Compulsory reading: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber
To Jim — thanks for the mateship and the teaching.
Final Working Definition: a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.
Graeber’s working definition perfectly sums up my initial interest in the anthropologist’s thinking. I first encountered Graeber a few years back when a mate sent me the author’s 2013 essay, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. I remember reading the essay (at my bullshit job) and grunting like Tim the Toolman Taylor when I came across this paragraph:
Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinetmakers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Nor does the task really need to be done - at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their coworkers might be spending more time making cabinets and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities that before long, there’s endless piles of useless, badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop, and it’s all that anyone really does.
Now that you’ve got a taste of David Graeber’s snarky style and blunt approach — one Guardian review was titled ‘Bullshit Jobs: A Theory review - laboured rant about the world of work’ — I imagine some will question why I’d write about “bullshit jobs” on a site dedicated to mental and emotional health.
My initial response takes the form of Graeber’s desire to demonstrate the significant physical and psychological health issues many who possess bullshit jobs experience. Graeber also fascinatingly focuses part of the book on what he terms ‘spiritual violence’ that develops in many who work bullshit jobs. So, without further ado, let’s chew the fat…
I posted this on the Mental Health Today Facebook page and chewed the fat with some followers in regards to their bullshit jobs experiences.
Why you should read Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
Get a different take
Have you considered the mental and emotional health issues you’ve experienced that relate to work? (I’m hoping some will answer yes.) If so, here’s my follow up question: Have you considered your job’s level of bullshit? I imagine many of us have felt it, but not unpacked it — that’s where Graeber comes in. This is most likely why Graeber’s 2013 essay caught digital fire. After attracting over one million clicks, and apparently being translated into a dozen languages, Graeber started fleshing his exploratory essay into a book. The book would, in part, take the next steps in observing and teaching about the “spiritual violence” that bullshit jobs unload on the workforce. For an example of this, come with me to chapter three: Why Do Those in Bullshit Jobs Regularly Report Themselves Unhappy?
In this chapter, I’d like to start exploring some of the moral and psychological effects of being trapped inside a bullshit job.
In particular, I want to ask the obvious question: Why is this even a problem? Or to phrase it more precisely: Why does having a pointless job so regularly cause people to be miserable? On the face of it, it’s not obvious that it should. After all, we’re talking about people who are effectively being paid — often very good money — to do nothing. One might imagine that those being paid to do nothing would consider themselves fortunate, especially when they are more or less left to themselves. But while every now and then I did hear testimonies from those who said they couldn’t believe their luck in landing such a position, the remarkable thing is how very few of them there were. Many, in fact, seemed perplexed by their own reaction, unable to understand why their situation left them feeling so worthless and depressed.
Troubling thought, eh? While several reviewers found this section of the book tedious and directionless, I found it therapeutic and uplifting. For years I’ve struggled with an innate desire to find fulfilling and skill-utilising work, instead of the increasing number of bullshit office jobs that only offer full-time pay.
After finishing my master’s degree in 2016, I worked three admin, comms or media jobs for companies that primarily employed me so that they could inform clients/members/staff that they have someone in the position.
It felt maddening to take on purposeless jobs when “work” consumes such a significant amount of time.
Before digesting Graeber’s thinking and theory, I felt inadequate and guilty. Guilty that I didn’t appear as “happy” or “content” as coworkers and mates. I’d receive messages from mates groaning about the amount of work they have, and think, When was the last time I had to work that hard? And when was the last time I got paid to use my skills like them?
What we find in Graeber’s take is an explanation and argument that we operate in economic, social and political systems which preach that employers own our time and that blame must fall on workers. He goes on to expose this insidious construct through his research and suggests that this capitalist ethos and outlook wasn’t always the status quo. In fact, in chapter three Graeber fascinatingly (and rather effectively) charts the history and evolution of ‘time’, and how technology and modern capitalism seized its use and unhealthy meaning:
The English historian E.P. Thompson, who wrote a magnificent 1967 essay on the origins of the modern time sense called “Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” pointed out that what happened were simultaneous moral and technological changes, each propelling the other. By the fourteenth century, most European towns had created clock towers — usually funded and encouraged by the local merchant guild. It was these same merchants who developed the habit of placing human skulls on their desks as memento mori, to remind themselves that they should make good use of their time because each chime of the clock brought them one hour closer to death. The dissemination of domestic clocks and then pocket watches too much longer, coinciding largely with the advent of the industrial revolution beginning in the 1700s, but once it did happen, it allowed for similar attitudes to diffuse among the middle classes more generally. Sidereal time, the absolute time of the heavens, had to come to earth and began to regulate even the most intimate daily affairs. But time was simultaneously a fixed grid, and a possession. Everyone was encouraged to see time as did the medieval merchant: as a finite property to be carefully budgeted and disposed of, much like money. What’s more, the new technologies also allowed any person’s fixed time on earth to be chopped up into uniform units that could be bought and sold for money.
Once time was money, it became possible to speak of “spending time,” rather than just “passing” it—also of wasting time, killing time, saving time, losing time, racing against time, and so forth. … Factories began employing time clocks; workers came to be expected to punch the clock upon entering and leaving; charity schools designed to teach the poor discipline and punctuality gave way to public school systems where students of all social classes were made to get up and march from room to room each hour at the sound of a bell, an arrangement self-consciously designed to train children for future lives of paid factory labor.
Having chartered these developments, I considered my upbringing and experiences. (The author’s ability to connect and reflect with the reader are significant benefits to Bullshit Jobs, as opposed to economists-turned-writers who touch on these topics.) What became clear is that school taught that dignity and self-worth are predominantly found in working for a living. Graeber goes on to argue that when you mix this modern teaching with the fact that an increasing number of people dislike their jobs, you get “the paradox of modern work”. We are then faced with Graeber’s argument (see Chapter 5: Why Are Bullshit Jobs Proliferating?) that an increasing number of white-collar jobs are bullshit, in part, because of a fusion of economics and politics — a concoction fixated on simplistic unemployment and economic figures. (Check out Graeber’s comments on President Barack Obama’s desire to maintain a bloated private, for-profit health insurance system!) All of this leads the anthropologist to ask us:
1. On the individual level, why do people agree to do and put up with their own bullshit jobs?
2. On the social and economic levels, what are the larger forces that have led to the proliferation of bullshit job?
3. On the cultural and political levels, why is the bullishitisation of the economy not seen as a social problem, and why has no one done anything about it?
Know that you aren’t alone
Lilian: What’s it like to have a job like this? Demoralisaing. Depressing. I get most of the meaning in my life from my job, and now my job has no meaning or purpose.
It gives me anxiety because I think that at any moment someone is actually going to realise that nothing would change if I were not here and they could save themselves the money.
It also trashes my confidence. If I’m not constantly being met by challenges that I am overcoming, how do I know that I’m capable? Maybe all my ability to do good work was atrophied. Maybe I don’t know anything useful. I wanted to be able to handle bigger and more complex projects, but now I handle nothing. If I don’t exercise those skills, I’ll lose them.
It also makes me afraid that other people in the office think the problem is me; that I’m choosing to slack off or I’m choosing to be useless, when nothing about this is my choice, and all my attempts to make myself more useful or give myself more work are met with rejection and not a small amount of derision for attempting to rock the boat and challenge my boss’s authority.
I have never been paid so much to do so little, and I know I’m not earning it. I know my coworkers with other job titles do significantly more work. I might even get paid more than them! How bullshit would that be?
I’m not afraid to admit that I cried when I read Lilian’s thoughts and experience. I had never connected with someone else who felt trapped in a bullshit job. It’s the kind of topic you don’t venture into with others for fear of exposure and judgement. (Does this relate to the teaching that ‘work’ brings dignity and worthiness? Probably.)
I lost count of how many experiences Graeber directly quotes from those he surveyed about their bullshit jobs in chapters three and four. (Note: I got to 18.) I’ve never read or experienced anything like it. It was as if I was sitting in a group therapy session, and we were finally able to take off our masks and speak:
Maria: I spoke to my manager, who very clearly told me not to “advertise the fact” that I wasn’t mega busy. I asked her to at least send any unclaimed work my way, and she told me she would show me a few of the things she does, but never did.
These chapters brought comfort, in part, because of the assurance that the problem isn’t simple — or just due to an individual’s poor decisions.
Since the book’s publication (2018), it has bemused me that reviews shrugged at these chapters, describing them as ‘tedious’ or ‘bloated’. Graeber asserts in the introduction that this isn't a manual for fixing the problem; it's a pitch and examination of the problem. Once you understand that the book goes against the grain, you'll (hopefully) appreciate Graeber's method, thought and connection.
Find some different answers
I just wrote that Graeber’s aim wasn’t to solve the proliferation of bullshit jobs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ideas to chew on:
Connect with others
This is self-explanatory, but I’ll flesh it out. Try and connect genuinely with someone struggling with a bullshit job. By reaching out (or approaching someone if you are struggling), you assist in creating a safe space and allow for learning. And sometimes it just helps to let it out and know that someone is listening. I wish I could tell you about an area of counselling that specialises in dealing with or avoiding bullshit jobs, but I’m unaware of such work.
Please don’t make the mistake of exercising and expressing your hatred of the bullshit on social media. Find someone trustworthy and create that space.
Push for social value and collective action
Have you ever considered the social good and value jobs offer society? For example, I can’t imagine anyone rejecting the idea that teachers contribute significantly to communities and society. But what about, say, investment bankers? And what disturbs me, and it’s something Graeber addresses at length, is the modern divergence in social value and what one is likely to be paid. Here’s part of Graeber’s take:
Imagine if a certain class of people were to simply vanish. Let me expand on this for a moment. If we all woke up one morning and discovered that not only nurses, garbage collectors, and mechanics, but for that matter, bus drivers, grocery store workers, firefighters, or short-order chefs had been whisked away into another dimension, the results would be equally catastrophic. If elementary school teachers were to vanish, most schoolchildren would likely celebrate for a day or two, but the long-term effects would be if anything even more devastating. …
The same cannot be said of hedge fund managers, political consultants, marketing gurus, lobbyists, corporate lawyers, or people whose job it is to apologize for the fact that the carpenter didn’t come. As Finn said of his software licensing firm in chapter 4: “If I showed up on Monday and the building disappeared, not only would society not care, I wouldn’t, either.” And there are certainly office buildings in the world … that, were they to simply vanish, would leave the world much better off.
Yet in many of these are precisely the people who get paid the very highest salaries.
It’s easy to read this thought and agree with it, even feel disgusted at the divergence of social value and pay, and then throw your hands in the air and think that there’s nothing you can do.
What I’ve come to believe is that comprehending these problems, through thinkers like Graeber, and talking to others is taking action. Nothing changes if we shut up.
Another way to advocate for change is to learn about the benefits of unionism, collective action and activist groups. A few weeks ago, I sat at a dinner table and listened to a mate paint a picture of unions that has been crafted and pushed from the media and governments since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s. (It’s also a view I would’ve backed until I researched and joined a union.) My mate was worried for a colleague who was struggling with poor health. He feared that their employer would find a way to shaft his colleague. When I asked about potential union support, he replied, “Unions?! They are useless and violent! You just need a good boss.”
We need to reconsider the place of unions and activist groups in “developed” countries. (This is when I again hand over to Graeber as he’s put these beliefs into action.) What we can all do is question and discuss the place of companies and political parties in looking out for the best interests of workers and bullshit jobs. And as automation and technology continue to alter industries and the playing field, we need to consider whether employers or public representatives are best suited to bring change for workers. (Note: If you reside in Australia, check out Meetup for local thought and activist groups.)
Consider the society you want to live in
Have you heard about Universal Basic Income (UBI)? I first dove into UBI when I read Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists. Graeber doesn’t dive into the background of UBI and its machinations, or forecast how UBI would be implemented today (see the likes of Andrew Yang for that); instead, Graeber looks into how:
Even a modest Basic Income program could become a stepping-stone toward the most profound transformation of all: to unlatch work from livelihood entirely. As we saw in the last chapter, a strong moral case can be made for paying everyone the same regardless of their work. Yet the argument cited in that chapter did assume people were being paid for their work, and this would at the very least require some kind of monitoring bureaucracy to ensure that people were, in fact, working, even if it did not have to measure how hard or how much they produced. A full Basic Income would eliminate the compulsion to work, by offering a reasonable standard of living to all, and then either leaving it up to each individual to decide whether they wished to pursue further wealth, by doing a paying job, or selling something, or whether they wished to do something else with their time.
By the end of Bullshit Jobs, we are left to consider these reformations and answer what a "genuine free society" looks like to us…
Graeber had me at his dedication page.
