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No one made fun of the madness of our world of work like anthropologist David Graeber. Obituary of a thought leader.
Each month an accountant writes reports that he sends to a larger distribution list. At any given time, you don’t have time to write these reports. No reaction from recipients. So let it stay. After months, one of the recipients reports: Where is the report?
The accountant asks, “What do you do with each of them?” Answer: “I’ll quit.” This is an example of one of the pointless tasks described by David Graeber in his world bestseller “Shitty Jobs: The True Purpose of Work.”
Graeber’s Basic Statement: Half of all jobs in the Western economy are “shit jobs,” meaning useless, useless activities that do nothing for employees or the company.
Declared war on the bureaucracy
In 2016’s “Sternstunde Philosophie” magazine, he explained that the assessment of whether a job is a shitty job is based on the opinion of the employees themselves.
“Most corporate lawyers think that if they disappeared, the world would be no worse,” Graeber said. Or: “Telemarketing departments only have companies because others have them too.”
Most shitty jobs can be found in the company’s bureaucracy – middle managers who organize meetings and write reports.
Instead, other people hold meetings to read these reports, and there is competition to see who has the most employees, Graeber says. “None of them really do anything!”
It started with a little talk
Dealing with these empty activities was what the holidays would have led him to, says David Graeber. When asked what they were doing, many people would have responded, “Oh, nothing big, I’ll just go to the office.”
“It happened very often. I asked myself, ‘How many people go to work every day and think their work is useless?’ Of course, they would never admit it to the boss or in public, ”says Graeber.
He wanted people to tell him about his mindless jobs. «How can you work with dignity if you don’t have the right to do anything all day? And that for life? ».
That was the central question for David Graeber, who came from a working-class family. The so-called common people were his focus.
The more relevant the job, the worse the salary
The London School of Economics professor also stated that “the more obviously a job benefits other people, the worse it pays.”
In the case of nurses and garbage workers, savings are being made, while “shit jobs” are smoothed out and increased: corporate lawyers, lobbyists, public relations personnel, management consultants, brokers.
He sat in meetings for hours that weren’t about important things, but just about a manager’s status in the company. Pure bureaucracy.
After all, the millions of “shit dealers” could feed their families. But doing mindless work leads to moral and emotional misery.
Incidentally, 37 percent of employees in Britain and the Netherlands responded in a survey, The link opens in a new window of not knowing exactly what your job is and of feeling unhappy in your job.
Pointing out these wrong forms of the economic system is David Graeber’s enduring credit. He died Wednesday at the age of 59 in a Venice hospital.
