BULLSHIT JOBS

The Special Patrol Group: posters go up on the Tube (picture credit: Strike! Magazine)

NOW GET BACK to WORK
Interview by Charlotte England / January 5, 2015

This morning, many sleepy, grumpy, bloated people across the country returned to their jobs for the first time since before Christmas. Some of those people in London – the country’s largest hub of early morning misery – were made to stop and consider the numb feeling inside of them by 200 posters that someone had plastered up in ad spaces on the tube, with depressing quotes such as: “How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?”

The quotes were taken from LSE anthropology Professor and activist David Graeber‘s article On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, which explained that much modern employment is pretty much pointless, and the toll having to do them takes on everyone’s mentality. The article went viral in 2013 and hasn’t lost its relevance since. The poster campaign seemed to be a re-run of the anti-police posters that went up before Christmas. Just like back then, the Bullshit Job posters were designed by STRIKE! magazine, which ran the original article. Nobody knows who put them up though, least of all Graeber, so I decided to call him up and chat about why everything I do is a meaningless waste of time.

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