Organizing a union from scratch is full of little folds you’d never expect until they’re right in front of you. Lots of unintended consequences of a workforce being made up of diverse mindsets, experiences, and beliefs. The truth is that corporate “multiculturalism” mostly just boils down to everyone hiding enough of themselves that the frictions lay under the surface. However, a big part of organizing is talking to people and finding their core grievances, which are often covered by more face-value grievances. Is this person upset about getting stiffed on a raise? Yeah, sure. But maybe their core issue is that they’re now worried about inflation making it hard to afford childcare accounting for inflation. An announcement about withholding raises is a momentary stressor. The active, continuous, daily stressor is the childcare.
So I wanted to talk about bullshit jobs. There’s an implication when people talk about bullshit jobs that someone with a bullshit job does not do work or experience stress. One of the most common experiences of people moving from factory work or retail into the office was realizing just how exhausting it is to work for 2 hours and then perform “being productive” for 6. And on the more active side of things where you’re actively working a bullshit job for 70 hours a week, it frankly could not matter less to you that the client on the other end of the phone is also working a bullshit job. You both know who writes your paychecks and it’s your job to deal with the vitriol and time pressure.
There’s also an implication that “bullshit job” means “office job” and vice versa. One of my first office jobs was at a logistics company who specialized in raw materials for medical equipment. This is an inherently globalized market which is necessary for modern medical advances to continue existing. I left because of shitty management. Those managers’ jobs might have been bullshit. But mine wasn’t and neither were my coworkers’.
All this is to say that the reality on the ground is a lot more complicated. Now imagine taking the person working 1 hour a day and putting them in a room with the person working 10 hours a day and have them speak honestly about their grievances. The overworked project manager is gonna have a hard time empathizing with how isolating and stressful it is to perform “I’m busy I promise” for most of the day. And then realize that this dynamic may be seasonal, so these people may switch roles depending on the time of year. And some departments are downstream from others and work on a delay. That means everyone is constantly hearing about how other departments are “finally getting a well deserved breather” while they’re still in the middle of shoveling shit. All of this is complicated by the fact that the 1 hour a day people are doing their best to look like the 10 hours a day people because if they don’t they’ll get fired.
All of this is to say that the discourse around “bullshit jobs” is moralistic and filled with resentment. This isn’t without reason or motivation. I think a lot of us romanticize the ability to “not work all day”. And I’m not gonna act like it’s never better. There are definitely people who show up for a couple meetings and just check out for the rest of the day with no consequences. But those people tend to be in management. The people at the bottom being forced to seem productive at all times generally request more work because they find working preferable. The complicated dynamics of this make it difficult to navigate as an organizer. I wish I had concrete solutions beyond, “keep these caveats in mind, get to know people, and use your best judgement,” but that’s about all I’ve got.
I work a bullshit job where I sit at home and let people talk at me all day.
It shouldn't be exhausting but it is. I have to pretend to REALLY CARE about shit I absolutely do not care about for multiple hours a day 5 days a week. And then talk to other people who also have to pretend to REALLY CARE about shit that none of us care about. It 5 days a week of repeatedly filling and dumping my brain with useless shit that nobody cares about. And sometimes you run into someone who actually DOES care about it and so now you get yelled at or chastised or pressured to pretend to care more than you do. Sure I get to do all this from the comfort of my home in my underwear but is that really what I want out of life?
Years and years ago I worked a factory job loading boxes on a truck. I hated that too because my god were my arms and legs tired, the hours were awful, it was loud and smelly, and my co workers all sucked. I got home every day sore and with jiggly limbs but with my brain really ready to engage in stuff. I had energy to read and to have conversations and learn things but moving was out of the question. Today I finish work and my brain shuts off and my body wants to engage in stuff. I have energy to bike and hike and kayak instead.
Work sucks. It sucks different but it sucks. I'm personally glad I've done both kinds of shitty work in my life. Really helps me have perspective I think. I dunno which is better; draining my body for money or draining my mind for money. They both suck in their own unique way both short term and long term. Some days I wish I was loading boxes. Some days I'm glad I'm not. Ultimately we're all workers and we all need to fix this together
There’s an implication when people talk about bullshit jobs that someone with a bullshit job does not do work or experience stress.
There’s also an implication that “bullshit job” means “office job” and vice versa.
All of this is to say that the discourse around “bullshit jobs” is moralistic and filled with resentment.
Admittedly I’ve never actually read the book only the essay but I’ve never thought any of these things are true, nor have I really got the sense these are common misunderstandings.
Good post.
I do think that's why
talks about the "spiritual violence" of working a bullshit job. It's not of the same order as the labor that goes into real work, but when you perhaps know your job is bullshit, or even if you don't but feel a pressure to fill time and "work" even when there's nothing to do ... That still sucks. Does it suck on the level of being yelled at while working minimum wage? No. But it's still Kafkaesque.I think that this is one way you can build solidarity across different bullshit jobs. It's not they aren't alienated or also exploited, it's just that the toll is different.
Cool post, thanks for this.
I've got a fairly cushy job, for a while i did very little work and was devastating to my psyche. When I finally had tasking that I could take ownership of and have a full 8-10 hours of work, it was weirdly invigorating. Solving problems, working with coworkers to solve their problems, making progress and proudly reporting that progress made me feel infinitely better at the end of the day. When I didn't have anything else to do besides perform productivity and doomscroll, I was extremely mentally unwell.
Telling people who put in effort the whole day that I haven't done anything meaningful in months and how shit it made me feel definitely brought up resentment and it was hard to talk about with people because they had a lot of difficulty empathizing.
I think a lot of this comes back to the alienation of labor and the toll it takes.
I dunno, kinda torn on this. I’ve been in unions for factory work and not everyone liked the union, but everyone had at least a basic sense of class consciousness. For bullshit work, there are plenty of overworked and underpaid people who were practically begging someone to step in and guide them through unionization (although they tended to think “getting a union” meant just immediately doing walkouts because, again, they were overworked and ready to quit). But also, it feels very dystopian sometimes just hearing classist propaganda flowing from the mouths of other folks who could really stand to get some representation.
