This is the book that I've read this week. Bullshit Jobs.
It's been reviewed thousands of times so I'll only make a couple of points. It contains some interesting ideas, it goes on for far too long (I reckon he could have boiled it down to 40 pages), and there's a lot of anecdote, a lot of which is from self-selected and not very critically assessed sources. I wouldn't dispute that jobs of this nature exist, however there is little counter-argument and the nature of the information is pretty insubstantial. An example which was included, presumably to add a little colour, was of the author's own experience at a British university. The example is where the author has a broken bookshelf which has deposited books all over the floor. The author appears to expect the person who has turned up to repair the broken bookshelf to also tidy up his books for him so that it doesn't present a risk during the repair process, this is the behaviour of an entitled prick, which may not be what he intended to be the case - it also may be due to the way he presented the anecdote, so perhaps I'm doing him an injustice.
The final chapter includes a great deal more social history and is much more interesting, however for me I didn't feel it represented the world of work from outside a male perspective particularly well and was woolly throughout. I understand that it was possibly meant to be taking a lighthearted view, in which case I would have appreciated more jokes.
I did read it from beginning to end, barring the copious footnotes, so it obviously held my attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment