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The rise of the pointless job

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of the pointless job

#481

Post by hgezim »

baxtr wrote: post #373
ctime wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never once seen this in my life (I typically have over 100k miles of airline travel per year) and have been traveling for work in the US since 2000. I don't understand how this scenario would play out, does he just grab a bag at random and hold it over his head? Read off the tag? Most people I know would be incensed if someone else were to grab their bag off the luggage belt. You might be confusing this with cur…

Similar to people who pack your groceries into bags at cashier. Have only seen this in the states, nowhere else

Oh boy. I normally lurk but this one gets me.

Having to bag my own groceries is infuriating. In Canada, The Real Canadian Superstore was the first to do this and it has a shitty feel.

The lines are long, I bring my own bags and have to get out of peoples way as I pay and try to bag my own groceries.

I actually started going to self checkouts because if they don’t bag my groceries, cashiers are useless to me!

If you think bagging is just stuffing bags in orde that groceries come, you’re nuts. I hate it when a useless cashier takes my apples and just tosses them into bags too. They’re fragile and need to be handled as such.

I definitely think bagging is a service worth paying for and appreciate when I get a bagger that gets it.

Oh, my first real job was bagging and helping customers with the groceeos to their cars. Not useles.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#483

Post by tboyd47 »

not_real_acct wrote: post #442
egypturnash wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like you're missing a line somewhere in this - you talk about quitting your job, your wife getting fired, and your now-ex-boss offering you a raise to stick around, then start talking about "both jobs" without ever mentioning a new job.

Basically I handed in my resignation because I got a new job. The next day my wife lost her job. Then my OLD boss gave me a pay bump to stay at my OLD job. So I did both jobs, the old and the new, simultaneously. The initial plan was that I'd do it for a couple of weeks or a month. I was just trying to cover my wife's income until she found a new gig. Lo and behold, doing two jobs simultaneously is surprisingly easy.…

Did either job know you were doing this?

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#484

Post by rkuykendall-com »

richev wrote: post #250
Thlom wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always a bit taken back when visiting the toilet at clubs and some restaurants when I'm in the UK as there's a gentleman sitting by the sink handing out towels and stuff. Very strange and utterly useless. Not sure if he's paid by the club or lives of tip, but it makes me really uncomfortable. I just want to take a piss and wash my hands, not have an awkward conversation with a towel handler.

I've always understood that this person's actual job was making sure that no-one was taking drugs in / vandalizing / doing anything illegal in the bathrooms. They're there so the owner of the club/restaurant can relax, not you.

If this were true, there wouldn't be so much emphases on tipping.

Right now, I feel like this guy is useless and I don't want to give him money and I feel bad about that, like by not paying him I'm calling him useless.

If it were for the owner, and that was clear, I'd feel great because I was making his job easier by not causing any trouble or mess, and on top of that, hey thanks for the towel!

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#485

Post by tabtab »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #55
tlb wrote: post #19

The goon category is interesting in a future world where AI has replaced most jobs, because it can employ an unlimited number of people. (Goon jobs exist to counterbalance other goon jobs. Militaries are the canonical example.) Most jobs -- teachers, auto workers, plumbers, farmers -- have a natural ceiling on employment related to demand, but goon jobs don't because when one side hires more goons, the other side has…

Advertising is a very typical arms race. If you're the only one advertising, a small cheap ad is very effective. If your competitor is advertising you have to spend just as much just to tread water. If you spend more, it forces your competitors to spend more too. It's not surprising that the modern Silicon Valley economy is built on advertising.

Peddling buzzwords and tech fads has made some bigly rich.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#486

Post by adultSwim »

Pointless jobs are much wider than this. Most jobs I can get are to perform a useful role in a useless pursuit.

Capitalism is supposed to be all about efficient resource allocation. However having the smartest people of a generation work on putting little text ads next to your search results and stock market chicanery is highly inefficient.

There is so much real work to be done. We shouldn't be wasting our time with fruitless pursuits in order to literally not die.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#487

Post by nylonstrung »

ItsMe000001 wrote: post #333
merpnderp wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you’ve never heard of inflation. When the government prints more money it steals value from the money in my pocket. See Venezuela printing money for people to fill holes other people are digging instead of letting a free market allocate reaources.

I guess you don't know how money works in the modern economy. The majority of money is not created by commercial banks out of thin air, but not unreasonably (at least the actual concept is not unreasonable) - they can only do so when they have a "partner" (customer) willing to sign a debt agreement that they will pay back that amount, plus interest. So banks can't just create what they want. The government GIVES you…

Very low inflation nominally, according to a measure that does not factor in 1. Rent 2. Medical Expenses and Health Insurance 3. Education, stuff that matters more than the eggs and milk the CPI measures

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#488

Post by dragandj »

gkya wrote: post #480
dragandj wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we agree more than we disagree. My comment was mentioned to highlight that in many practical ways, the Christian population was practically enslaved to the Muslim overlords (regardless whether them being "real" Turks, or, more commonly, local converts, or even Janissaries). Much more than a Christian serfdom was a lightweight variation on slavery. Christian population as a whole had very little to choose whet…

We disagree at the definition of what slavery is. My definition of it is complete subordination to some masters, with no rights and in an inhumane situation (e.g. Afro-American slavery). Your definition seems to be that it is any sort of subjugation to some foreign powers. Even the fact that almost all businesses in the Empire were run by Christians prove, with my definition, that the situation was not that of enslav…

Serbian (and other smaller nations) in Austria-Hungary were under what you would call imperial dominance. In Ottoman Turkey, it was definitely much heavier. In many ways, local Christian population in Balkans was literally enslaved. That's one of the reasons that large part of Serbian population collectively fled en masse from old Serbia to then Austria-Hungary in 16th century, and left a literally empty countryside, which was later re-populated by Serbian and Albanian population from even poorer mountainous areas.

I mean, finding cases of African American slaves that lived and worked as cooks or home attendants, or nannies, or whatever easier jobs were available in the South, in addition to much harder cotton picking would not be an argument that those people were not enslaved. The fact that one does not literally carry chains the whole day does not mean that he is not a slave, if the owner can literally decide on the life and death, without much consequence.

If we talk about imperial dominance in Ottoman Balkans, I would accept that local Muslim population (largely converts) lived under imperial dominance. Christian peasants - much, much heavier.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#489

Post by christophilus »

modbait wrote: post #95
expensivedrone wrote: post #80

I'm a programmer working at a big-tech company. I make ~$350k/year, even though my job could be done equally well by a college intern. I only do ~2 hours of productive work in an average day. My previous jobs were far more interesting and challenging, and I had apparently done extremely well in my interviews. Hence why I got an offer with an extremely good compensation package. However, the team that I go put into, i…

Through my long career, I've notice virtually no correlation between my pay and the utility of my position. And indeed, I've had one or two jobs like yours. Sadly for my bank book, I can only stand being useless for relatively short stretches. I still reminisce about my lowest paying job, my first. It was probably the most enjoyable and satisfying. It was also useful, though perhaps not at the top of that list. It's…

In my career, I'd say the correlation is an inverse proportion. The more useful / needed I was the less I was paid and the other way around... It's curious. I'll have to put some thought into why this might be.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#490

Post by iriNjfk993 »

SnowingXIV wrote: post #110
iriNjfk993 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustrating thing is though: we have plenty of real demand Social work, infrastructure repairs, mental health services. But all the effort coalesces around BIG Corp. and Douche Co. needs first Somehow we’re convinced that Bezos and Koch’s are more important than our neighbors Some looney economists will tell you it’s proven in physics these people are just better Ignoring the history of violent imperialism and co…

I might be missing a lot of what you're saying, but say I worked for FAAMG - they just pay a lot more than what my neighbor could pay me. Even if repairing the neighbors deck or planting new trees in their yard or whatever might be "better" for society than submitting code for review on some feature. I guess I'm trying to understand what you're getting at because I think a lot of people don't believe Bezos or Koch ar…

That’s the pragmatic acquiescence that makes them “special”.

I don’t mean to suggest people literally consider them special in thought (though there are folks that do believe wealthy folks are divine).

But an objective view, minus culture bias, of economic activity would show a lot of activity swirling into Bezos’s bank accounts

What are Bezos ideas? Selling books online. Today that seems rather quaint, so yeah it was a different thing in 199-whenever

But that’s it. Everything else has been curated around him — cloud and such, he didn’t invent shared compute time.

But the system inherently protects that now. Ownership is the root of power. And the public, through government, has taken on debt to prop up ownership of new ideas and achievements as described in the anecdote about nuclear subs

IBM refused to invest in transistor computers. So the government did. And gifted it to IBM for mass production.

There’s a paper trail to tell a narrative that shows Bezos, etc, got lucky to live now, after all this government invention

And now he just says work on cloud and homes for me with 25 toilets and that’s how it goes. He’s that special in the system that he can command such

But he’s not elected. He’s not divine. And the species has plenty of demands that aren’t related to what he needs.

I’m picking on Bezos, but to me the notion applies to any super rich “my great grandkids can retire on inheritance.”

Those are the conversations we should be having.

I’ve tutored kids in comm college, algebra and basic coding, who can absolutely build web apps and shit, but all their lives assume adulthood is pragmatic acquiescence their future

Not working with the neighbors they grew up knowing, but for elites a world away

Pragmatic acquiescence has us literally discussing the value of Bezos and the stock market and not opioid addiction, and mental health — where there is plenty of demand

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