Heads up, parents.
If you didn't notice it in the title, our topic today is bull jobs.
That bleep you just heard.
It won't be in the rest of the episode.
This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Many of us, at some point in our careers, have had jobs that seem pointless.
I once had a bullshit job working as a work study student when I was in college.
I passed out flyers for the streetcar during one summer, and I could not figure out why.
I've had some temp jobs where I've literally sat in the closet.
Jobs where you ask yourself, what am I even doing here?
Like, really, what is my actual role at this company?
If I disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice?
I was doing some paper filing, but they didn't have that much paper filing.
And for a week, I sat in.
A supply closet doing expense reports and.
Creating, like, a new piece of paper for every single transaction item, on every receipt, for every single thing that expense, like, down to, like, the most minimal thing.
This week, we're looking at jobs that feel so pointless, so gut wrenchingly boring, that they are, in the words of one expert, bullshit.
If you don't have one of these jobs yourself, you probably know someone who does.
Like the guy binging YouTube videos on his computer at work or the woman who always seems to be playing solitaire.