This sounds good, but it's honestly just not realistic in a lot of jobs. How are you going to make working at an Amazon warehouse meaningful? Stocking shelves at Walmart? Making fries at McDonalds?

You can give the usual platitudes of how you're helping to make sure that people in your community can get the goods/food/whatever they need, but I think most people know that they're not really contributing to the betterment of society in a lot of jobs.

And to be clear, that's not just menial labor - I've been a PM on some products that could disappear off the face of the earth without making anybody especially worse off (except the guy managing the part of the operation that used our software, but ultimately he'd go to a competitor and all would be fine).

I think that it's often better to forget the idea that work needs to be deeply meaningful and treat people with the respect of recognizing that they're there for a paycheck and nothing else, and then try to do what you can to make the day-to-day work easier and more pleasant.

Meanwhile I'll be hoping against hope that when these meaningless jobs get replaced by robots and AI that we get UBI and people can actually work to find meaning.

I think excluding compensation from those jobs, meaning higher compensation, from the idea of meaning is losing sight of it all. There at a lot of jobs that if people were compensated better they would find it to be more meaningful to engage with. It can be a primary motivation to simply do well because they feel fairly valued.

It’s not all heart and soul stuff

If you talk to these workers, you can tell those who have a careful manager from those who don’t.

Mere tediousness would consign all warehouse jobs and janitorial positions to "bullshit" - which they are not, as specifically called out in the book. They might be unpleasant, but are definitely necessary.

Parent commenter is stating that, with a good manager, they will remind you of the meaning inherent in the work. At McD's, perhaps: "Remember folks, we're getting hungry people fed, hard working folks deserve a fresh hot meal"

"You make a distinction between bullshit jobs and shit jobs in your book. Can you talk a little bit about the distinction between the two?

Well it’s fairly straightforward: shit jobs are just bad jobs. Ones you’d never want to have. Back-breaking, underpaid, unappreciated, people who are treated without dignity and respect… The thing is for the most part, shit jobs aren’t bullshit, in the sense of pointless, nonsensical, because actually they usually involve doing something that genuinely needs to be done: driving people around, building things, taking care of people, cleaning up after them…

Bullshit jobs are most often paid quite well, involve nice benefit packages, you’re treated like you’re important and actually are doing something that needs to be done — but in fact, you know you’re not. So in that way they’re typically opposites."

> At McD's, perhaps: "Remember folks, we're getting hungry people fed, hard working folks deserve a fresh hot meal"

McD is a prime example of a bullshit sector.

"Bullshit jobs are ones ... that if the job (or even sometimes the entire industry) were to disappear, it would make ... the world ... a better place. "

> Livestock and climate change: what if the key actors in climate change are... cows, pigs, and chickens? ... https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Livestock-and-climate-...

> Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century .. https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

> Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth ... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

> In terms of carbon sequestration and dealing w/ climate, it is clear that agricultural land use(especially land used for animal feed) is the largest barrier to ecosystem restoration. Potential for carbon sequestration is enormous (literally enough for the entire 1.5C carbon budget) ... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4.

If a sector (industry) is bullshit, the jobs are too.

> the climate change stuff here is a total non sequitur

I was reacting to

'with a good manager, they will remind you of the meaning inherent in the work. At McD's, perhaps: "Remember folks, we're getting hungry people fed, hard working folks deserve a fresh hot meal"'

Serving hungry people "fresh" hot meal does not alone make it non-bullshit job. Maybe I was not clear enough ... consuming meat & dairy destroys the environment (and animal agriculture is the main culprit), and not consuming meat & dairy is a best way to stop anthropocenic crisis (overshoot). There are enough peer reviewed scientific studies that confirm that. Ask if you want more sources.

> The worst part about being vegan is other vegans

Funny, but somehow relevant: https://i.redd.it/xuwnig93hg6b1.jpg

> There will always be food service jobs, and they will always be tedious and taxing ... serving ideologically-correct foodstuff

By definition those are not bullshit jobs.

Those are not “bullshit jobs” by any definition. An Amazon warehouse worker knows that someone has to do that job. The same is true for your other examples.