Meaningless Jobs

Introduction

What is your professional job title? What value do you contribute, create, or improve within the scope of your job title? With the United States of America being regarded as one of the richest countries in the world, arguably all foreign nationals flock into this country to find work. The services sector there is believed to represent at least 80% of all workers. While this sector remains complex to understand, we know that the introduction of robots and digitalization tripled employment. Knowing that we can’t fully replace human capacity, this article seeks to investigate some of the most meaningless jobs in our days.

What is the meaning of job titles?

The history of occupation and job titles can be traced from medieval times to the era of slavery. Jobs in this era were not famous for remuneration, but they had titles. Everyone responsible for that task or activity was titled by that provided labor. In the medieval era, we had shamans, prophets, farmers, judges, shepherds, and kings. In this era, job titles were asserted based on your subjectivity or talent. In recent times, job titles have proven more than being a show of subjectivity or display of talent but a show of education and professionalism. It argued that from your salary expectation to your level of authority, your job title says more about you than you.

In this regard, job titles not only present your role in the workplace but the level of your position, authority, salary, superiority, and responsibilities. Job titles are used to inform people about what other people do for a living or their responsibility, for instance, they were bakers or doctors or lawyers or plumbers, but nowadays we have witnessed a rise in meaningless but fancy job titles.

Reason for rise of meaningless job titles

While it may depend on your professionals or industry, many people might not understand your job title when distilled to its meaning. Schoolers argue that the trend of meaningless job titles can be ascribed to the Soviet Union and humanity’s knowledge of how money works. In Soviet communism, employment was viewed as noble labor where people took pride in giving and doing their jobs until there weren’t enough jobs. Factories adept ‘worker holding,’ which is employing many people in fear of losing state allowance and talent. Others argue that this phenomenon is due to the surge of people seizing the opportunity to inflate their career profiles. This phenomenon has been growing over the years, confirming that there are senior-sounding job titles but who still earn middle-ranking wages.

Categories of meaningless jobs

There are three unfavorable reasons for having a wrong job title to both the worker and the employer.

Firstly, when an employee is fired or has resigned, finding a replacement could be tough;
Secondly, a worthless job title could impact negatively on the job hunter’s ability to be employed, and in the end, they create a wage misperception.
A professor of anthropology David Graeber outlines five broad categories of what he calls “Bull Shit Jobs”

“The flunkies” _ these jobs range from receptionist, shover, and doorman who exist to make others feel good about themselves (can be replaced by technology).
“The duct-tapers” _ are people who work to ease corporate challenges that should be eliminated permanently (inventory manager)
“The box-tickers” _ are people who create internal company articles or newspapers.
“The goons” _ these employees use aggression and manipulation tactics to attract clients and are negative on society (an inhouse corporate lawyer).
“The taskmaster” _ are people employed to monitor and manage employees that don’t need to be managed, thus disregarding effective management.

Jobs regarded as meaningless

One will ask, what is wrong with these job titles, and if they are meaningless, why is the corporate world using them? Meaningless job titles often reward better than professional jobs and are also more useful. However, occupants in these jobs regard them as jobs they feel are pointless, even if the job didn’t exist, it wouldn’t make any difference to the world. These jobs have proven to impact negatively on employees’ psychology. People who work in the health care, education sector and in government and NGOs or community services, religious services, and education sectors might feel their jobs are meaningful, but those in the wholesale trade industry or media, communications, and digital entertainment might feel otherwise.

Research shows that the hypothesis that meaningless work is significant and rising is a flaw; what is rising is an illustration that the same job fondness is very different between men and women’s feelings.. Below is a list of job titles that are regarded to be meaningless.

Consultant- an individual who gives professional advice or services to businesses for payment.
Analysts- these employees apply their expertise to study and make recommendations about complex issues.
Executive- an employee with senior managerial authority to put plans or actions into effect.
Brand evangelist- a person who promotes the company brand.
Reprographics expert- an individual responsible for copying and reproducing files.
Customer happiness specialists- these are shop customer care representatives.
Customer experience enhancement consultant- good old shop attendant.
Communications executive- is an executive employee with executive authority and governance over company telecommunications.
Beverage dissemination officer- bartender.
Director of first impressions- this is just a receptionist.
Information advisor- well, it’s self-explanatory.
Field nourishment consultant- your school lunch or dining servers or waiters.
Gastronomical hygiene technician- Dishwasher
An organizational change specialist- is assumed to be responsible for organizational structural change like rebranding.
Compliance worker- employed to assure banking quality control.
Petroleum transfer engineer- gas joker
Domestic technician- Housewife
Student-paper writer- writes college students’ essays and term papers.
Parking lot attendance- do you attend to parking or parking cars?
Chick sexer- is employed to determine the sex of chickens.
Digital overload- a person who manages the company website.
Wizard of light bulb moment- it is supposed to be a marketing director.
Chief charter- back in the days, they were regarded as call center managers.
Animal colorist- a person who colors animals for commercials and movies.
Problem wrangle- a simple psychotherapist.
Dream alchemist- someone who heads the department of creativity.
Corporate magicians- these just trade show magicians.
Social media trailblazers- these are digital marketing executives.
Initiative officer- a planner
Sales ninja- sales executive
New media guru- someone responsible for digital marketing.
Creative analyst- someone employed to assist the marketing manager.
Oyster floater- a person who floats oysters until they are free of impurities.
Associate vice president- one of the different vice presidents
Hair boiler- an individual who boils animal hair until it curls.
Part-time cza- this individual works as an assistant manager.
Chief inspiration officer- employed as a company representative who encourages belief in the company.
Space travel agent- this individual is an accredited travel agent.
Light Bender- is an individual responsible for the high-tech precision job of neon lights.
A pneumatic device and machine optimize- is a simple factory worker.
Actions and repercussions adviser- these people recommend disciplinary actions against an employee; the HR office has a backlog of cases.

Employees who feel that their jobs are needless are mostly office workers and seem to be intense in the departments such as clerical, administrative, supervisory, and managerial

Why produce meaningless job titles?

Of course, you would ask why businesses keep these meaningless job roles? Well, the response is twofold. Firstly we need to consider that cooperation develops these posts to negotiate deals with the government, thus using the workforce as leverage. Any government wouldn’t want low national employment companies to use this as an influence on certain concessions with an assurance to grow employment.

Secondly, individuals within certain industries are inflating their responsibilities to gain authority or company validation. While the communist Soviet Union created meaningless employment because it wanted everyone to work, and people took pride in these jobs, the capitalist world still perpetuates this same bureaucracy and its obsession with assuring that everyone works their weekly minimum of 40 hours.

Conclusion

Ever heard that time is money and money costs time? This phenomenon of meaningless job titles seems to carry those elements. Employed individuals performing the very same duties as yesterday, last week, or even last year overtime start to feel useless in their workplace, thus feeling that their jobs are meaningless. Yes, some jobs carry meaningless job titles, but when you zoom into their responsibilities, the meaning could be otherwise. Concluding, this article explained the meaning and brief origins of job titles. It also elaborated on why the phenomenon of meaningless job titles is rising and which jobs are regarded to be meaningless within certain sectors of employment.