Do you know what a cheese artisan does? Well, he (or she) “sculpts milk products for upscale restaurants and pretentious markets”. The earnings could be high; cheese artisans, like fashion designers, exist to feast on the gullible.

At the other end of the scale is the crumber. She (or he) “removes detritus from dining tables in restaurants”. In the US, that will fetch you $5.50 an hour —more, if you get to share the tips. But as a job it sure is crummy.

So, for that matter, is the cheese artisan’s. And, apart from both being related to the restaurant trade, they have something else in common — they feature in a list of 100 bullshit jobs, detailed in a book by Stanley Bing.

“My publisher told me to limit this exercise to 100 jobs for some bullshit marketing reason,” says Bing in his book 100 Bullshit Jobs…And How to Get Them. “But I could have doubled that number easily, and that’s focusing on only the domestic front and California. The global possibilities are equally limitless, especially in France, where 46 per cent of all people are engaged in some kind of bullshit occupation, and Japan, where they hire people to help you get on and off escalators.”

They do that in India too. At malls in Mumbai and Gurgaon, you have escalator attendants waiting to pull you to a safe landing when you start tumbling down. In Delhi, the metro is planning to employ people to push passengers into trains; such pushers already exist in Japan. So this country is in no way short of bullshit job ideas.

Another place where you will find lots of bullshit is the library. It’s not just the librarian. Among the books, you will espy On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, The Dictionary Of Bullshit by Nick Webb, The Dictionary Of Corporate Bullshit by Lois Beckwith and Bullshit and Philosophy by Gary L. Hardcastle and George A. Reisch.

Bullshit is evidently a vast territory. But what exactly is the connotation when applied to a job? Says Bing, “The folks who work in these coveted bullshit positions enjoy the best lives imaginable — they are well paid, they work very little, and their professions are highly respected because nobody really knows what they do.”

“Bing is more a humorist than a management writer,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “So you don’t have to take him too seriously. But there is much more than a kernel of truth in what he says.”

In Singh’s view, bullshit (BS) jobs are not dead-end jobs. Nor are they dying professions. The key about BS jobs is that you create an aura that they are necessary. Take the editor of a newspaper or a magazine, for instance; if you send him on a year’s sabbatical, no one will miss him. Or the chairman emeritus of a company.

The first thing about a bullshit job is that there must be no meaningful work. Sure, you can spend a lot of time pretending to be very busy and important. But your real role is creating unnecessary work for other people. Second, you must enjoy what you are doing. This need not be apparent. Most BS staff love to grumble and complain; how else will they prove themselves indispensable?

Finally, you must be creating other BS jobs in your wake. What is the “gardener” at one prominent IT company doing or the “chief mentor” in another? In their time, they may have been useful; today they are “nurturing minds” — their successors in the BS business. But at least they have had the grace to get out of the way of people who are actually working. For most of us, the biggest bullshit job is that of our boss; until we take over from him, of course.

A pick of bullshit jobs

Advertising executive

Anything emeritus

Aromatherapist

Celebutante

Chairman

Consultant

Economist

Food critic

Guru

Headhunter

Investment banker

Lawyer

Motivational speaker

Personal trainer

Pet psychic

Poet

Poker teacher

Politician

Rogue journalist

Writer of this book

Source: 100 Bullshit Jobs…And How to Get Them, by Stanley Bing