Well, that was pointless

Have you ever had a completely pointless job? These people have.

Inspired by David Graeber's book, Bullsh*t Jobs: A Theory, I once asked a lot of people if their jobs were pointless.

If they answered "No, my job has a point, thank you very much," I had a follow-up:

Well, have you ever had a pointless job?

Because Graeber says as many as 40 percent of workers will answer that question with a resounding yes.

The answers I heard? Basically a bunch of “resounding yesses.” Here are 10 of them, plus a bonus. 

1. I got paid to read business books.

"My job was to prepare reports for meetings. I had to go through a few steps online, then print them out and staple them. This process took me between 30 and 40 minutes, three days a week, but I was paid a salary. I asked [my boss] what to do with my extra time, and she said I could read business books. I literally read books for nine months." 

--Bill Fish, now the co-founder of Tuck.

2. I sold $5 watches for $100+

"My first job was selling watches to tourists at the Swatch Store: $100+ a watch that costs less than $5 to make. The lack of mental stimulation was draining. I had a manager ... who had been working [there] for 10 years. I do not know how he did it. He was always trying to suggest that we go hiking or some other date-type activity. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there."

--Nadine Argueza, Harden Communications Partners LLC

3. I was an attendant at an automated car wash.

"[W]hen I was a teenager, I worked at an automatic car wash. We were completely unneeded. ... I think our boss just didn't want to leave the car wash unattended. We even had the gall to ask for tips. I made $80 in tips one night doing absolutely nothing."

--Chad Zollinger, chief editor of the Debt and Tax blogs at Best Company

4. My job was to enter obsolete information into a database.

"I was given a zip code and I had to look up cell phone or cable plans within that specific market, and add the details to a Microsoft Access database. Nearly everything you input  would be out of date after a certain amount of time. Once I saved my information, I had no idea where it went or who reviewed it." 

--Lou Haverty, of Financial Analyst Insider.

5. I was the on-site assistant to an executive who traveled constantly.

"I worked for the president of a holding company and I had SO MUCH FREE TIME. I was really a personal assistant and had full days with nothing to do. However, I was earning more than I ever had, so I figured out ways to keep myself busy."

--Regina Rodríguez-Martin, manager at The Shift.

6. Consulting on a project I knew was doomed.

"This was a well-compensated consulting gig, and the client was a medium-sized hospital in Texas. They engaged us to help them build a Medicaid plan for very ill children. This was a pointless job because we knew that it would fail. ... My boss at the time said: 'It's like being a defense attorney and knowing your client is guilty.'"

--Chris Lee, founder and career consultant, Purpose Redeemed 

7. Pushing paper for a digital business.

"Pointless jobs were my only jobs for a few years. I worked for Countrywide Home Loans in college, ... Stuffing envelopes, opening mail, filing paper. ... I went to the office everyday wondering why in the world all of this wasn't digital."

--Prudence Limphaibule, Virtuity Financial Partners

8. Writing bullsh*t citations

"[I was] a citation inspector for Baltimore City. I would spend all day patrolling poverty stricken neighborhoods ... writing citations for uncut grass, uneven side walks, unsecured trash cans, and boarded up windows. It felt absurd. Nobody I was writing citations for had the money to pay and it felt counterproductive." 

--Evan Roberts, founder, Dependable Homebuyers

9. I stood in a small room and ran a shredder.

'I was a pre-med student with aspirations of becoming a doctor. I took a job at a local hospital. ... The supervisor told me that my duties would include shadowing nurses and doctors. [But], they just had me shredding stacks and stacks of paper in a small room away from the main areas of the hospital. [Also], it was a shredder that was built for home use instead of industrial use, so it could only handle a few sheets at a time."

—Jesse Harrison, CEO, Employee Justice Legal Team

10. I pressed a button to run a macro.

"I used to work at an online electronics retailer as part of their, analyzing lots of SEO data. It was completely pointless. Within the first week, I made my own Excel macro that automatically processed all of the data into a fancy document I could read and send to my boss. The entire process took around 10 minutes and completed my entire week's worth of work. With my free time, I would just sit there browsing Reddit."

--Neil Andrew, founder, PPC Protect

11. I walked the floor.

"During one college winter break, I got last-minute job at a clothing store. The manager was just doing me a favor by hiring me, really--paying minimum wage, but not teaching me to do anything except greet customers, since I was only going to be there a short time. They just wanted me to 'walk the floor,' for eight hours a day, which might have been the most bored I've ever been. I think I lasted two days."

--Bill Murphy Jr., Understandably Newsletter

Yes, I slipped my own pointless job in there. I know whereof I speak. Got one of your own? Share it with us in the comments.

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7 other things …

• Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded at about the same time Tuesday afternoon in what appeared to be an unprecedented attack that authorities said injured almost 2,800 and killed nine across Lebanon. Many of the affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel; the Israeli military declined to comment. (WSJ)

• Sean “Diddy” Combs presided over a sordid empire of sexual crimes, coercing and abusing women for years while using blackmail and shocking acts of violence to keep his victims in line, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday. The music mogul pleaded not guilty. A conviction on every charge in the indictment would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence. (AP)

• The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded in the grinding 2½-year war has reached roughly one million, a staggering toll that two countries struggling with shrinking prewar populations will pay far into the future. Alongside military deaths, Ukraine’s birthrate also collapsed to the lowest recorded level: In the first half of this year, three times as many people died as were born, according to government data. (WSJ)

• Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will face renewed pressure to step aside after his Liberals lost a Montreal stronghold in a special election late Monday night. His party’s diminishing fortunes put Trudeau in the ranks of many incumbent leaders in the West struggling amid a difficult post-pandemic economy, from former U.K. Tory PM Rishi Sunak who was defeated at the polls to Joe Biden, who was forced out of the U.S. presidential race. (Politico)

• A criminal case that opened a window to a plot to help Republicans win important 2020 Florida Senate races by propping up fake progressive Senate candidates with shadowy money is finally headed to trial, with a South Florida political operative fighting the charges. Lest anyone think this is only on one side: A secretive group recruited far-right candidates in key U.S. House races for the 2024 election, apparently intended to help Democrats siphon votes from more moderate Republicans. (Miami Herald; AP)

• The lead engineer for an experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023 testified that he felt pressured to get the vessel ready to dive and refused to pilot it. "’I’m not getting in it,’" Tony Nissen said he told Stockton Rush, co-founder of the OceanGate company that owned the Titan submersible. (WANE)

• Radiant diamonds, sapphires, and rubies have been among the most coveted gemstones on the planet for nearly a century. But long before their reign, a far less dazzling gem captured the hearts of jewelry lovers — and now it’s making a comeback. Jet, a flat-black, opaque gemstone derived from wood that has experienced extreme compression over millions of years, was the haute stone throughout the Victorian era, a time when fashion and jewelry deftly signaled a person’s social status, financial wealth and even emotional state. (CNN)

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Thanks for reading. Photo credit: Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.