/lit/ - Literature

My jobs are bullshit temporary jobs but I like them a lot, so why complain?

>>20854060
>Why do we even work when we don't need to?
Capital loves to expand.

>>20854060
Collecting money for doing basically nothing is the dream isn't it?

>>20854145
We're doing something unfortunately

>>20854145
Not according to mommys boy litcels. They need an intellectual job that fosters their spiritual growth lollllllllllllllll

that's why i'm satisfied working construction. i don't have to build something significant that lasts like the pyramids to be fulfilled. i can be content taking part in a profession that will literally never end, it's a staple of what we are.

>>20854060
No, i fix machines.

The author is onto something. But he undermines his own point direly with vapid overanalysis of abstract minutiae, even more vapid liberal snark that reads as heavy-handedly shoehorned in and, most bizarrely, by actually failing to take the depth and magnitude of the issue he sets out to discuss seriously enough - at every turn, he attempts to *shrink* the concept he's grappling with down to make it fit into an obsolete neolib framework, chalking it up to the work of those dastardly Republicans or those gosh-darned capitalism apologists who troll the internet. He opens with a devastating premise, a truly profound set of observations. From there on it's as if he's doing damage control on his own explosive ideas, neutering them with inane navel-gazing and dragging them down into the murk of pedestrian, partisan shitflinging.

He correctly identifies profound dysfunction in the current paradigm, and then exhausts himself - at times rationalizing, at others deploying gaslighting and innuendo - trying to convince the reader (and likely himself) that the present paradigm can by and large remain as-is if we'd all just be good boys who support Blue Corp over Red Corp. Stunning idea, terrible book. The angels who blessed him with such insight would have done better if they picked another vessel.

>>20854060
>somebody didn't actually need you to do something
>but they don't realize that, and in fact pay you for it
Why is that your problem? If anything, employers are the ones who should be panicking about bullshit jobs, and the fact that they aren't makes me think it's not actually that common.
However, maybe a lot of employees don't know what makes their job worth paying for, which is a shame and I think the employer is making a mistake if that's the case.

Can anyone actually name a bullshit job? Everybody seems to believe they exist but nobody knows what they are.

>>20854171
You're barking up the wrong tree. You think it's about fulfillment or feeling useful, it's about the money. Why do they pay us to dig holes and then pay us to fill them?

>>20854207
HR you niggercattle. Its a miracle your dumb ass survived the trip out of your moms cunt.

>>20854207
Consulting

>>20854221
She seems incredibly based. Seethe more.

>>20854213
>Why do they pay us to dig holes and then pay us to fill them?
big shovel would like a word

>>20854207
The sad truth is that while there are bullshit jobs, they're nowhere near as common as people think. People just massively underestimate how much work goes into maintaining civilization. Another thing people underestimate is the value that they provide at work. So what, you only do "real work" about two hours a day instead of the full eight: that ten hours of real work a week is actually really important.

There's room for optimization, sure, but saying there's tons of bullshit jobs mostly just reveals ignorance on the part of the speaker.

>>20854207
Janny

>>20854234
shouldn't graeber be happy that we all have jobs with lots of slack and aren't slaving away 8 hours straight every day? i don't work all day, but i'm being paid to be available to do what needs to be done. i guess they could replace me with a part timer. is graeber a crypto-business consultant effeciency expert or something trying to get every employee to be more productive? how about bullshit books? does selling shitty ideological books with weak scholarship count as a bullshit job?

>>20854207
>HR
>Elected Officials
>Entire mass media of tv, movies, video games
>Artists
>IT types
>Everything female dominated except nursing or childcare

>>20854207
>fastfood
>you're not working class
>you're lumpenproles

Its overstated, litteraly everything you see around you exept nature exists because of people working. Its the harsh reality. If you dont work, you should not expect to be able to life a live.

just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's useless

>>20854298
There are more people than there are jobs

>>20854337
not where I live.

>just because something is consumed or used, does not make it useful. porn, 90% of entertainment "content", fast food and other processed foods, faggot robot dick ecigs, SSRIs etc. etc. destroy either your mind body and soul or all three at the same time, and are thus not useful, but the contrary, destructive and poisonous

Imagine how many jobs in these industries would be lost if they were eradicated, and for good reasons

>>20854370
I'm quoting myself, I'm tired.
Meant to reply to >>20854316

>>20854378
I agree, Its also a good counter argument for this poster: >>20854298

>>20854234
This. I’m not sure exactly what the alternative is here, that Graeber wants me to stare at spreadsheets for 40 hours exactly a week for the rest of my life until I go blind?

>>20854370
I like it and I want it. You dont get to dictate whats good and whats bad.

>>20854370
>>20854378
again, simply. you don't have to like it, that doesn't make it useless. some people benefitted from SSRIs, plenty of intellectuals throughout history used countless drugs and you'll be damned sure there are ones in the making using vapes. processed food is bad but so is factory farming, are you buying from a farm?
>t. did NOT benefit from SSRIs, quit vaping, eating shit

>>20854298
Everything around us can function without people working. That's how the world got stuff done for 2 years during corona

>>20854193
Good post, thank you

>>20854207
>teachers (this is a recent trend)
>HR
>Eveyone in Government
>social activist
>consultants
>Social media managers
>90% of female jobs
>University lecturers
>Equity, diversity and inclusion managers
>journalists

>>20854417
The words of an addict

>>20854234
This. I have huge chunks of time at work where I'm just fucking around doing nothing important. The company gladly pays me for this though because when shit has to get done, I'm there and ready to go. Otherwise they'd have to call around to outside companies, schedule a service call, and wait god knows how long for someone to actually come out and do the work.

t. plant maintenance

>>20854799
>>teachers

Retard take, because the trade has many bad members does not mean the job is worthless. The very opposite of this is true, it is critical to a nationalist state to have commited teachers who can instruct early minds to embrace their blood and soil.

>>20854060
bullshit jobs are real and you should be reading while you do them... read over 200 books during the covid shutdown

I'm a 25yo NEET with no previous work experience and a HS education, how do I get a "bullshit job"?

>>20854856
Quality is a better metric for reading than quantity. Any mong can turn page on prolebait, which I suspect you did by your immediately proclaimation of the number of books you read.

What books did you read? The most demanding and the least demanding.

>>20854894
Says the faggot that is proud of reading commie critical theory.

>>20854839
An example of shitty teachers is Russia. They taught people to embrace their blood and soil and that resulted in the invasion of Ukraine which is a bullshit war by the way.

>>20854874
You have to do some legwork to convince people that you're willing to work and shit. But actual work? There is always very little, most people slack off and waste time

>>20854925
I'm deathly afraid of getting any job. I went to work at a warehouse once and lasted 3 days, it was hellish

>>20854060
>their job is bullshit
Yes
>and not needed
No
You still need your economy running to provide you with goods and services you aren't able to immediately or locally provide. However, the switch away from localized and eventually even nationalized industry to localized and nationalized "service sector" jobs has actually made you MORE reliant on the capital-E Economy than you would have been at any point in history before.
>Why do we even work when we don't need to?
You are never going to reach a point where you don't need to work, and the only people that believe they will are the less intelligent of the communists. Even Lenin said those who don't work don't eat. You can't consume without producing (even if only nominally, as in service sector labor), otherwise the entire economy runs out of steam and collapses.
Recognizing that you have been lead by the nose into a crock of artificial horseshit by policymakers and economic manipulators is a good thing, but transferring that criticism to "waaah having to sustain myself bad" is just infantile and retarded.

>>20854941
Yeah work is a scam. Honestly the world doesn't need work these days. I don't know who is pushing it on us.

>>20854916
The invasion of Ukraine is widely denounced in Russia; extreme government censorship and crackdowns on those who criticize the war is the only reason the people haven't sent the government completely tits up over it.

>>20854951
>I don't know who is pushing it on us.
All goods are ultimately scarce. If you want to withdraw from the pool of goods (which includes human labor), you have to be adding back to it, through either your own produced goods or labor. Its really that simple.

Yeah. It’s mental hell because I am beyond bored to point of misery but at the same time there is nothing else that appears worth doing which I could do as an alternative.

>>20854964
How about the rest of you work 0.000001% harder so that I don't have to

>>20854060
>work when we dont need to
You expect a free ride from people who do real jobs? Why would they want to support you

>>20854207
In the book he names plenty of examples and develops a whole taxonomy. Off the top of my head:

> Taskmaster: exists solely to create tasks for others. Example: deans in college
> crony: exists only because other people have cronies. Example: corporate lawyer
> box ticker: exists because of some requirement or ass covering. Example: compliance officer

Graeber is fascinating in his ability to create a fairly internally-consistent parallel universe of economics that flies in the face of orthodox teachings (and axioms!) Whether or not he is correct is another matter (and the Economist has published at least one debunking article about Graeber)

Some, I assume, is true. There is extravagant wasteful spending across government, non-profit, and for-profit industries.

>>20854974
We could all do that and also put you in a cave to starve so that our collective extra percentage of work would go towards posterity instead of your failed, never reproducing ass.

>>20854974
Well, you are right. This does happen ofcourse. But it shouldnt.

>>20854060
Institutional and systematic inertia. We have built societies predicated on doing certain things that are bullshit. Not just meaningless jobs but what about the inertia of how long workweeks or “full employment” is? The normal problem of work is that you gain nothing from working harder than everyone else. You don’t get to go home 4 hours early because you’re that much more efficient. You will just get more crap dumped on your desk for being “such a good worker”. The nadir of this is the japanese culture where people are sleeping at their desks because there’s nothing to do but honolable wolk ethic-u demands you spend the most time in the office.

We laugh at jap antics when our system is as idiotic. And no I don’t want worldwide communism instead or anarchy or whatever college students are on about now.

>>20854988
Yeah but it's really nice not having to work, meanwhile working is hell. Why bother having a civilisation if no one can enjoy it? Your suffering would be wasted if it weren't counterbalanced by my enjoyment of the fruits of everyone's labour.

>>20854839
I literally said "this is a recent trend" and you cut it out then attacked the other part??

>>20854941
Where's your father?

>>20855026
I love the smug neet act from someone who is still ultimately posting on /lit/; we all know you're not doing too hot bud.
Ultimately I'm military so I'll be scamming the fuck out of the taxpayer for the rest of my life while providing no tangible benefit to society, but I'm not going to be deluded about the nature of economics on top of gaming the system. I'm under no illusion that what I'm doing should be the way things work.

>>20855026
>I didnt ask to be born!!!
tier teenager argument.

>>20855046
What is the counter argument to that? Do parents stop being responsible for the act of creating a life after a certain amount of time passes?

>>20855068
>Do parents stop being responsible for the act of creating a life after a certain amount of time passes?
Yes. If you are capable of taking care of yourself, you are your own responsibility. You could always just kill yourself, you know.

>>20855068
>Do parents stop being responsible for the act of creating a life after a certain amount of time passes?

Yes

>>20854234
maintaining a capitalistic civilization with the excessive luxuries only afforded to the rich sure does require a lot of "necessary" jobs

>>20855068
No. They are always the ones that made the choice to create a new life. Or at least risk it.
If you disagree you’re just confusing the moral responsibility of that life with being responsible for its creation.

>>20854145
Whenever I work from home (three days out of five ususally) I play videogames all fucking day and do jack shit. I've done this for a year and no has noticed.

>>20855086
>If you are capable of taking care of yourself, you caused your own existence
Ok bro. Explain exactly why parents should ever be absolved of any responsibility.

>>20856298
Your parents gave you a wonderful gift, if you don't want it, you can throw it away whenever you feel like it. But deep down you know that it's a wonderful gift, as you're unable to enjoy it for what it is so, you choose to be resentful, this is nonsense.

>>20854060
My job is definitely needed, but it's not needed for a good reason. Just like liposuction surgeons are needed.

>>20854060
My job literally exists because the central government in this country cannot trust the state governments to do their job without corruption. Its literally a bullshit job.

>>20856446
They didn't give you a gift. They gave you hell and then you'll actually go to hell if you kill yourself

>>20855432
what is your job supposed to be? are you an italian public worker?

>>20854221
This didn't make me annoyed until I went back and noticed it said 22. Fucking 22 and living that nice in the city. Wonder what she does..

>>20854207

Alright just walk into a store pretty much any store
Look at all the stuff on the shelf and think about how much of it is actually needed or has any real value
Think of how much of it will end up in some landfill within a year
All of that stuff is being churned out every day by billions of people working many different jobs and really these jobs don't even quite deserve to be called bullshit because they're arguably worse than that

>>20854894
"most demanding" would have been the Tattvasangraha and "least demanding" Alice in Wonderland

>>20856819
Literally nothing. "Consulting" is a code word for nepotism. Parents probably donated a lot to some university their daughter attended (most likely a generational alumni) and since she paid in, she got hired.

>>20854193
>devastating premise, a truly profound set of observations
i suppose if you were sheltered to the extent of never having any contact with the outside world, ever, since the day you were born, then the author's observations might seem devastating and profound. but every single person in the real world that has ever held a job for more than a day knows they're just paper pushers or wishes they were.

>>20854060
>Why do we even work when we don't need to?

So you don't develop the idea of overthrowing your masters.

>>20854207
Probably sales management. Most sales managers are divorced alcoholics.

>>20854207
Anything I dont like

>>20854207
Basically anything middleman

Why do Americans have such a hard time recognizing that we assign value to the act of accepting liability? Somebody whose entire job is to take responsibility for something isn't a "bullshit job" and anybody who has ever had to be responsible for somebody else's work knows it.

(((Graeber))) is reflecting his parasitic nature by hating work. And all the BS jobs people have named, like HR, are a direct result of people like him.

>>20857484
>Somebody whose entire job is to take responsibility for something isn't a "bullshit job" and anybody who has ever had to be responsible for somebody else's work knows it.
you're not working, you're a fall guy. This argument breaks down when you realize these fall guys only exist to fall for the next fall guy above them, they literally are body scarifies so higher ups don't have to take responsibility.

>>20857484
>Somebody whose entire job is to take responsibility for something
if that something is literally another employee who may or may not be a bullshit jobber himself, you can see how this quickly becomes ridiculous

>>20857512
>you're not working, you're a fall guy
you fundamentally misunderstand how society works
we assign value to intellectual ownership
in exchange for accepting intellectual ownership, you are allocated resources commensurate with your liability
the same reason the breadwinner is allocated more resources in the household in exchange for the liability of their standard of living
the same reason the conductor who plays no instrument is given credit for the performance of the orchestra
the same reason the president IS responsible for the price of gas, because his job is to accept responsibility

>>20857558
bad resource allocation isn't a phenomenon of late-stage capitalism or American society, it's just basic malfunction in an organized unit of humans. It's not some giant flaw in society we're just now recognizing—society is flawed because humans are flawed. It's incredible to me that "too much money == lazy allocation of that money" is somehow some cogent observation on modern society when the Russians have been complaining about American decadence for a century.

>>20854221
Fucking yuppies, have it all society can offer yet they are very unhappy and lacking content underneath the glamour.

>>20854216
HR provides a function at managing office disputes (its fake role) and its real function is liability protection from ex employees, its much harder to sue a company that has an efficient and well oiled HR which will detooth all court cases

>>20854221
the woman isnt a consultant, shes a propagandist paid by the firm to attract new actual working talent. she was exposed for this but of course this is never mentioned when its posted online.

>>20854264
>>20854273
>>20854799
>>20856860
pure retardation

>>20857481
functions to make interactions and decisions more efficient.

>>20854977
the whole crony thing is retarded too. consider corporate lawyers. the state wants to prosecute companies for wrongdoing and the companies want to protect themselves from this. what in the fuck in this equation is wrong? where is the bullshit job?

honestly the whole book can be summed up as: midwit retard says something that whilst is true would make society function more efficiently, it goes against all logic and human nature so would never exist ever for any reason besides the retarded authors head.

>>20854060
All the jobs I had were bullshit

>Dishwasher
Literally put the dishes in the machine and press a button. So hard.

>Quality control inspector
"Is it clean here in the factory? Yep it's clean. Is that having the right shipping label? Yep it does." Repeat this through the day.

>Customer Success Analyst
"Thanks for calling, how can I help you? Oh, you need me to do something for you could do yourself but you didn't do it because it was easier to find the customer support rather than reading the instructions in the manual? I see."

>ISP Support
"So, you wanna know why you don't have connection? Well, as you can see, your router is off. Please turn it on and try again." "Sir, you have connection, the reason the website you are trying to reach is not loading is because you have typed it wrong"

>High School Teacher
I wasn't really teaching, I was basically following a textbook as gospel (because that's what you are forced to do) and automatically passing retard students (because there are many retards these days and no one wants to do the paperwork for them)


I hate the antichrist

>>20857618
>he thinks a job being easy makes it bullshit
>he thinks that putting the right labels on products is bullshit
>he thinks that helping retards is bullshit
>he thinks that following a textbook to teach children is a bullshit job

honestly this book might be the perfect filter test. anyone who values it in anyway should be thrown deep into the wilderness to survive alone and recreate their own society. low iq niggers dont belong in the 21st century society we have

Didn’t someone ask Graeber if being a professor is a bullshit job?

>>20857587
>bad resource allocation isn't a phenomenon of late-stage capitalism or American society, it's just basic malfunction in an organized unit of humans. It's not some giant flaw in society we're just now recognizing—society is flawed because humans are flawed
I'm not invested in the narrative of late stage capitalism but for an interesting and similar historical, non-American instance of what is really happening—a softer and gentler form of corruption wherein money is accepted for tasks only carried out nominally or not at all, and tasks which become more and more costly to perform as a result of this—see MacMullen's Corruption and the Decline of Rome. "Bullshit Jobs" is I think just an irreverant and topical way of addressing the problem. So by the end of the (western) empire, the Roman state was essentially spending more money to field a smaller, weaker, and less competent army than when it had been able to field a larger, stronger, and more effective one. Much like how Americans are so expensive as employees compared to the rest of the world—something we nominally take as evidence of higher productivity but really that's almost a joke, that someone working in one of our Walmarts stocking shelves with tshirts is "more productive" than someone in a garment factory in Bangladesh. If we consider stocking an American Walmart to be more "productive" than making what that Walmart sells we obviously need to think about what we mean by production. We don't mean the making of actual stuff but how much the tasks done cost—it's more expensive to keep Walmart open than to make shirts! And no doubt, Walmart's corporate structure, which has little to do with retail operations, is filled with innocent but inherently corrupt functions whose purpose is not to add value but siphon their cut of it through layers of bureaucracy that Walmart certainly lacked when it was smaller. Things like HR, Risk departments, middle managers everywhere, etc. all add very little value but have become "essential" to "getting things done." It's corruption, just a soft and gentle corruption. No one is putting a gun to you or formally running a racket, but in practice there is no difference in outcome, and it's because intense concentrations of wealth and power attact courtiers, who make themselves indispensible, and set up their own fiefdoms unto fiefdoms and it isn't before long you have five people asking you for an update on the same issue. Why couldn't there be one, or even two? No good reason in all honesty, and were one to attempt to reform it writ largr, might actually kill the golden goose, as so few of its stewards are even capable of sustaining in the first place, they were only there to milk it. What bullshit jobs really do is turn an organization into the ship of Theseus, except all the replacement timbers are rotten. Apparently, Theseus pays well for work on his ship, so it's important that it needs to be constantly maintained rather than ever launched

>>20854145
The fact that people will say this without a hint of irony shows just how rotten people's brains have become by modern capitalism. You are a human being, your goal should be to experience thins, to do thins, to be part of a family and a community. The modern bugman see their goal as just to become an economic parasite so that they can consoom more until one day they die, and that will be that.

i am programmer doing software for private pharmacy that sells some bullshit to people (for example losing weight programs, or smoking cessation programs according to some plans that you can probably get for free from internet), thats bullshit job for me, cause i dont feel i help anyone, except slimy porkies selling trash to retards

No, because I've only worked jobs that are needed.
First as a technician that keeps factory machines running, then as an english teacher for Chinese children that will eventually travel to the west, finally as an admin for an ERP system that is vital to the automotive company.

If someone paid me 20% more to work a pointless job I would do it in a second and feel absolutely no guilt. This is a major first world problem.

>>20857734
to experience thins, to do thins

Yo moma isn't very thin, but I experienced her

>>20857747
>thats bullshit job for me, cause i dont feel i help anyone, except slimy porkies selling trash to retards
Honestly this is the case for many big companies. I work in finance and our entire business model is basically to get dumb people to agree to go into debt for something they dont really need so that we can milk them dry with interest payments. Since people with lower FICO scores pay way higher rates, our whole company basically boils down to "take money from the poor and give it to the rich"

I hate consultants

>>20854079
Please Define capital and what makes it " love " to expand.

>>20854207
My cousin works IT for a company in California. Gets paid for 8hr work day but only “works” while on a conference call for 30minutes a day or checking graphs for another 30mins-1hr. This was during our week long vacation together, seems chill af.

>>20854975
Because they are already getting free rides just doing nonsensical rituals and the rest is petty sadism

>>20856446
>If you don't leave the abusive relationship for fear of what the abusive party might do to you, it means you are secretly enjoying it

>>20854370
The only purpose of mind and soul is to enjoy these, trash take

>>20854145
Like finding a pot of gold in a never ending nightmare

>>20854221
Too many white lights.

>>20854202

You have to understand how commies think to understand how this misunderstanding of a concept came to be.

Commies don’t differentiate between wanting something or needing something. As far as they’re concerned you only need things, and when they encounter something like someone hiring someone else because they can’t be bothered to do something they can’t compute it. And like an actual computer they try to justify it by whatever means necessary.

Who would have thought that people who want to reduce humans to mindless drones think like machines.