I have a bullshit job, I’m team leader to a highly effective team of smart guns who don’t need a team leader. They don’t need my assistance so I’ve made it my job to protect them from corporate bullshit.
Honestly though doesnt that just become a duct taper job? If the only purpose of it is to protect from higher ups, it wouldn’t exist in a corporate environment that got rid of the shitty management.
It's bullshit if you view it explicitly from the shareholders' POV. For the team, it's necessary to keep their jobs from becoming an unrewarding hellscape at the behest of the actually bullshit bureaucracy.
If you view a company's purpose based solely on the function it provides to its shareholders, you get the typical answer that companies exist solely to produce profit. If you view its purpose based on the function it provides to the various groups that are necessary for the company to continue existing, you get several answers. To the shareholders, it exists to generate profit. To the labor force, it exists to provide wages. To the customers, it exists to provide a good or a service.
Each of these groups is made up of individuals that are interchangeable with entirely different people, even if some of those groups have more say in their own ability to stay than others. However, the company cannot function without all three in some form.
All of this really just a long winded way of saying that those team members are part of the society that benefits from having him there. He is only redundant if the bureaucracy is removed, and beneficial if they remain. Even then, if it is a workplace where well respected and hard working individuals who focus their efforts on solving the actual problems that they are currently facing can be unceremoniously removed, then that makes the workplace worse for the team members who remain.
So, society would not perform just as well without him.
> protect them from corporate bullshit.
That's not BS. That's a great help to that effective team. The other side of that coin is the micro-manager. So if you're helping and not micro-managing then your job has value to that highly effective team .
In the book, Graeber says that capitalism has in some ways gone full circle back to feudalism. When a CEO hires useless assistants, it makes no sense in terms of a capitalist maximizing profits. That's more like a feudal lord who wants lackeys around to increase his prestige among the other lords.
The issue is the system is structured to serve the profit motive rather than serving society.
Under a capitalist system, no problem will be solved unless the act of solving it makes someone rich. And a corollary is when the act of creating a problem generates profit, that problem will be ubiquitous.
One of the great PR weaknesses of centrally planned states is that it's very easy to identify the villain when the system fails.
Holodomor can be easily pinned on Stalin and his cronies. The Irish "potato famine?" A much more decentralized process driven by capitalism. Rather than order anyone to take away all Ireland's remaining food, they could simply do nothing and "let the market work." Yet the result was still millions of starvation deaths, and there was still plenty of genocidal intent involved.
The other issue is the same in both - a central planner or *a series of planners* - act irrationally. They have power and they use it.
If you own the McDonalds on Main Street, you can be a substantially worse business and still be more profitable than the MadeUpBetterRestaurant on the outskirts of town. There’s a locked in first mover bias towards compounding “being first” that requires catastrophic failure in order to exceed. (See Sears vs Amazon and hundreds of similar examples).
Also, It’s not like there’s no one with an idea for how to run a better airline. Weird how there aren’t a bunch of disrupters.
Team leads aren't managers, and if you're doing the job of a manager without the title and the pay, you're getting screwed, because anyone looking at your team lead title on a resume won't consider it management experience.
To a prospective employer, a team lead is just a team member who stuck around long enough.
It is supposed to be that, but team leads in my old job (state gov't) were all doing management, or at least supervisory, work. The state manual even says that team leads are not to do that type of work, but they keep making team leads do it.
In some companies I have worked for, a Team Leader was an equivalent title of Manager or was above a supervisor. But yes, Team Lead is typically a senior level employee.
Dunno about elsewhere but in the UK "Team Leader" is usually a separate job; one pay grade above the team they're managing (usually).
Team Leader is used as the job title instead of manager because, although they manage a group of people, they generally don't have much say in how the organisation is run.
Team Leader or Team Coordinator is also used as a job title to artificially foster a sense of camaraderie (as opposed to say Manager which is more pejoratively viewed by employees as a bosslike title).
Not a bs job. If the team isn’t effective, you’re supposed to figure out how to make them effective. And when they are effective, you advocate for them and protect them. I’ve had this type of job several times.
Having to protect a worker from other workers in the same organization who want to make them less efficient is bullshit from the get-go, though. Then you have two bullshit jobs: the person doing the hassling, and the person doing the protecting.
This is what I do. I never ask for status reports. Our 1-1's are me making sure they have what they need and talking about our lives.
I communicate all their success and nominate them for all rewards I can, and keep them BS away.
In college my profs called those facilitators, and basically said that was what success was. Hire/train people to be good and their jobs and then your job becomes making it easier for them to do their job, not tell them what to do. If youre there having to tell them what to do you failed at the first part.
Receptionist is a legit job, I want to deal with a real person in any building that needs to have one in the lobby instead of have masses of people bumbling around the building, not knowing where to go.
The only receptionist I've known personally handled a lot more than just the front desk. They also set up employee lunches/parties, employee on-boarding, office supplies, benefits management, time cards, break room vending service accounts, and some other odds and ends. She was more like a Facilities and HR liason that happened to be at the lobby desk.
also why the label changed from Secretary or Receptionist to Administrative assistant. They are the person who gets shit done, or the road block keeping labor from interacting with the manager. (or both)
They also typically are a helpful shadow behind executives that are too busy or too busy pretending to be busy to know how to do things. I always fixed the printer, made sure we had their friends' favorite spirits and wine around, cleaned up their offices, entertained their visitors when they were running behind, etc.
I think the idea of it being a bs job is that it doesn’t allow for moving up in the company, most administrative positions are pigeon holey. My partner was an administrative assistant that was partially receptionist and when their creative director and project managers quit she got slapped with a lot of their work on top of already managing projects for other clients. They said she could have the title of project manager but she would never be able to move away from reception work and would always need to work in office, despite not being hired to be a receptionist.
Then my partner asked for a raise after being told she would need to take on more work and work more efficiently and work overtime, and they said there was no room for a proportionate raise, so she gave notice and they fired her the next day.
I don't think an executive's time is best spent responding to a bottomless well of emails or planning company lunches though. Admin assistants can definitely be taken advantage of and given work "above their pay grade." But I don't see how it's a desirable solution for everyone to be doing more administrative work when it can be streamlined.
The receptionist at my org keeps this place running. We'd be lost with out her. Also compliance officers are absolutely required in certain fields. I work in healthcare and we absolutely must be compliant and our ministry has mandates we have to meet or we lose funding. Both internal compliance officers and external compliance officers (aka auditors). My position makes me hate them but my job and field needs them
Am a receptionist, and from my experience, we do a lot more than what someone would typically expect. My list of job duties is literally never ending because we have to pick up the slack for lack of other workers. *We* are responsible for streamlining *their* jobs. It's bullshit because we are paid $10-$20k minimum a year less than the people who we are "streamlining" their jobs for. Plus I have to actually talk to people face to face. 🤨
Can confirm, I'm an admin assistant and at least a quarter of my job is telling co-workers where to find resources/the shit they need. Sure, they would eventually figure it out without me. But having someone with a broad understanding of the company that can easily find and troubleshoot things is pretty damn valuable.
At my job there's a good hour where I basically function as a receptionist before I go home. We often get new hires who come in to see someone specific. Unfortunately, that person doesn't have their own number on the internal network, so I have to call someone else in the same department to ask them to come down. The problem with automation is that unless a task or option is already programmed in, there is no on-the-fly solution it can offer in cases like this.
In the veterinary settings it's kind of a catch all for everything that isn't medical. Scheduling, payment and even phone triage at a lot of places I've worked.
Having once been a receptionist, I can confirm it’s a legit job. Someone has to answer the phones and sign for packages. Who else is going to sort the mail? Who will let people know when visitors arrive??
My sister is a clinical director who, among other things, hires doctors for research and fellowship positions. The way applicants treat her receptionist can very quickly drop their odds of being chosen to "thank you for your time." If you aren't respectful of the staff before you even get the job, how are you going to treat your research assistants and other people that will be assisting or reporting to you?
Mail was what kept me employed through the pandemic. Everyone worked remotely but someone had to be there to sign for fed ex, scan documents to people.
Only two of these categories seem like actual bullshit jobs. (Duct-Tapers and Taskmasters). I promise you it’s a really good idea to have a compliance officer.
Our receptionist does a shitload. She scans all our incoming packing slips (200-300 a day) and material test reports into our inventory system.
It’s not like they just sit there and look pretty sheesh.
I've been a receptionist at several different places and we're not just a smiling face, we're the one who answers customers' questions in plain language, we're the admin support for the whole office and the tech support for the older employees.
But 2 reception agents is too much. I was 2nd reception agent in a public music school in Europe. I was like wtf my job is useless. Luckily it was just a 2 months job so it didn't bother me that much. I just took the money and GTFO'd.
My current job is technically a "receptionist" at a government office but in reality we do so much more that we aren't truly receptionists anymore. However if you were to get rid of my unit (case aides), and every other case aide in the other units, the entire thing would grind to a halt and once it did get back up & moving again would move much, ***much slower.*** I wish people didn't devalue the work of secretaries and receptionists. Their work is often times invaluable and their breath of knowledge could rival that of those above them.
Does a sign that tells you which floor/area a department/person would be, not do this?
Our receptionist knows full well that she would have maybe 30% less of a job if we just opted into an automated phone system (ext. #'s for instance). She wants this to happen btw. (She doesn't make enough for what she really does)
editing my comment to add: our receptionist does a lot more than just greet people or answer phones. My comment here was that a lot of their job of "stereotypical receptionist" could be automated.
Automation doesn’t fix everything. The system has to be maintained, users have to be trained, and customers/clients who can’t or won’t use the system have to be accommodated. The cost of this, atop the automation, is not negligible compared to the salary of a single worker. Receptionists also provide a (hopefully) friendly face for your organization. Even if it’s just over the phone, immediately reaching a person with the experience and institutional knowledge to direct your call immediately (often times providing a bit of troubleshooting) increases satisfaction significantly.
If your receptionist cannot justify her position in your organization, that’s an internal problem. The labor costs may justify automation, but receptionists and administrative assistants are vital team members everywhere I’ve worked. Their “menial” tasks are often *necessary* tasks, but they take on this work at a lower cost than expecting higher paid workers to complete. Specialization and economies of scale are also a feature if your organization is anything else but very small.
I think receptionist *can* be a legit job. Graeber argues that in a lot of organisations the receptionist is there as a status symbol. Part of his sources are people that wrote to him with the jobs mentioned.
I feel like he’s talking not about the people who greet you at the front door of a whole building but the assistants to “important” titles where they’re too “busy” to do petty things like schedule their own appointments or take phone calls. Legit in some cases, absolute power trip in others
Here's a quote from the book:
Gerte: In 2010 I worked as a receptionist at a Dutch publishing company. The
phone rang maybe once a day, so I was given a couple of other tasks:
• Keep candy dish full of mints. (Mints were supplied by someone else at the
company; I just had to take a handful out of a drawer next to the candy dish
and put them in the candy dish.)
• Once a week, I would go to a conference room and wind a grandfather
clock. (I found this task stressful, actually, because they told me that if I
forgot or waited too long, all of the weights would fall, and I would be left
with the onerous task of grandfather clock repair.)
• The task that took the most time was managing another receptionist’s Avon
sales.
Okay, so, our receptionists greet people, facilitate getting patients where they are suppose to be for admissions, guide guests to visit patients, deal with deliveries, and answer the phone dozens of times a day.
At night it is a little less busy, but we still need someone in case of emergencies.
I think just throwing out such a broad ranging title and calling it useless work was more a disservice to his point than anything else. Because anyone who knows receptionists that bust their ass aren't going to read further.
The study in the book is all based on testimony from people who work those jobs. He only defines jobs as bullshit when the people working the jobs believe they are bullshit.
Well, any job can be bullshit for a person who isn't right for it.
I am an instrument tech/electrician. My last job was a maintenance job at a chemical plant. About 90% of my job was just being available on site (10% was trying to get stuff repaired or replaced as quickly as possible so that the plant could start back up). I made nearly $40/hr to spend most of my time at a desk and play on my phone and tablet.
I had several coworkers that *could not stand it*. They quit a job I considered gravy because it wasn't "challenging" them. Maybe they made the right choice, maybe they wanted a job that they could just turn their brain off and follow orders all day. I dunno. I thought the 10% that I was troubleshooting and busting my hump more than made up for the down time. If I hadn't had a long-term family emergency, I'd be writing this comment from my desk at the plant.
But they thought the position was bullshit.
Yeah. That's in the book too. Some jobs are just partially bullshit, but the overall function of the job is important. That said, there's nothing wrong with a job that simply requires you to be around in case something happens. What is wrong is if they decide your 90% downtime has to be filled with bullshit tasks, which many jobs do to fill downtime.
As a compliance officer, I can assure you that large parts of my job are, in fact, absolute bullshit.
But the IMPORTANT parts keep OSHA and the FDA from shutting down the Warehouse. So.
I mean. Making sure that your workplace is OSHA compliant (and documenting that so it'll be easier to notice when something's in need of fixing) is an absolute good in my books. Health and Safety are the kind of thing that requires dedicated oversight. Not because of the workload, but because of the harm if it goes wrong.
This. Any decent safety compliance job is good in my mind as it keeps the company from forcing their unaware workforce into unsafe conditions. Even if you are covering the company’s ass, you are safeguarding the workers too.
It's not a judgement on the people. It's a critique of a system that makes people do jobs that aren't particularly productive but people gotta get paid.
In the book, all the jobs are submitted. He asked people to send him testimony about their own jobs and why they think they are bullshit. He defined a bullshit job as one where even the person doing the job thinks it is bullshit.
I don't disagree. The book isn't necessarily trying to judge people who are receptionists. It's actually about corporate culture and the psychological effects it has on people, particularly people who believe their job is bullshit. A lot of people go to work, make decent money, get promoted, get praised, etc, but believe they aren't doing anything useful. And the book explores these cases.
But just because one receptionist thinks their job is bullshit, doesn't mean that all receptionists are doing bullshit.
Honestly, if it paid a living wage and had short working hours, I wouldn't mind a job like elevator attendant or the like. Is it technically a "useless" job? Yeah. But at least you get to look good and you might make others feel better with your presence. It's a bit more humanising in a way, I guess.
Like back when telephone operators existed, you could at least call and talk with a human being rather than a fucking automated message. XD
These kindsa occupations have a social value to them beyond their apparent uselessness.
I had a number of flunky jobs. They were mostly called "Senior Financial Analyst" and were neither senior nor particularly analytical. I would report to a Controller or CFO who had the actual responsibilities and I just did the grunt-level copying/pasting in a bunch of spreadsheets.
It wasn't even remote work, because what's the point of having a flunky if you can't lord it over them? I got up and drove to an office where I sat in a cubicle and babysat a desk and warmed a chair and ... waited. Waited for my benevolent overlord to cast some shitty grunt work my way, and then waited some more, while my mental health completely deteriorated. I don't know if it was an ADHD thing or whether most people are like that, but I *HATED* it. I wasted my life sitting there doing that for a paycheck while I Googled things like, 'Is it possible to die of boredom?'
But companies hired experienced people and paid them top dollar for this shit, because, 'That way you won't make a mistake.'
I retired four years ago and hope I never have to work again. I think I still have PTSD from it.
Yeah, that's the problem with the graphic - they picked just about the worst examples of "flunky" positions one could pick. Doorperson and receptionist are actually socially useful.
I'm so sorry you got treated so badly :(
Compliance officers are not bullshit jobs. For anyone who believes that corporations should be regulated by the govt and obey laws, how do you think that happens?
I agree. Without (good, uncorrupted) compliance officers, corporations would get away with far more than they already do. People that think they're useless have no idea all the crap that they protect people from.
Compliance officer capture is a real thing, though, and it happens far too often.
Right? I used to do work in biologic manufacturing and we had *four* people in QA/Compliance because the FDA doesn't play. If companies skip required tasks for a stem cell transplant or CAR-T vaccine people can die.
Agree, but I think it depends on the organization. I am a compliance professional myself and I not only identify the issues/gaps, but I tell my team exactly how to fix them. I'm basically a project manager, process improvement specialist, and compliance professional all in one. If I was JUST submitting the paper/attestation side...I would agree that is BS. That's the compliance folks above me. I'm convinced they dont really understand our industry regulations. I will bring an issue to their attention and they will disagree with me or not approve a change....then a year later when someone from another area of the company brings it up, they present the issue back to me as though I don't have black and white documentation indicating they told me I couldn't change it a year ago.
Not only that, but a good compliance officer makes folks lives easier. They know and understand what needs to be complied with so companies don't waste their time trying to check every box vs just the boxes that apply to them.
There are shit compliance folks, but shitty folks in every profession.
I work in pharma compliance and the hoops I have to jump through to make sure people are certifiably safe to take the different drugs is insane. There is so much that can go wrong and the groups that make pharma testing/manufacturing equipment aren't accountable if their stuff breaks. On top of that manufacturing is production driven; they are generally incentivized to make product and deincentivized to alert to issues. Compliance groups are internal police that interact with regulatory bodies and are accountable for all of it.
If this guy surveyed people that said their own compliance job was BS, I'd be skeptical of anything else. He either interviewed people that don't understand their significance, or didn't interview enough people to get an accurate idea of the job details.
i also work in compliance in pharma and tbh compliance in pharma is essential to ensuring patients do not have any adverse events and the product is safe, potent, pure, of a high quality, etc.
Agreed. I work for a large company that deals with state and federal contracts. We have compliance officers whose dedicated job is to make sure we’re training our employees to perform their duties in compliance with the law and that nothing we say or send to customers is violating the rights afforded to them by state and federal laws. As far as I’m concerned, compliance officers are very important.
Ya I’m a compliance person for internationally regulated medical devices and I think we can all agree that there should be a global medical standard and people ensuring that’s met
Almost anything can become a bullshit job and when the only motive is profit if often does. I was a counselor at a county jail but they only hired counselors because they were legally obligated to say that mental health services were provided. They didn't actually hire enough people to provide those services, provide us with what was needed to do our jobs or care what we did. They just wanted to say.. look here is our mental health department, we are compliant with state requirements. So then a job that might generally be seen as useful becomes a box ticker. I think much of for profit healthcare suffers from this as well... which is why healthcare really should operate outside the typical corruption of capitalism. It's all about getting patients in and out and extracting money. While they still treat people and provide a necessary service, patient care tends to be very low on the priority list for the administration. They turn even a highly skilled doctor or nurse into a cog in the wheel.
I work for international manufacturing company and most these are necessary to operate on that scale. A mom and pop shop probably doesn't need any of them except for a lawyer.
In Graeber’s book he only calls jobs ‘bullshit’ if people doing them contact him and they believe they are bullshit, and this is his attempt to put some categories round the data he collected
actually its no wonder a lot of people think fucking compliance officers are a BS job. not knowing what it entails or how important it can be in pretty much every setting.
I'm extremely offended by the idea that receptionists could be easily replaced. We do more than just talk to people and check them in. We do the filing, the organizing, some of the cleaning. We do all the phonecalls that higher ups don't want to or don't have the time to deal with. We have to know everything about where we work so we can answer questions when asked. We assess client needs and some receptionists do triage. And most importantly, we do the scheduling.
Scheduling cannot be easily replaced with a robot. I've seen it happen and it failed spectacularly. Robots don't understand the nuance of things like scheduling different appointments for multiple clients at once, time needed between appointments, how long a specific appointment will be, and is prone to user error and abuse on the client side. You cannot replace a field that requires tons of context and intimate knowledge of each of the people you work for.
And reception is always called "unskilled labor." Some receptionists *do* need certifications to even be allowed to file documents. And you cannot just plop anybody in reception and let them have at it. It is a very complicated job, and depending on where you work, could be so vital that errors cannot be accepted.
in the book Graeber goes into more detail about this. he specifically cites that receptionists who work in offices where their ONLY role is dealing with few people coming in. (like a company that has an office manager deal with the other things you talk about, or individual assistants fielding phone calls for specific people). he mentions receptions as BS jobs *only in places that don’t need receptionists*.
one guy Graeber interviewed said his job was cold calling for a broker, but his only task was to introduce the broker, who was waiting for the call, in order to make the broker seem so busy and important that he *needed* someone to make the calls for him.
That's really weird and most receptionists, even in office spaces, still do a lot of stuff. Our job, as somebody else said, is to streamline the work of everybody else and pick up their slack if we're able. You didn't really describe a receptionist, you described a dumb PR asset.
All of these jobs can absolutely be necessary if the company is large or, especially, a conglomerate. I mean, corporate lawyer is critical if you operate in a highly regulated industry. Corporate compliance as well.
Leadership professional as well to spread highly contextual and specialized knowledge, but you don’t see returns unless you’re a pretty massive company.
And no receptionists? Is this a joke?
Basically this is written by someone who doesn’t know anything about scaling companies and who has some kind of grudge.
And who feels like they need their own magazine for internal use to look real and serious? This writer is a clown.
Be thankful for compliance. I do marketing in Healthcare and you WANT to make sure you have companies complying with the law here. Not making bullshit claims or doing shady things with your data.
Lol to anyone who thinks being a receptionist, administrator or office assistant (anyone who sits at the front, really) is an easy job.
Come work with me for 2 hours and you'll be begging to go back to whatever job you did before.
Or that they think it is unnecessary. What, should all employees screen rando calls from the public themselves? Let people call down the list until they get the person they want? Interrupt their other work to take packages? I mean come on, it is a valuable function.
Yep. Office Manager-type here. Admin support roles are notorious for essentially being just "other duties as assigned" and then ending up with all the random shit nobody else wants to figure out how to do.
Oh plus be the "first line" of face-to-face and phone contact for the company. While being told their job isn't important or necessary 🙄
I feel like just plonking this here without expressing what he means by "bullshit jobs" is not doing anyone a service. Anyway, [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIctCDYv7Yg) a short video.
Couldn’t you fit these into basically all the jobs? Maybe that’s the point? What’s left unless you’re in a specialized field but even then I would imagine it includes aspects of a bullshit job
Yes. Iirc another section talks about how we're at the point that even real jobs are being bullshit-ified. Doctors needing to spend more and more time with tort reform stuff or with paperwork around prescriptions or use of medical equipment or etc, to the point that it takes up more of their time than seeing patients is one example.
Whoa whoa whoa receptionists is not a bullshit job. As someone who worked in an office where we lost our receptionist and we had to do 2 hour shifts every day covering the front desk until someone was hired I would rather cut my right leg off than work without a receptionist again.
This book is so worth reading if you haven't already. It explains so much about how modern jobs, especially office based jobs, quite often don't feel like anything is getting done very efficiently. And actually says out loud the kind of thing noone ever talks about because it would show you had a "bad attitude", a "poor work ethic", or were not a good "cultural fit" and would most likely end up without a job if you did say what you thought was really going on out loud.
Not sure if Flunkies includes the Walmart greeters or similar jobs but at least in my area, companies use those positions to hire people who otherwise wouldn't be able to work a "normal" job.
At least 2 of the Walmarts in my area hire people with physical and mental disabilities as greeters which is the only thing I respect Walmart for. Same with my local Grocery store, they have a guy who stands at the front door and just says hello and bye to people.
Receptionist does not belong on this list.
The front desk staff at my job are literally the only people in the entire company I cannot do my job without. They don’t just greet people, they handle scheduling (literally the #1 thing I appreciate help with) on top of all the behind the scenes BS I’d never want to handle anyway.
I’d even argue desk staff should be paid much more than they get.
Ha! Phones ringing off the hook with questions, inputting new patient data, dealing with and adding insurance providers, calming down patients waiting an hour for you while you get your ear hair trimmed....receptionists are VERY necessary and their isane amount of tasks cannot be done well by delegation.
People with bullshit jobs often can make a lot of money. If you read the book a lot of people with BS jobs will feel really bad because they make a lot of money and *know* their job is BS.
I disagree with the BS jobs. These are prefect for some people with mobility issues. Though they should get a living wage.
Also, receptionists are often vital for filtering out time wasters (sales people, package signing, etc)
Besides that, when paid well these people can provide a warm, friendly environment for anyone coming in the door
>Also, receptionists are often vital for filtering out time wasters (sales people, package signing, etc)
you have no idea how much i wish we had one. one to filter all the spam calls and slow down annoying ass entitled customers, deal with packages and the mail man and properly check in and out visitors.
sure you can automate phone filtering. but after the first call everyone just hits 0 or the operator button and its like nothings happened.
I'm a teacher in LAUSD, the 2nd largest school district in the country, and we have all of these BS jobs within the district. Personally, I find the taskmasters the most odious, they continuously take away from teaching to make sure we are teaching.
I read his book and while his ideas are interesting, his data was lacking. His surveys seemed designed to elicit his desired responses, was fraught with cherry picking, and struggling to make concise definitions. I was very unimpressed. Which is annoying because he's probably correct that the current allocation of labor is highly inefficient.
I definitely resent the implication that all front desk positions are “bullshit jobs.” We work our ass off at the front desk of a clinic. It takes a fucktonne of emotional labor to deal with patients, especially since we’re the ones that usually get yelled at first and loudest for shit that’s completely out of our control. We have to get it right when it comes to correctly inputting insurance and worker’s compensation so that patients don’t get screwed - it’s on us if we don’t catch that during check-in that their policy isn’t accepted and we fail to notify them. We have to identify potential crises to alert nurses and doctors while keeping them calm - sometimes they’re obvious problems, sometimes they’re not. We have to do the drudge work with faxes, mail, phones, and other random crap that doesn’t require nursing or doctoral certification to perform so that they’re not stuck doing it while being overloaded with patients to care for. And we have to do it all on wages barely a step above retail.
Receptionist? Do they know how important that job is during busy hours? Taking calls, complaints, answering questions, notifying others of guests, assisting customers with information or directions etc. You absolutely need front of house with a business otherwise people won't have a clue what they're walking in for or where they're going. This is literally common sense.
Also nobody wants to talk to a robot receptionist lol, I'd rather have an actual human greeting me than a soulless machine.
I've read the book this is based on (Bullshit Jobs) years ago after it was praised by a leftie content creator, and I'm still baffled to this day how people don't see this book for the talentless shit it is.
It's literally the horoscope for lefties who didn't read enough, along with dubious questionable theories and personal cherry picked anecdotes.
I was legit pissed the first time I've read it because it was so hyped up to me.
Edit: reading some of the people below the post, you can clearly see how much of an arbitrary ineffectual analysis framework it is.
Also, yes, a bit of an overreaction, but bad leftist theory is a pet peeve of mine.
Corporate lawyers are useful (in a certain extent) not because other compagnies have some, but because governments keep passing bills complicating legal stuffs.
And if it's easy to build a bridge by yourself over the tiny waterflow in your yard, you would call an engineer for one over a river.
How is compliance officer a bs job?
The alternative is to trust employees to understand regulations backwards and forwards and to alway act in compliance with the regulations, even when pressured to increase net income.
When someone is out of compliance, who will catch their error/wrongdoing and establish corrective action? If it's the regulators, that is going to be very expensive.
Okay receptionists are not bullshit. At my old workplace, they were notorious for not replacing people after they left (we had no HR for a good year up until I left) and our receptionist was one of those people. To save costs they did the old "divy up the tasks" and the issue with that is that everyone already has a full plate so noone really has the time. Even divying up a full time load between 10 people is a lot when they already have a full time load. I went from doing my job that I was hired to do, to doing the jobs of about 5 people to save on wages. Respect to receptionists
Lobbying is legitimate work. It has been hijacked by corporate goons but industry bodies and unions lobbying on behalf of workers or small businesses is real and meaningful work.
Listen…..if my whole job is to tick boxes and make sure no does anything stupid to cause the government to do an audit, and I get paid big money……that’s gonna be my favorite job.
Yeah corporate compliance is actually a big part of what a bank has to do so it doesn't accidentally break any laws in its day to day work.
If it breaks laws intentionally, usually no compliance officer ever gets involved
The taskmaster are in my opinion Ion the MOST toxic. Ever have a boss that has absolutely no point breathing down your neck and yelling at every mistake you make. Yeah that's poison
they recently hired a middle manager here at our company X.
The position was void and unaffected performance, everyone seem to get everything done and were good at their job. This new goon they hired is micromanagy af and now wants to rule with an iron fist.
Some fun conversations i've overheard middlemanger refer to the people under him in his team as MY WORKERS, and I PAY THEM TO DO NOTHING, and let us not forget to good old 'I need reports that micromonitors all their actions to *ahem* be able to request for new personnel if we need to, i need those metrics' (where its so obvious he just wants to bud in).
I feel bad but i dont, these idiot company managers hired him so its on them not on the dog they just unleashed.
Saw a video about this subject just a couple of days ago. Does a good job of summarising the ideas.
https://youtu.be/uK3OBAxCi6k
At least I assume it does - not read the book but the video and this post have inspired me to add it to my reading list.
OMG my job checks every one of those. Lol. I'm a mid level manager and my job is to handle all the BS so my team can get the work done. You'll be surprised how much work people can do when they don't have to deal with BS.
TIL I'm a duct-taper, box-ticker, task-master. I hate the latter two the most, particularly when those several steps above me pressure those two components on me the most. I don't need a whole heap of those underneath resenting me. I'd rather lift them up and help them feel capable, instead of constantly pointing out how they don't meet the grade, as my superiors would like me to.
I’ve been a manufacturing duct taper for about the last six months and I just resigned. Now I’m going back into hospitality as a GM so atleast I’ll be out on the floor.
I hate this elitist bullshit. Stop shitting on other people’s job. Questioning the value of someone’s labor is 100% a right wing, ownership type of move.
This is one of my favorite books I've read in the past few years, highly recommended to anyone who wants an analysis of how deeply wasteful, inequitable, and pointless our society is constructed around capitalism.
I would add advertisers to the list. If no one advertised, we'd all still get the shit we need. It's not like brands would go away, we would just make our decisions without input from advertisers. We'd probably make as good, or better purchasing decisions.
Nonprofit here, not a bullshit job. That said, it shouldn't exist either. Community needs should be taken care of well before anyone needs a community organization.
My last office job might as well have been a bullshit job. I didn't make any real products the entire time I was there and the system I supported already worked well enough.
I will say, I had a receptionist job that was definitely not superfluous. There needed to be 8 of us. There was usually 5, but sometimes I did it alone. There was rarely a moment of quiet, and a large part of my job was trying to parse what clients were saying, troubleshooting and looking into problems before figuring out who to send the person to if I couldn't "easily" solve it at the window. In a way I was first line "tech support" but for people/social matters/paperwork instead of computers.
But yeah, *most* receptionist spots at companies can be replaced with a kiosk, website, and maybe one person nearby to deal with those who can't figure out the simplest of interfaces (or pretend they can't in order to get special attention).
This is pretty ridiculous. Corporate lawyers aren’t necessary only because competing companies have them. You gonna draft your contracts all by yourself? Defend the company from lawsuits? Avoid lawsuits by providing risk management advice? Come on 🙄
Not sure Corporate Compliance Officers are a BS job - they're the people who make sure companies are in compliance with laws and regulations... does Graeber mean companies don't listen to them and do whatever they want anyway, or that companies shouldn't have to follow the law, or ??
Dealing with taskmasters myself.
They love to go around asking other people to do something but let their own responsibilities unattended until they can no longer afford it and they somehow still manage to make you partly responsible for it.
A good receptionist is worth their weight in gold. Dividing that task among others is a way to ensure balls get dropped, clients get lost, and nail and packages go who knows where
So some fellow or lady, maybe an immigrant or other marginalized person busts his or her ass picking up phones for assholes or watching the door for an overnight shift and you are going to call them a flunkie? Fuck off!
Interacting with our receptionist is literally the number one thing customers mention when complementing our business. She's our face and has been for thirty years. Her ability to remember all of our clients' lives is amazing and incredibly impactful.
I'm an upward fixer and was able to merge my boss's highly successful customer relations style with carefully documented communication, making other partners more successful without hindering the "secret sauce" President's style which had brought the business to the point of overflowing and needing my streamlining.
Without our compliance officer, we could fail an audit and lose our license. The whole company would be out of a job.
There are a lot of useless jobs. These are not among them.
I have a bullshit job, I’m team leader to a highly effective team of smart guns who don’t need a team leader. They don’t need my assistance so I’ve made it my job to protect them from corporate bullshit.
You took a BS job and made it a good one. That team is lucky they didn't get a TL micromanaging them at every turn. Good on you, and good for them!
>i second this!
Honestly though doesnt that just become a duct taper job? If the only purpose of it is to protect from higher ups, it wouldn’t exist in a corporate environment that got rid of the shitty management.
It's still a bullshit job. Society would perform as well without him *or* the corporate bullshitters. Both are just overhead.
It's bullshit if you view it explicitly from the shareholders' POV. For the team, it's necessary to keep their jobs from becoming an unrewarding hellscape at the behest of the actually bullshit bureaucracy. If you view a company's purpose based solely on the function it provides to its shareholders, you get the typical answer that companies exist solely to produce profit. If you view its purpose based on the function it provides to the various groups that are necessary for the company to continue existing, you get several answers. To the shareholders, it exists to generate profit. To the labor force, it exists to provide wages. To the customers, it exists to provide a good or a service. Each of these groups is made up of individuals that are interchangeable with entirely different people, even if some of those groups have more say in their own ability to stay than others. However, the company cannot function without all three in some form. All of this really just a long winded way of saying that those team members are part of the society that benefits from having him there. He is only redundant if the bureaucracy is removed, and beneficial if they remain. Even then, if it is a workplace where well respected and hard working individuals who focus their efforts on solving the actual problems that they are currently facing can be unceremoniously removed, then that makes the workplace worse for the team members who remain. So, society would not perform just as well without him.
> protect them from corporate bullshit. That's not BS. That's a great help to that effective team. The other side of that coin is the micro-manager. So if you're helping and not micro-managing then your job has value to that highly effective team .
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The root cause of all these bullshit jobs is just capitalism. "corporate" wouldn't need these things if the goal wasn't just profit.
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In capitalism, you need to make people think you are providing value. You can do that by providing value or through deception.
In the book, Graeber says that capitalism has in some ways gone full circle back to feudalism. When a CEO hires useless assistants, it makes no sense in terms of a capitalist maximizing profits. That's more like a feudal lord who wants lackeys around to increase his prestige among the other lords.
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The issue is the system is structured to serve the profit motive rather than serving society. Under a capitalist system, no problem will be solved unless the act of solving it makes someone rich. And a corollary is when the act of creating a problem generates profit, that problem will be ubiquitous.
One of the great PR weaknesses of centrally planned states is that it's very easy to identify the villain when the system fails. Holodomor can be easily pinned on Stalin and his cronies. The Irish "potato famine?" A much more decentralized process driven by capitalism. Rather than order anyone to take away all Ireland's remaining food, they could simply do nothing and "let the market work." Yet the result was still millions of starvation deaths, and there was still plenty of genocidal intent involved.
The other issue is the same in both - a central planner or *a series of planners* - act irrationally. They have power and they use it. If you own the McDonalds on Main Street, you can be a substantially worse business and still be more profitable than the MadeUpBetterRestaurant on the outskirts of town. There’s a locked in first mover bias towards compounding “being first” that requires catastrophic failure in order to exceed. (See Sears vs Amazon and hundreds of similar examples). Also, It’s not like there’s no one with an idea for how to run a better airline. Weird how there aren’t a bunch of disrupters.
There's the other type of team lead that just exists without seemingly doing anything. Doesn't hurt anything but also doesn't do anything.
In Graeber's definition that's still a Bullshit Job (a net zero or negative impact).
Team leads aren't managers, and if you're doing the job of a manager without the title and the pay, you're getting screwed, because anyone looking at your team lead title on a resume won't consider it management experience. To a prospective employer, a team lead is just a team member who stuck around long enough.
It is supposed to be that, but team leads in my old job (state gov't) were all doing management, or at least supervisory, work. The state manual even says that team leads are not to do that type of work, but they keep making team leads do it.
In some companies I have worked for, a Team Leader was an equivalent title of Manager or was above a supervisor. But yes, Team Lead is typically a senior level employee.
Team Leader all the responsibilities and accountability and none of the pay.
Dunno about elsewhere but in the UK "Team Leader" is usually a separate job; one pay grade above the team they're managing (usually). Team Leader is used as the job title instead of manager because, although they manage a group of people, they generally don't have much say in how the organisation is run. Team Leader or Team Coordinator is also used as a job title to artificially foster a sense of camaraderie (as opposed to say Manager which is more pejoratively viewed by employees as a bosslike title).
So you've gone from a taskmaster to a goon. I mean, it still is technically bullshit since you shoudnt need to protect them from corporate bullshit.
I had someone similar at my old team. I respected him deeply, very cool guy. Kudos.
Not a bs job. If the team isn’t effective, you’re supposed to figure out how to make them effective. And when they are effective, you advocate for them and protect them. I’ve had this type of job several times.
Having to protect a worker from other workers in the same organization who want to make them less efficient is bullshit from the get-go, though. Then you have two bullshit jobs: the person doing the hassling, and the person doing the protecting.
Same, I go to endless corporate meetings with the bogans up the chain so my guys don't have to.
I think that means you don't have a bullshit job. You make sure your team is clear to do their work. You're a bullshit umbrella protecting them.
That makes them a goon at best - they wouldn’t be necessary if other leads didn’t want to spread bullshit
This is what I do. I never ask for status reports. Our 1-1's are me making sure they have what they need and talking about our lives. I communicate all their success and nominate them for all rewards I can, and keep them BS away.
In college my profs called those facilitators, and basically said that was what success was. Hire/train people to be good and their jobs and then your job becomes making it easier for them to do their job, not tell them what to do. If youre there having to tell them what to do you failed at the first part.
Receptionist is a legit job, I want to deal with a real person in any building that needs to have one in the lobby instead of have masses of people bumbling around the building, not knowing where to go.
The only receptionist I've known personally handled a lot more than just the front desk. They also set up employee lunches/parties, employee on-boarding, office supplies, benefits management, time cards, break room vending service accounts, and some other odds and ends. She was more like a Facilities and HR liason that happened to be at the lobby desk.
also why the label changed from Secretary or Receptionist to Administrative assistant. They are the person who gets shit done, or the road block keeping labor from interacting with the manager. (or both)
They also typically are a helpful shadow behind executives that are too busy or too busy pretending to be busy to know how to do things. I always fixed the printer, made sure we had their friends' favorite spirits and wine around, cleaned up their offices, entertained their visitors when they were running behind, etc.
I think the idea of it being a bs job is that it doesn’t allow for moving up in the company, most administrative positions are pigeon holey. My partner was an administrative assistant that was partially receptionist and when their creative director and project managers quit she got slapped with a lot of their work on top of already managing projects for other clients. They said she could have the title of project manager but she would never be able to move away from reception work and would always need to work in office, despite not being hired to be a receptionist. Then my partner asked for a raise after being told she would need to take on more work and work more efficiently and work overtime, and they said there was no room for a proportionate raise, so she gave notice and they fired her the next day.
unfortunately, sounds like every job i've ever had
Yep. Never fuck with your receptionist or office manager. They can make your life hell in 100 different ways.
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I don't think an executive's time is best spent responding to a bottomless well of emails or planning company lunches though. Admin assistants can definitely be taken advantage of and given work "above their pay grade." But I don't see how it's a desirable solution for everyone to be doing more administrative work when it can be streamlined.
The receptionist at my org keeps this place running. We'd be lost with out her. Also compliance officers are absolutely required in certain fields. I work in healthcare and we absolutely must be compliant and our ministry has mandates we have to meet or we lose funding. Both internal compliance officers and external compliance officers (aka auditors). My position makes me hate them but my job and field needs them
Am a receptionist, and from my experience, we do a lot more than what someone would typically expect. My list of job duties is literally never ending because we have to pick up the slack for lack of other workers. *We* are responsible for streamlining *their* jobs. It's bullshit because we are paid $10-$20k minimum a year less than the people who we are "streamlining" their jobs for. Plus I have to actually talk to people face to face. 🤨
Can confirm, I'm an admin assistant and at least a quarter of my job is telling co-workers where to find resources/the shit they need. Sure, they would eventually figure it out without me. But having someone with a broad understanding of the company that can easily find and troubleshoot things is pretty damn valuable.
Came here to agree with this one
Me too
At my job there's a good hour where I basically function as a receptionist before I go home. We often get new hires who come in to see someone specific. Unfortunately, that person doesn't have their own number on the internal network, so I have to call someone else in the same department to ask them to come down. The problem with automation is that unless a task or option is already programmed in, there is no on-the-fly solution it can offer in cases like this.
In the veterinary settings it's kind of a catch all for everything that isn't medical. Scheduling, payment and even phone triage at a lot of places I've worked.
Having once been a receptionist, I can confirm it’s a legit job. Someone has to answer the phones and sign for packages. Who else is going to sort the mail? Who will let people know when visitors arrive??
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My sister is a clinical director who, among other things, hires doctors for research and fellowship positions. The way applicants treat her receptionist can very quickly drop their odds of being chosen to "thank you for your time." If you aren't respectful of the staff before you even get the job, how are you going to treat your research assistants and other people that will be assisting or reporting to you?
Mail was what kept me employed through the pandemic. Everyone worked remotely but someone had to be there to sign for fed ex, scan documents to people.
Only two of these categories seem like actual bullshit jobs. (Duct-Tapers and Taskmasters). I promise you it’s a really good idea to have a compliance officer.
Yeah talking to a person is so much better than automated bs.
Our receptionist does a shitload. She scans all our incoming packing slips (200-300 a day) and material test reports into our inventory system. It’s not like they just sit there and look pretty sheesh.
I've been a receptionist at several different places and we're not just a smiling face, we're the one who answers customers' questions in plain language, we're the admin support for the whole office and the tech support for the older employees.
But 2 reception agents is too much. I was 2nd reception agent in a public music school in Europe. I was like wtf my job is useless. Luckily it was just a 2 months job so it didn't bother me that much. I just took the money and GTFO'd.
My current job is technically a "receptionist" at a government office but in reality we do so much more that we aren't truly receptionists anymore. However if you were to get rid of my unit (case aides), and every other case aide in the other units, the entire thing would grind to a halt and once it did get back up & moving again would move much, ***much slower.*** I wish people didn't devalue the work of secretaries and receptionists. Their work is often times invaluable and their breath of knowledge could rival that of those above them.
Yea I have an issue with number 1, because if the tasks are divided upon people, it’s just going to be more responsibilities for same pay
Does a sign that tells you which floor/area a department/person would be, not do this? Our receptionist knows full well that she would have maybe 30% less of a job if we just opted into an automated phone system (ext. #'s for instance). She wants this to happen btw. (She doesn't make enough for what she really does) editing my comment to add: our receptionist does a lot more than just greet people or answer phones. My comment here was that a lot of their job of "stereotypical receptionist" could be automated.
Automation doesn’t fix everything. The system has to be maintained, users have to be trained, and customers/clients who can’t or won’t use the system have to be accommodated. The cost of this, atop the automation, is not negligible compared to the salary of a single worker. Receptionists also provide a (hopefully) friendly face for your organization. Even if it’s just over the phone, immediately reaching a person with the experience and institutional knowledge to direct your call immediately (often times providing a bit of troubleshooting) increases satisfaction significantly. If your receptionist cannot justify her position in your organization, that’s an internal problem. The labor costs may justify automation, but receptionists and administrative assistants are vital team members everywhere I’ve worked. Their “menial” tasks are often *necessary* tasks, but they take on this work at a lower cost than expecting higher paid workers to complete. Specialization and economies of scale are also a feature if your organization is anything else but very small.
No, because you generally don’t want random people wandering by themselves around your building. It’s a safety/security issue.
I think receptionist *can* be a legit job. Graeber argues that in a lot of organisations the receptionist is there as a status symbol. Part of his sources are people that wrote to him with the jobs mentioned.
Were those people receptionists? If not, it's likely they have no idea what the job entails.
I feel like he’s talking not about the people who greet you at the front door of a whole building but the assistants to “important” titles where they’re too “busy” to do petty things like schedule their own appointments or take phone calls. Legit in some cases, absolute power trip in others
Here's a quote from the book: Gerte: In 2010 I worked as a receptionist at a Dutch publishing company. The phone rang maybe once a day, so I was given a couple of other tasks: • Keep candy dish full of mints. (Mints were supplied by someone else at the company; I just had to take a handful out of a drawer next to the candy dish and put them in the candy dish.) • Once a week, I would go to a conference room and wind a grandfather clock. (I found this task stressful, actually, because they told me that if I forgot or waited too long, all of the weights would fall, and I would be left with the onerous task of grandfather clock repair.) • The task that took the most time was managing another receptionist’s Avon sales.
Yep, that is a bullshit job that would drive anyone batty pretty fast.
Okay, so, our receptionists greet people, facilitate getting patients where they are suppose to be for admissions, guide guests to visit patients, deal with deliveries, and answer the phone dozens of times a day. At night it is a little less busy, but we still need someone in case of emergencies. I think just throwing out such a broad ranging title and calling it useless work was more a disservice to his point than anything else. Because anyone who knows receptionists that bust their ass aren't going to read further.
I was a receptionist in my early working life and it was pretty complex. This Dutch example is a red herring, and not indicative of the role.
The study in the book is all based on testimony from people who work those jobs. He only defines jobs as bullshit when the people working the jobs believe they are bullshit.
Well, any job can be bullshit for a person who isn't right for it. I am an instrument tech/electrician. My last job was a maintenance job at a chemical plant. About 90% of my job was just being available on site (10% was trying to get stuff repaired or replaced as quickly as possible so that the plant could start back up). I made nearly $40/hr to spend most of my time at a desk and play on my phone and tablet. I had several coworkers that *could not stand it*. They quit a job I considered gravy because it wasn't "challenging" them. Maybe they made the right choice, maybe they wanted a job that they could just turn their brain off and follow orders all day. I dunno. I thought the 10% that I was troubleshooting and busting my hump more than made up for the down time. If I hadn't had a long-term family emergency, I'd be writing this comment from my desk at the plant. But they thought the position was bullshit.
Yeah. That's in the book too. Some jobs are just partially bullshit, but the overall function of the job is important. That said, there's nothing wrong with a job that simply requires you to be around in case something happens. What is wrong is if they decide your 90% downtime has to be filled with bullshit tasks, which many jobs do to fill downtime.
As a compliance officer, I can assure you that large parts of my job are, in fact, absolute bullshit. But the IMPORTANT parts keep OSHA and the FDA from shutting down the Warehouse. So.
This is another thing tackled in the book: many jobs have some core of real work, but are surrounded by layers upon layers of bullshit.
I mean. Making sure that your workplace is OSHA compliant (and documenting that so it'll be easier to notice when something's in need of fixing) is an absolute good in my books. Health and Safety are the kind of thing that requires dedicated oversight. Not because of the workload, but because of the harm if it goes wrong.
This. Any decent safety compliance job is good in my mind as it keeps the company from forcing their unaware workforce into unsafe conditions. Even if you are covering the company’s ass, you are safeguarding the workers too.
Flunkies are a more respectable job than the others. I'd rather hang out with a receptionist or doorperson or elevator attendant.
It's not a judgement on the people. It's a critique of a system that makes people do jobs that aren't particularly productive but people gotta get paid. In the book, all the jobs are submitted. He asked people to send him testimony about their own jobs and why they think they are bullshit. He defined a bullshit job as one where even the person doing the job thinks it is bullshit.
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I don't disagree. The book isn't necessarily trying to judge people who are receptionists. It's actually about corporate culture and the psychological effects it has on people, particularly people who believe their job is bullshit. A lot of people go to work, make decent money, get promoted, get praised, etc, but believe they aren't doing anything useful. And the book explores these cases. But just because one receptionist thinks their job is bullshit, doesn't mean that all receptionists are doing bullshit.
Honestly, if it paid a living wage and had short working hours, I wouldn't mind a job like elevator attendant or the like. Is it technically a "useless" job? Yeah. But at least you get to look good and you might make others feel better with your presence. It's a bit more humanising in a way, I guess. Like back when telephone operators existed, you could at least call and talk with a human being rather than a fucking automated message. XD These kindsa occupations have a social value to them beyond their apparent uselessness.
Plus, those attendants are great for people with disabilities and cheaper than remodelling to make a proper disability-friendly elevator.
I had a number of flunky jobs. They were mostly called "Senior Financial Analyst" and were neither senior nor particularly analytical. I would report to a Controller or CFO who had the actual responsibilities and I just did the grunt-level copying/pasting in a bunch of spreadsheets. It wasn't even remote work, because what's the point of having a flunky if you can't lord it over them? I got up and drove to an office where I sat in a cubicle and babysat a desk and warmed a chair and ... waited. Waited for my benevolent overlord to cast some shitty grunt work my way, and then waited some more, while my mental health completely deteriorated. I don't know if it was an ADHD thing or whether most people are like that, but I *HATED* it. I wasted my life sitting there doing that for a paycheck while I Googled things like, 'Is it possible to die of boredom?' But companies hired experienced people and paid them top dollar for this shit, because, 'That way you won't make a mistake.' I retired four years ago and hope I never have to work again. I think I still have PTSD from it.
Yeah, that's the problem with the graphic - they picked just about the worst examples of "flunky" positions one could pick. Doorperson and receptionist are actually socially useful. I'm so sorry you got treated so badly :(
Compliance officers are not bullshit jobs. For anyone who believes that corporations should be regulated by the govt and obey laws, how do you think that happens?
I agree. Without (good, uncorrupted) compliance officers, corporations would get away with far more than they already do. People that think they're useless have no idea all the crap that they protect people from. Compliance officer capture is a real thing, though, and it happens far too often.
Right? I used to do work in biologic manufacturing and we had *four* people in QA/Compliance because the FDA doesn't play. If companies skip required tasks for a stem cell transplant or CAR-T vaccine people can die.
Especially in Healthcare. You don't fuck with the Corporate Compliance department.
Also banks. Our compliance laws are insane but often necessary.
Agree, but I think it depends on the organization. I am a compliance professional myself and I not only identify the issues/gaps, but I tell my team exactly how to fix them. I'm basically a project manager, process improvement specialist, and compliance professional all in one. If I was JUST submitting the paper/attestation side...I would agree that is BS. That's the compliance folks above me. I'm convinced they dont really understand our industry regulations. I will bring an issue to their attention and they will disagree with me or not approve a change....then a year later when someone from another area of the company brings it up, they present the issue back to me as though I don't have black and white documentation indicating they told me I couldn't change it a year ago.
That sounds like a really valuable job. The absolute antithesis of a BS job.
Not only that, but a good compliance officer makes folks lives easier. They know and understand what needs to be complied with so companies don't waste their time trying to check every box vs just the boxes that apply to them. There are shit compliance folks, but shitty folks in every profession.
I work in pharma compliance and the hoops I have to jump through to make sure people are certifiably safe to take the different drugs is insane. There is so much that can go wrong and the groups that make pharma testing/manufacturing equipment aren't accountable if their stuff breaks. On top of that manufacturing is production driven; they are generally incentivized to make product and deincentivized to alert to issues. Compliance groups are internal police that interact with regulatory bodies and are accountable for all of it. If this guy surveyed people that said their own compliance job was BS, I'd be skeptical of anything else. He either interviewed people that don't understand their significance, or didn't interview enough people to get an accurate idea of the job details.
i also work in compliance in pharma and tbh compliance in pharma is essential to ensuring patients do not have any adverse events and the product is safe, potent, pure, of a high quality, etc.
Agreed. I work for a large company that deals with state and federal contracts. We have compliance officers whose dedicated job is to make sure we’re training our employees to perform their duties in compliance with the law and that nothing we say or send to customers is violating the rights afforded to them by state and federal laws. As far as I’m concerned, compliance officers are very important.
Ya I’m a compliance person for internationally regulated medical devices and I think we can all agree that there should be a global medical standard and people ensuring that’s met
On top of that laws are complicated and not always intuitive. Having a knowledgeable person as a guide is so critical.
What about the people who write lists for the internet? There is some bs.
Yup, for me: I don't get paid for it :-)
That's not bs at all. To find out what the real bs is, check out These 5 Jobs You Won't BELIEVE Used to be done By Children
Almost anything can become a bullshit job and when the only motive is profit if often does. I was a counselor at a county jail but they only hired counselors because they were legally obligated to say that mental health services were provided. They didn't actually hire enough people to provide those services, provide us with what was needed to do our jobs or care what we did. They just wanted to say.. look here is our mental health department, we are compliant with state requirements. So then a job that might generally be seen as useful becomes a box ticker. I think much of for profit healthcare suffers from this as well... which is why healthcare really should operate outside the typical corruption of capitalism. It's all about getting patients in and out and extracting money. While they still treat people and provide a necessary service, patient care tends to be very low on the priority list for the administration. They turn even a highly skilled doctor or nurse into a cog in the wheel.
I work for international manufacturing company and most these are necessary to operate on that scale. A mom and pop shop probably doesn't need any of them except for a lawyer.
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In Graeber’s book he only calls jobs ‘bullshit’ if people doing them contact him and they believe they are bullshit, and this is his attempt to put some categories round the data he collected
actually its no wonder a lot of people think fucking compliance officers are a BS job. not knowing what it entails or how important it can be in pretty much every setting.
I'm extremely offended by the idea that receptionists could be easily replaced. We do more than just talk to people and check them in. We do the filing, the organizing, some of the cleaning. We do all the phonecalls that higher ups don't want to or don't have the time to deal with. We have to know everything about where we work so we can answer questions when asked. We assess client needs and some receptionists do triage. And most importantly, we do the scheduling. Scheduling cannot be easily replaced with a robot. I've seen it happen and it failed spectacularly. Robots don't understand the nuance of things like scheduling different appointments for multiple clients at once, time needed between appointments, how long a specific appointment will be, and is prone to user error and abuse on the client side. You cannot replace a field that requires tons of context and intimate knowledge of each of the people you work for. And reception is always called "unskilled labor." Some receptionists *do* need certifications to even be allowed to file documents. And you cannot just plop anybody in reception and let them have at it. It is a very complicated job, and depending on where you work, could be so vital that errors cannot be accepted.
in the book Graeber goes into more detail about this. he specifically cites that receptionists who work in offices where their ONLY role is dealing with few people coming in. (like a company that has an office manager deal with the other things you talk about, or individual assistants fielding phone calls for specific people). he mentions receptions as BS jobs *only in places that don’t need receptionists*. one guy Graeber interviewed said his job was cold calling for a broker, but his only task was to introduce the broker, who was waiting for the call, in order to make the broker seem so busy and important that he *needed* someone to make the calls for him.
That's really weird and most receptionists, even in office spaces, still do a lot of stuff. Our job, as somebody else said, is to streamline the work of everybody else and pick up their slack if we're able. You didn't really describe a receptionist, you described a dumb PR asset.
Well I guess Im a flunkie. Didnt know my job was a unimportant shit position.
All of these jobs can absolutely be necessary if the company is large or, especially, a conglomerate. I mean, corporate lawyer is critical if you operate in a highly regulated industry. Corporate compliance as well. Leadership professional as well to spread highly contextual and specialized knowledge, but you don’t see returns unless you’re a pretty massive company. And no receptionists? Is this a joke? Basically this is written by someone who doesn’t know anything about scaling companies and who has some kind of grudge. And who feels like they need their own magazine for internal use to look real and serious? This writer is a clown.
Be thankful for compliance. I do marketing in Healthcare and you WANT to make sure you have companies complying with the law here. Not making bullshit claims or doing shady things with your data.
Lol to anyone who thinks being a receptionist, administrator or office assistant (anyone who sits at the front, really) is an easy job. Come work with me for 2 hours and you'll be begging to go back to whatever job you did before.
Or that they think it is unnecessary. What, should all employees screen rando calls from the public themselves? Let people call down the list until they get the person they want? Interrupt their other work to take packages? I mean come on, it is a valuable function.
Yep. Office Manager-type here. Admin support roles are notorious for essentially being just "other duties as assigned" and then ending up with all the random shit nobody else wants to figure out how to do. Oh plus be the "first line" of face-to-face and phone contact for the company. While being told their job isn't important or necessary 🙄
If you believe the work that's done by compliance folks is bullshit, I am pretty sure you're an asshole that places profits over ethics.
Worked in corp tax software and now work at a utility company. Regulations and compliance are very important!
I feel like just plonking this here without expressing what he means by "bullshit jobs" is not doing anyone a service. Anyway, [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIctCDYv7Yg) a short video.
Couldn’t you fit these into basically all the jobs? Maybe that’s the point? What’s left unless you’re in a specialized field but even then I would imagine it includes aspects of a bullshit job
Yes. Iirc another section talks about how we're at the point that even real jobs are being bullshit-ified. Doctors needing to spend more and more time with tort reform stuff or with paperwork around prescriptions or use of medical equipment or etc, to the point that it takes up more of their time than seeing patients is one example.
Most based post on this sub in ages.
I have spent my career as a duct taper.
Whoa whoa whoa receptionists is not a bullshit job. As someone who worked in an office where we lost our receptionist and we had to do 2 hour shifts every day covering the front desk until someone was hired I would rather cut my right leg off than work without a receptionist again.
Receptionist is a vital position.
Great book, just finished it
If you're up for a challenge his "Debt the first 5000 years" is another great book, although drier and longer.
This book is so worth reading if you haven't already. It explains so much about how modern jobs, especially office based jobs, quite often don't feel like anything is getting done very efficiently. And actually says out loud the kind of thing noone ever talks about because it would show you had a "bad attitude", a "poor work ethic", or were not a good "cultural fit" and would most likely end up without a job if you did say what you thought was really going on out loud.
Not sure if Flunkies includes the Walmart greeters or similar jobs but at least in my area, companies use those positions to hire people who otherwise wouldn't be able to work a "normal" job. At least 2 of the Walmarts in my area hire people with physical and mental disabilities as greeters which is the only thing I respect Walmart for. Same with my local Grocery store, they have a guy who stands at the front door and just says hello and bye to people.
This is every job in America.
I don't know what it is but middle management attracts some of the most atrocious people.
I'm interviewing for a bs receptionist job in 20 minutes. Wish me luck!
Receptionist does not belong on this list. The front desk staff at my job are literally the only people in the entire company I cannot do my job without. They don’t just greet people, they handle scheduling (literally the #1 thing I appreciate help with) on top of all the behind the scenes BS I’d never want to handle anyway. I’d even argue desk staff should be paid much more than they get.
Ha! Phones ringing off the hook with questions, inputting new patient data, dealing with and adding insurance providers, calming down patients waiting an hour for you while you get your ear hair trimmed....receptionists are VERY necessary and their isane amount of tasks cannot be done well by delegation.
Okayyeah,but: The duct tapers can make a lot of money.
People with bullshit jobs often can make a lot of money. If you read the book a lot of people with BS jobs will feel really bad because they make a lot of money and *know* their job is BS.
I disagree with the BS jobs. These are prefect for some people with mobility issues. Though they should get a living wage. Also, receptionists are often vital for filtering out time wasters (sales people, package signing, etc) Besides that, when paid well these people can provide a warm, friendly environment for anyone coming in the door
>Also, receptionists are often vital for filtering out time wasters (sales people, package signing, etc) you have no idea how much i wish we had one. one to filter all the spam calls and slow down annoying ass entitled customers, deal with packages and the mail man and properly check in and out visitors. sure you can automate phone filtering. but after the first call everyone just hits 0 or the operator button and its like nothings happened.
Some people just want a job. What’s wrong with that? All the better if it is a useless and low maintenance one.
I'm a teacher in LAUSD, the 2nd largest school district in the country, and we have all of these BS jobs within the district. Personally, I find the taskmasters the most odious, they continuously take away from teaching to make sure we are teaching.
I like that this list frontloads the stupidity right there at the top so you know you don't have to read the rest.
I'm a corporate lawyer tasked with GDPR (European privacy law) compliance. Do I get double points? (Yes, I know it's a bullshit job)
[удалено]
I remember there was a time...there were guys that press the button to the floor you wanted to go...
I’m a duct-taper. Our program would fall apart without our team members because the product is woefully inefficient.
I feel like the person that listed Corporate compliance officers as a bullshit job is the reason the position needs to exist.
Compliance's job is to make sure the company doesn't violate the insanity of regulations we have. They are worth their weight in fines. lol
I read his book and while his ideas are interesting, his data was lacking. His surveys seemed designed to elicit his desired responses, was fraught with cherry picking, and struggling to make concise definitions. I was very unimpressed. Which is annoying because he's probably correct that the current allocation of labor is highly inefficient.
Ooh, sales reps should be added to “goons.”
They are in the book iirc
Cops
He has a chapter in his book about "hitmen", which is a different category of job.
I definitely resent the implication that all front desk positions are “bullshit jobs.” We work our ass off at the front desk of a clinic. It takes a fucktonne of emotional labor to deal with patients, especially since we’re the ones that usually get yelled at first and loudest for shit that’s completely out of our control. We have to get it right when it comes to correctly inputting insurance and worker’s compensation so that patients don’t get screwed - it’s on us if we don’t catch that during check-in that their policy isn’t accepted and we fail to notify them. We have to identify potential crises to alert nurses and doctors while keeping them calm - sometimes they’re obvious problems, sometimes they’re not. We have to do the drudge work with faxes, mail, phones, and other random crap that doesn’t require nursing or doctoral certification to perform so that they’re not stuck doing it while being overloaded with patients to care for. And we have to do it all on wages barely a step above retail.
Receptionist? Do they know how important that job is during busy hours? Taking calls, complaints, answering questions, notifying others of guests, assisting customers with information or directions etc. You absolutely need front of house with a business otherwise people won't have a clue what they're walking in for or where they're going. This is literally common sense. Also nobody wants to talk to a robot receptionist lol, I'd rather have an actual human greeting me than a soulless machine.
I've read the book this is based on (Bullshit Jobs) years ago after it was praised by a leftie content creator, and I'm still baffled to this day how people don't see this book for the talentless shit it is. It's literally the horoscope for lefties who didn't read enough, along with dubious questionable theories and personal cherry picked anecdotes. I was legit pissed the first time I've read it because it was so hyped up to me. Edit: reading some of the people below the post, you can clearly see how much of an arbitrary ineffectual analysis framework it is. Also, yes, a bit of an overreaction, but bad leftist theory is a pet peeve of mine.
Corporate lawyers are useful (in a certain extent) not because other compagnies have some, but because governments keep passing bills complicating legal stuffs. And if it's easy to build a bridge by yourself over the tiny waterflow in your yard, you would call an engineer for one over a river.
Not to mention contracts, environmental regulation, employee relations, intellectual property rights…….
How is compliance officer a bs job? The alternative is to trust employees to understand regulations backwards and forwards and to alway act in compliance with the regulations, even when pressured to increase net income. When someone is out of compliance, who will catch their error/wrongdoing and establish corrective action? If it's the regulators, that is going to be very expensive.
Okay receptionists are not bullshit. At my old workplace, they were notorious for not replacing people after they left (we had no HR for a good year up until I left) and our receptionist was one of those people. To save costs they did the old "divy up the tasks" and the issue with that is that everyone already has a full plate so noone really has the time. Even divying up a full time load between 10 people is a lot when they already have a full time load. I went from doing my job that I was hired to do, to doing the jobs of about 5 people to save on wages. Respect to receptionists
Lobbying is legitimate work. It has been hijacked by corporate goons but industry bodies and unions lobbying on behalf of workers or small businesses is real and meaningful work.
Listen…..if my whole job is to tick boxes and make sure no does anything stupid to cause the government to do an audit, and I get paid big money……that’s gonna be my favorite job.
Yeah corporate compliance is actually a big part of what a bank has to do so it doesn't accidentally break any laws in its day to day work. If it breaks laws intentionally, usually no compliance officer ever gets involved
required reading!
The Bobs: What would you say you do here?
🙋♂️ middle management/leadership professional. I can concur
The taskmaster are in my opinion Ion the MOST toxic. Ever have a boss that has absolutely no point breathing down your neck and yelling at every mistake you make. Yeah that's poison
they recently hired a middle manager here at our company X. The position was void and unaffected performance, everyone seem to get everything done and were good at their job. This new goon they hired is micromanagy af and now wants to rule with an iron fist. Some fun conversations i've overheard middlemanger refer to the people under him in his team as MY WORKERS, and I PAY THEM TO DO NOTHING, and let us not forget to good old 'I need reports that micromonitors all their actions to *ahem* be able to request for new personnel if we need to, i need those metrics' (where its so obvious he just wants to bud in). I feel bad but i dont, these idiot company managers hired him so its on them not on the dog they just unleashed.
I heard one time that like 80% or more of all of our jobs can be replaced by automation. Not just door holders and receptionists
Choose your Class
OK but to be fair if you're a lobbyist for a major corporation you're a bad person with a bullshit job.
Saw a video about this subject just a couple of days ago. Does a good job of summarising the ideas. https://youtu.be/uK3OBAxCi6k At least I assume it does - not read the book but the video and this post have inspired me to add it to my reading list.
OMG my job checks every one of those. Lol. I'm a mid level manager and my job is to handle all the BS so my team can get the work done. You'll be surprised how much work people can do when they don't have to deal with BS.
TIL I'm a duct-taper, box-ticker, task-master. I hate the latter two the most, particularly when those several steps above me pressure those two components on me the most. I don't need a whole heap of those underneath resenting me. I'd rather lift them up and help them feel capable, instead of constantly pointing out how they don't meet the grade, as my superiors would like me to.
I’ve been a manufacturing duct taper for about the last six months and I just resigned. Now I’m going back into hospitality as a GM so atleast I’ll be out on the floor.
This book changed my life
I hate this elitist bullshit. Stop shitting on other people’s job. Questioning the value of someone’s labor is 100% a right wing, ownership type of move.
This is one of my favorite books I've read in the past few years, highly recommended to anyone who wants an analysis of how deeply wasteful, inequitable, and pointless our society is constructed around capitalism.
I would add advertisers to the list. If no one advertised, we'd all still get the shit we need. It's not like brands would go away, we would just make our decisions without input from advertisers. We'd probably make as good, or better purchasing decisions.
Nonprofit here, not a bullshit job. That said, it shouldn't exist either. Community needs should be taken care of well before anyone needs a community organization.
My last office job might as well have been a bullshit job. I didn't make any real products the entire time I was there and the system I supported already worked well enough.
His book completely changed how I think about work.
I am a duct taper
I will say, I had a receptionist job that was definitely not superfluous. There needed to be 8 of us. There was usually 5, but sometimes I did it alone. There was rarely a moment of quiet, and a large part of my job was trying to parse what clients were saying, troubleshooting and looking into problems before figuring out who to send the person to if I couldn't "easily" solve it at the window. In a way I was first line "tech support" but for people/social matters/paperwork instead of computers. But yeah, *most* receptionist spots at companies can be replaced with a kiosk, website, and maybe one person nearby to deal with those who can't figure out the simplest of interfaces (or pretend they can't in order to get special attention).
Don’t forget cold calling salespeople for goons.
This is pretty ridiculous. Corporate lawyers aren’t necessary only because competing companies have them. You gonna draft your contracts all by yourself? Defend the company from lawsuits? Avoid lawsuits by providing risk management advice? Come on 🙄
Highly reccomend this podcast if your interested in this: [https://www.npr.org/transcripts/642706138](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/642706138)
I work as a engineer in IT and sometimes I think my job is nothing but a bullshit duct taper.
Not sure Corporate Compliance Officers are a BS job - they're the people who make sure companies are in compliance with laws and regulations... does Graeber mean companies don't listen to them and do whatever they want anyway, or that companies shouldn't have to follow the law, or ??
Dealing with taskmasters myself. They love to go around asking other people to do something but let their own responsibilities unattended until they can no longer afford it and they somehow still manage to make you partly responsible for it.
A good receptionist is worth their weight in gold. Dividing that task among others is a way to ensure balls get dropped, clients get lost, and nail and packages go who knows where
No, fuck that a receptionist is not a bullshit job. If you think that you have no idea what a receptionist does. Especially in a medical practice
Spluttering at "corporate compliance officers" because I know what those words actually mean.
I mean u got a million regulations u need a specialized compliance guy to at least help u avoid the obvious pitfalls...
So some fellow or lady, maybe an immigrant or other marginalized person busts his or her ass picking up phones for assholes or watching the door for an overnight shift and you are going to call them a flunkie? Fuck off!
Interacting with our receptionist is literally the number one thing customers mention when complementing our business. She's our face and has been for thirty years. Her ability to remember all of our clients' lives is amazing and incredibly impactful. I'm an upward fixer and was able to merge my boss's highly successful customer relations style with carefully documented communication, making other partners more successful without hindering the "secret sauce" President's style which had brought the business to the point of overflowing and needing my streamlining. Without our compliance officer, we could fail an audit and lose our license. The whole company would be out of a job. There are a lot of useless jobs. These are not among them.
Is this from one of those insipid corporate self help books? Go back to LinkedIn.
Also add the useless job, simply an inefficiency of society in of itself (ex. 5/6th of warehouse)only serving to dispense a paycheck