5 - what taskmasters do

Page 51-: 52. what taskmasters do

Taskmasters fall into two subcategories. Type 1 contains those whose role consists entiely of assigning work to others. This job can be considered bullshit if the taskmaster herselfbelieves that there is no need for her intervention, and that she were not there, underlings would be perfectly capable of carrying on by themselves. Type 1 can thus be considered the opposite of flunkies: unnecessary superiors rather than unnecessary subordinates.

Whereas the first variety of taskmaster is merely useless, the second variety does actual harm. These are the taskmasters whose primary role is to create bullshit tasks for others to do, to supervise bullshit, or even to create entirely new bullshit jobs. One might also refer to them as bullshit generators. Type 2 taskmaster may also have duties in addition to their role as taskmaster, but if all or most of what they do is create bullshit tasks for others, then their own jobs can be classified as bullsit too.

As one might imagine, it is especially difficult to gather testimonies from taskmasters. Even if they think their jobs are useless, they are much less likely to admit it. But I found a small number willing to come clean.

Ben represent a classic example og type 1. He is a middle manager:

Ben: I have a bullshit job, and it happen to be in middle management. Ten people work for me, but from what i can tell,yhey can do all the work without my oversight. My only function is to hand them work, which I suppose the people the people who generate the work could do themselves (I will say in a lot of cases, the work that is assigned is a product of other managers with bullshit jobs. which makes my job two levels of bullshit).

I got promoted to this job, and I spend a lot of timelooking around and wondering what I'm supposed to be doing. As best I can tell, I'm supposed to motivating the workers. I sort of doubt that I'm earning my salary doing that, even if I'm really trying!