Bullplop Jobs - You ever work in one?

[Quark Blast]

This book here is kind of self-explanatory and got me thinking about the few jobs I've had. None of them so far have been clearly bullplop jobs but then one in particular, an internship, is a job for which I have no certain opinion that it was not a bullplop job. And that lack of certainty my friends is one of the reddest of red flags signalling that perhaps indeed, before I ever set out on a career, I in fact have already worked my first (of many to come?) bullplop jobs.

Has anyone here in these forums worked a bullplop job?

Not expecting anyone to confess their current job, least of all actual Paizo employees, but am curious if David Graeber has simply stated the obvious or if he was really on to something worth considering.

Do roughly 40% of us work jobs that don't matter by any reasonable standard?

Do the rest of us conduct some significant portion of our workday (or work-night) engaging in total bullpoloppery?

Point of order:
The topic at hand is not to be confused with this concept here, as there are plenty of unenjoyable jobs that are nonetheless rather not bullplop jobs.

[Quark Blast]

Yeah, so I'm bumping my own thread and maybe this should've been set in the "Off-topic" section. Regardless.....

Administrative jobs are often entirely or mostly bullplop. The book says so, if somewhat more verbosely.

I say this due to recent encounters with university administration policies and the people who enforce them; even happily enforce them. I mentioned in passing the uselessness of the many administrative hoops hapless students must leap through and my advisor/program director/major professor/concierge readily (and unexpectedly) agreed. In her 30-something years of academic life administration has "grown like a cancer" <-- her words and will be joyfully viewed from the rear view mirror once she retires.

May the gods save me from a career in administration!

[DungeonmasterCal]

I grew up on a cattle farm. Does that count? ;)

I've held a lot of jobs throughout my life, and a lot could probably qualify for this category. The first one that comes to mind was one I had just before my son was born. I needed a job pretty quickly so I took one as a projectionist in a theater. I'd done it in high school, so I didn't need a lot of training and fell right back into the routine.

It paid minimum wage and had I not lied and said I had a second job on the weekends in another town I would have had to work seven nights a week. The "boss" had been at this particular theater, doing this job, for fifteen years. He still made minimum wage. No overtime pay, no vacation, no insurance. That qualified it immediately as bullplop.

The last commercial radio station I worked at promised me insurance after one year (which was plop in and of itself) and first crack at a new shift should one come available. I was the overnight DJ and the evening shift, from six to midnight, was denied to me five times. I wasn't given a key to the building so when I came to work I had to hammer on the door until the evening person let me in. When my one year anniversary rolled around I asked about health insurance and my answer was that "statistics show that driving that late at night and so early in the morning (going to and from working overnights) that my job was the safest shift. When I got married, not a single person said congratulations or sent a card. I found out from one of the many evening shift people that they got that shift and avoided taking the overnight one was because they'd been told by the operations manager that if you "treat the management right you'll get what you want". Before he was even hired officially he'd been taking the management out to dinners and buying their lunches and such. Complete brown noser. So, after ten years in the radio business I realized the whole thing was complete plop and left. I've never regretted that.

[Quark Blast]

Whew! There's apt to be a lot of plop on a cattle farm alright.

Your other jobs sound more like #### bosses rather than plop jobs but I imagine projectionist is mostly not about running the projector anymore; Coronavirus aside.

Receptionist in an office as a job suffers similarly in that practical duties have been largely eroded by technology.

I think America has seen increased efficiency measures mostly due to our cultural ill-fit to placeholder bureaucratic jobs. As a rule we don't like them (Cf. the French e.g.).

[Quark Blast]

I detect a bot in the forums!
:D

[David knott 242]

I think this is the first time we ever caught someone making two non-spam posts followed by a spam post. In the past, whenever I flagged a spammer, either that spam post was their only post or all of their posts were spam.

[BigNorseWolf]

Park ranger at the bear mountain pool was a lot of time enforcing some meaningless rules, coupled with a fair number of non bullplop duties first aid, breaking up fights, cleaning things, running the filter, fixing things, getting in between misbehaving visitors and the mostly behaving local wildlife ...

So it was a lot of bullplop until all of a sudden it wasn't.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Oh, here's one I'd forgotten. Right out of high school I worked for a restaurant called "Al's Chicago Style Dogs and Spuds". Hot dogs and baked potatoes. That was all they sold. Employees were allowed one free meal per shift. We were only allowed to choose from the smallest potatoes and if we added even just butter, we were charged full price for it.