Punching the Clock

http://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/punching-the-clock/
Publisher:  Harper's Magazine
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX22999

An excerpt from David Graeber's book "Bullshit Jobs" published by Simon and Schuster. Graeber, a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, looks at the existence of meaningless work and the psychological and societal harm that results.

Abstract: 
--

Excerpt:

The company needed a team of engineers to come in every morning and check whether the air conditioners were working, then hang around in case something broke. Of course, management couldn't admit that; instead, the firm invented forms, drills, and box - ticking rituals calculated to keep the team busy for eight hours a day. "I discovered immediately that I hadn't been hired as an engineer at all but really as some kind of technical bureaucrat," Ramadan explained. "All we do here is paperwork, filling out checklists and forms." Fortunately, Ramadan gradually figured out which ones nobody would notice if he ignored and used the time to indulge a growing interest in film and literature. Still, the process left him feeling hollow. "Going every workday to a job that I considered pointless was psychologically exhausting and left me depressed."

The end result, however exasperating, doesn't seem all that bad, especially since Ramadan had figured out how to game the system. Why couldn't he see it, then, as stealing back time that he'd sold to the corporation? Why did the pretense and lack of purpose grind him down?

A bullshit job - where one is treated as if one were usefully employed and forced to play along with the pretense - is inherently demoralizing because it is a game of make--believe not of one's own making. Of course the soul cries out. It is an assault on the very foundations of self. A human being unable to have a meaningful impact on the world ceases to exist.