11 Comments
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dj l's avatar

I thought I had a pointless job, but certainly not after reading this list!! #6 - oh gosh â˜šī¸ & #8.

Great add-on #11 👍

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dj l's avatar

pagers from Bangkok - yikes, huh!!!

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Darrell's avatar

Different place. According to the NYT:

“ The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AR924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.”

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dj l's avatar

haha - someone might get it

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Lisa Maniaci's avatar

Look how many Founders and CEOs there are in that list. Maybe everyone should start out with pointless jobs, it seems to motivate them to find purposeful ones.

I will add mine. I worked for an electric company the summer after High School. My job was to enter notes from completed jobs onto work orders in the computer system. It literally took me minutes but I was told I was working too fast and had to make the work last 8 hours. There was no internet back then, so I couldn't surf or shop or even take online classes. I got really good at the NYT crossword puzzle and Newsday Cryptoquote. I couldn't wait to get to my waitressing job at night just to get my cardio up and converse with people.

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Patty McGlasson's avatar

I have to ponder the meaning of pointless. Dictionary says - 'having little or no sense, use, or purpose'. Most likely, we have all had jobs we didn't see the purpose in, but it seems we were all doing something that had an end outcome, whatever that was. Having little or no sense seems to be in the eye of the beholder? I can see that some of the above lacked my understanding of integrity, but that is a different topic.

Good day to all!

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JoLyn's avatar

A large corporation was closing down our plant and was aiding laid off employees by operating an employment search training project. This was paid for by a federal grant, and my job was to enter data on participants’ training progress into a Windows data base. It was boring, but I kept at it day after day, because I had been laid off myself and it was a paycheck.

One day I accompanied my boss to the tech school we partnered with on the grant, and where the data would be reviewed and stored. I noticed immediately they only had Apple computers. This was a long time ago and there was no way to access the Windows data on the Apple machines. I mentioned this problem to my boss, and she said, “It’s our job to put the data into a database. It’s not our job to get it out again, so don’t worry about it. Typical useless government work! I kept working until that program ended, but I can tell you I didn’t put much effort into the job after that.

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dj l's avatar

haha!

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Carol Ferguson's avatar

Back in the late 70's, worked at an investment banking firm. My only duties took 15 minutes each morning, then the occasional letter (dictation, typing). Then nothing for hours, the rest of the day. After 6 weeks, a rush job came up and I wound up staying late (until 6:00 pm). Got the work done and was paid overtime as well. So boring, nothing to do but read the paper or a book.

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Seattle Mom's avatar

I don’t think the Sisters thought this was a pointless job, but the patients certainly did. It was the early 80’s in Regan’s recession, and I couldn’t even get a job in fast food, so my opinion was “I need to eat”. I was in Nursing school, so I had a limited amount of time to offer. My job in this Catholic owned hospital was to require patients to pay $2.66 per day to rent their TV sets from Phillips. Apparently, compassion doesn’t extend to empty hours when in pain. I guess the nuns figured one should spend that time in prayer rather than watching Judge Judy. Anyway, I was not popular. And even though we gave discounts to long term clients, like the floor full of eating disorder patients, I had to question the ethics of this process. After almost a year, I got a great job in a research lab, and somehow, giving dermoid tumors to white mice posed many fewer dilemmas. Plus, I learned Lotus 123!

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SPW's avatar

Honestly, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a pointless job. Boring, maybe but the few that could be described as boring had a point to them.

Diddy’s in deeeeeep. Oh well.

Russia/Ukraine war is just sickening. Who really wins here even if it were end today?

The politics story is the very reason people zone out and divorce the whole system. The country loses as a result.

So good to see jet coming back. I loved the jewelry that was still available when I was much younger and would love to have a jet ring or earrings now.

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