annotation: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

[matsushima]

I don't remember when I read On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant but I remember the feeling that Graeber was onto something. (I'm not familiar with his other work but I've heard it's good, even better.)

For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it … [A]part from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. … [For example] in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers … for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told ‘but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?’

I read the book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory when it came out and recently picked it up again after If Books Could Kill did an episode about it. It was their worst - and I'm not just saying that because I like this book but because they clearly didn't understand it; towards the beginning, the hosts kinda scoff at the idea of an anthropology professor, a Marxist* scholar, as though that was a bullshit job, when, by the book's definition, it's very much not! Academics don't have meaningless jobs, make-work designed to keep us chained to our desks 40+ hours a week and too exhausted to rebel against, or even reform, our busted socioeconomic system.
*Graeber wasn't a Marxist, either; he was an anarchist.

As you may know, I am currently job hunting. Rereading Bullshit Jobs has been helping me articulate what the hell happened, here. I know it sounds strange, because "librarian" is definitely not a bullshit job. There might be evil librarians whose work has a negative impact on society (a law librarian for the Federalist Society, e.g.) but it's not a bullshit job.

Rereading Bullshit Jobs, I realized that I have a bullshit job even though "school librarian" is real work. I kinda already knew that. The library is stocked with literally hundreds of books that the students aren't allowed to touch. (No, I wasn't consulted about this decision.) We have a $50 clothbound hardback edition of Naked Lunch but I've been fighting a losing battle for two years to get a few more Babysitters Club comics. (I work at a K-12 school but the elementary:secondary ratio is ~75:25.) This isn't a real school. This is a bullshit school.

From Bullshit Jobs:

[W]hile few offices are entirely free of cruelty and psychological warfare… they [are] particularly prevalent in offices where everyone knew, but did not wish to admit, that they weren't really doing much of anything. … [T]he lack of any feeling of common purpose, any reason to believe one's collective actions in any way make life better for those outside the [school]… will tend to magnify all of the minor indignities, distempers, resentments, and cruelties of office life since, ultimately, office politics is all that's really going on. (emphasis added)

Without saying anything potentially libelous*: Yeah, that makes sense based on my experience at this school. We all(?) know this is a bullshit school, not a real school, but you can't say that or you'll get fired. (Ask me how I know.) The fact that this is all bullshit is maybe especially difficult for educators who take education seriously because we didn't know were signing a contract for a bullshit job. We thought we were going to be doing a real job because teaching is a real job. Instead, we're paid $$$ to pretend to teach.
*Truth is not an absolute defense against defamation claims in Japan! You can be sued for telling the truth here, like if I told you ██ ██████ ████ █████ ███ ███████████ ████████ ███ ███ ██ ███████ ██████████ ██ ███████████████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ ███████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ████ ███ ████.

There's also something to be said about the bullshittification of real jobs, like the time tracking paperwork Graeber writes about being required to fill out. There is an increasing amount of bullshit in K-12 education and it's only getting worse… but this isn't even that!