Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs

Graeber’s article, and subsequent book, were criticized by some economic journalists—and resentful employers—for having an inadequate understanding of capitalist economies or contemporary firms. In the book, Graeber draws on “over 250” “firsthand testimonies” from the workers themselves. They, he argues, are the ones actually doing the work and, therefore, are the best placed to really know what’s going on.

These testimonies are informative descriptions of people’s experiences expressed in their natural voices.

Some had me laughing out loud at the sheer absurdity of the individual’s predicament. The situation of “Eric,” for instance, farcically escalates like a P.G. Wodehouse story as he becomes more and more reckless in a bid to break the vocational pointlessness and absurdity of it all by getting himself fired … only to keep being offered more money!

We have usually associated “bullshit jobs” or “make-work,” writes Graeber, with the old Soviet Union and its “full employment ideology.” The current prevailing view is that market competition means such “inefficiencies” are not supposed to happen in a capitalist economy: A private firm would never hire and spend good money on someone they don’t need.

However, a significant number of contemporary workers, he writes, firmly believe their employers do just this. Yet, somehow, this has not been seen as a significant social problem.

Box tickers, duct tapers

Graeber offers a humorous basic taxonomy of types in Bullshit Jobs.

“Box tickers” (such as survey administrators, corporate compliance officers, in-house magazine journalists) are meant to make a firm appear to be doing something it’s not actually doing.

“Betsy,” for example, was hired to “coordinate leisure activities in a care home.” She conducts elaborate surveys of the residents, asking what sorts of entertainment they would like. The surveys take up so much time that she doesn’t have any left to actually entertain anybody.

“Flunkies” (receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters) serve to make their superiors feel important but don’t have much in the way of actual tasks to perform. For example, Graeber describes a small publishing firm that doesn’t really need a receptionist (“the phone rang maybe once a day”). But it hired one to be perceived as a “real company.”