Bullshit Jobs

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