Bullshit
Jobs: A Theory
David
Graeber (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
The
world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting
and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Wordsworth's
words have seldom been better illustrated than by this book, which
began as an essay, "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs."
David Graeber wondered if some jobs that seem downright pointless
seemed that way to the people who got paid to do them. He tossed the
idea out into the internet in 2013; his essay went viral, and
elicited a vast commentary, which Graeber collected, by way of
research; he also solicited emails, and entered into correspondence
with people all over the world. Some 375 people contributed comments
or emailed testimonies about how useless their jobs are, and how
unhappy they are about it.
What
does Graeber mean by bullshit jobs? One key element is that they are
'pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious;' another is that the employee
is obliged to pretend that this isn't the case, which is tough on
morale. In general, he's talking about white collar jobs, as opposed
to shit jobs, in which actual work is done, however tediously.
His
typology is rough but revealing. 'Flunkies' are people like
receptionists and doormen, echoes of the feudal retainers of old;
they may be window dressing, or they may be like the competent
assistant who renders her boss redundant (though in that case it may
be disputed which of them has the bullshit job.) 'Goons' are the
lobbyists, telemarketers, and corporate lawyers who are hired to make
things harder for other people.
The
term 'duct tapers' arises from the software industry, where it
describes people who patch together incompatible software. More
generally, they are people hired to work around a fault within an
organization so that the fault never needs to be fixed. "There
is, it seems, a whole genre of jobs that involve correcting the
damage done by a superior who holds his position for reasons
unrelated to ability to do the work." 'Box tickers' spend a lot
of time filling out reports, as in the compliance industry, which
grows every time a new government regulation is published. "The
employee is usually aware that not only does the box-ticking exercise
do nothing toward accomplishing its ostensible purpose, it actually
undermines it, since it diverts time and resources away from the
purpose itself." A 'taskmaster' has a bullshit job if the people
he's supervising would get along better if he never talked to them.
Some taskmasters exist to create bullshit jobs for everyone else.
Obviously, these definitions could be split in other ways, since they
often overlap, but it's a good start.
According
to stereotype, bullshit jobs are often government jobs; this can
happen, but the private sector has generated more and more of them
over the past four decades. For one thing, the private sector is not
nearly as disciplined as its mythology would suggest; flunkies get
hired to give managers someone to manage, and they can prove hard to
dislodge. Corporations have shown a tendency to lay off the factory
workers and keep the middle managers, just as universities downsize
the faculty, and keep the staff. And consider how many people work
for health insurance companies, denying claims. During the debate on
the ACA, President Obama said the quiet part out loud–we can't have
universal public health insurance because some two million(!)
Americans are employed to slow the flow of money out to where the
care gets done, and it would be too great a shock to the system to
get rid of those jobs.
One
pernicious effect of jobs that could disappear without anyone being
the worse off is that it abuses a fundamental aspect of human nature:
we like to make things happen. Even as tiny children, pushing our
bowl of cereal off the table to see what will happen, we measure
ourselves by our impact on the world around us. The more we waste our
efforts writing reports that no one will ever read, the more we feel
like we're disappearing from the world.
Another
is that this situation is a setup for tremendous mutual resentment
and contempt. We can well imagine that people on the factory floor
grouse about the boss's brother-in-law lounging in the office playing
computer games,and marvel that he gets paid so well. On the other
hand, why don’t people who want to work as teachers, nurses, or
bartenders deserve to earn a decent living? Because they have job
satisfaction, and the people who feel useless are envious. And
everybody scorns those on the dole, for whatever reason.
Polling
has shown that thirty to forty per cent of people, asked if their job
makes ‘a meaningful contribution to the world’ would say No. "We
have become a civilization based on work–not even 'productive work'
but work as an end and meaning in itself. We have come to believe
that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they
do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or
assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively
acquiesced to our own enslavement.”
This
is a crisis we haven't had any name for. It's invisible because it's
omnipresent, and the solutions (if such there be) lie all over the
map, in education and public policy, economics and theology. I haven't treated you to the personal stories that led Graeber
to these conclusions, but they are passionate and insightful. (The
footnotes also give good value.) I hope you'll track down the essay,
if not the book.
8/1/20
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