In his book Bullshit Jobs, the late David Graber wrote how society is set up to create jobs that ‘don’t exist’. You know the ones: telemarketers and ‘team meetings’ with people drawing things on whiteboards, creating ‘mission statements’.
We don’t need jobs like this, which are usually created to manipulate job figures for the government stats. We need more ‘real jobs’. carers and wildlife rescuers, dog walkers, carpenters, green builders, teachers, hospice workers, community chefs.
Many people in England are working on jobs they hate, simply to earn money. But money is not everything, it’s important to do work that you love and that makes a difference to your community.
What Are ‘silly jobs that don’t exist?’
Graeber grouped bullshit jobs into five types:
- Flunkies: roles that make someone else look or feel important. Think receptionists hired for empty foyers, or assistants whose main task is to signal status.
- Goons: roles that exist only because others have them. Think PR hit-squads trading press hits, or aggressive sales teams battling for the same pie.
- Duct tapers: roles created to fix problems that should not exist. Think staff paid to patch broken systems rather than fix the system itself.
- Box tickers: roles that produce reports and metrics to prove work is happening, even when it is not.
- Taskmasters: managers who create work for others, or oversee teams that do not need oversight.
You have likely experience of this. Ever gone into a Lush or Next shop? You’re bombarded the minute you arrive, with people ‘greeting you”. They look bored out of their brain, and the first thing you do is leave the shop. It would be far better if Next spent money on improving their ethics score at Good on You.
The NHS budget is bursting. But we have managers and middle managers, who waste money and energy on lit-up appointment boards. That money could be used to fund nursing assistants, to take the load off nurses and doctors. Proper jobs!
In a YouGov survey, 37% of British workers said their job did not make a meaningful contribution to the world. That is a lot of wasted potential.
Ask three simple questions, to determine if you’re in a silly job:
- What would break if I stopped doing this for a month?
- Who would notice, and why?
- Does my job help anyone or the community?
How Economic Systems Keep Useless Jobs Alive
GDP and market systems means we need more ‘economic growth’. But this results in ‘full employment goals, which encourages people to pad out jobs, to produce political gains.
Alternatives exist. Ideas like shorter work weeks or universal basic income shift value from money to wellbeing. Iceland has shorter workweeks, and a 4-day week pilot in the UK found lower burnout and better job retention.
Who Was David Graeber?
David Graeber (the anthropologist who coined the term ‘bullshit jobs’) died suddenly from narcotic pancreatitis a few years back (just 59, it was though to be COVID-related, he did not even drink alcohol). His early death has nevertheless left a legacy, on how we need to rid the world of useless jobs that do more harm than good.
He was a fan of Universal Income, rather than a society where the blue-collar workers got ill from exhaustion, and white-collar workers did ‘invented jobs’ going round with clipboards, to check how others were doing:
Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour. Whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar, and salaried.
For some reason, we as a society have collectively decided to have millions of human beings spending years of their lives, pretending to type into spreadsheets or preparing mind maps for PR meetings. Rather than freeing them to knit sweaters, play with their dogs, start a garage band, experiment with new recipes or sit in cafés arguing about politics.
Lobbyists and PR specialists have a largely negative impact on society. I think almost anyone would concur that, were all telemarketers to disappear, the world would be a better place.
