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The rise of the pointless job

theguardian.com

411–420 of 499 posts

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#411
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Job's Guarantee is a real movement, and a reasonable idea for this reason. Not having a job puts you in a lower social caste - might as well have them doing SOMETHING. Even if it's not especially productive, the small positive affect is better than nothing.

Why not just give people a UBI and be done with it?

Basic job might have a better cost/benefit tradeoff.

For example, https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basi...

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#412
post #228
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30 centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

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…

Baggage handlers at airports pull bags off the belts and put them in a line nearby (and sometimes give them to passengers) when there's a need to clear the belt, or when they don't have other work to do (at some airports). This is mainly to keep the belt from filling up.

They also sometimes do this when looking for a bag for transfer (which failed to get interlined correctly or something, or when an elite has a connection but there's no interline agreement.)

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#413
post #242
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30 centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

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 did that gig at a county fair one season. You’re there to deter people from pissing on the floor and plundering the place. People behave bizarrely in certain situations.

The highlight of that experience was the drunk lady who stole a toilet lid in the men’s room.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI will lead to societal degeneration. Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket; people would lose direction and the small amount of meaning they had. I call UBI gay-space-communism because it suggests that all human beings are capable of handling themselves outside of employment and daily routine. They are not. The market creates this drive in people, and if you remove it, people will degenerate fast.…

> UBI will lead to societal degeneration No, it won't. > Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket If you do a constant-value UBI and set the value too high, yes, that would happen in a positive feedback loop, but that's why UBI should be tied to a revenue stream with a value set by splitting the revenue stream with a reserve cushion to build a fund to allow preserving benefits in short-term revenue decl…

Any value of UBI higher than 0 creates positive feedback loop:

1. government announces UBI

2. retailers, in anticipation of higher demand raise prices.

3. UBI beneficiaries see that they cannot buy as many goods as they want/need so they start demanding more money.

4. government see that they have more tax revenue due to higher retail sales (and the price raise from step 2) so it easily agrees to increase UBI amount.

5. go to step 2.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#415
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pretty sure the idea here is to quicken the checkout and lines-> having someone fill bags as someone else handles payments and you handle paying, makes queues move faster than having them grind to a halt due to someone packing their bags too slowly.

IN Italy there’s a little desk behind the cashiers and it’s split in half so while you fill your bags using one half the next client uses the other half. The amount of useless jobs in the states always amazes me, but then you look at the unemployment rate and everything becomes less useless ...

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#416
post #76

Author lost me on doorman. Doormen absolutely bring value and saying that doormen is bullshit job is the same as saying that waitress is a bullshit job - in the end customer is fully capable of bringing the food from the counter to his table on his own. Doormen Can accept packages when you are not in your apt (leaving outside is not an option in NY) Can accept laundry delivery Provide security by screening people out…

> Author lost me on doorman. Doormen absolutely bring value and saying that doormen is bullshit job is the same as saying that waitress is a bullshit job - in the end customer is fully capable of bringing the food from the counter to his table on his own.

Waitress is a bullshit job though, just like a butler. In a truly egalitarian society a job like that wouldn't exist. It's an artificial construct that can be pretty annoying especially when you're waiting for your check for half an hour. :)

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#417
Pointless jobs abound in both the public and private sectors, but I think these articles resonate because so many white collar workers are largely occupied with projects that will be cancelled before they're finished or whose end product will eventually be ignored by the people who are intended to use it. Most companies just aren't managed very well...

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You too may experience this "luxury" by going to pretty much any club (dance or strip) on pretty much any weekend in pretty much any major US city. The opulence wears off quickly, as it is made clear that you're expected to tip and all you want to do is wash your hands like a decent person.

If the attendant is to my left, I rotate clockwise towards the door after I finish washing. Then it looks like I didn’t see him.

With wet hands, though, or damp pants, which is not a great look in either club environ.

I would just simply refuse to go to such places, but I've only ever gone at the strong insistence of friends and perhaps the insistence some strong drink.

Perhaps a real-life hack could be to bring sanitizer gel.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#419
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my family lived in Japan years ago, we noticed that when taking the train, approximately three attendants checked our tickets before we boarded a train. At least two of those jobs are "bullshit" in terms of producing wealth, but they are socially beneficial in a culture where the social contract requires near-zero unemployment. (I, apparently like you, can't help but remember this kind of arrangement when listen…

Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30 centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

I find the concept of having to have someone pump gas for you (by law) another strange example of a pointless job, I'm quite capable of pumping my own gas.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never noticed this, visited Japan a few times myself. Often I had mine checked at the gate and on the train. Are you sure you’re not just exaggerating?

Keep an eye out for people guiding traffic in Tokyo. It's much more than in Europe

They’ve fixed it, but Japan used to have a very high pedestrian death rate from being hit by cars.
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