The Shackles of Busywork: Dissecting the Taxonomy of the "Pointless" Job
February 23, 2026
In my previous entry, we touched upon David Graeber’s fundamental question: why, in an age of unprecedented technological advancement, are we working more than ever on things that matter less? Today, I want to move past the broad definition of "bullshit jobs" and look at the specific, often absurd, categories Graeber identified. This isn't just an academic exercise; it’s a way to look at our modern cubicle culture and ask if we’ve traded our human potential for a paycheck that requires us to pretend.
Graeber’s research led him to identify five "families" of bullshit jobs. First, we have the Flunkies. These roles exist solely to make someone else look or feel important. Think of the receptionist at a firm that gets no visitors, or the administrative assistant whose boss insists on having an "entourage." The work isn't the point—the prestige of the person hiring them is. Then there are the Goons. These are jobs with a competitive element that only exist because other people have them. Corporate lawyers or PR specialists often fall here; they are the "arms race" of the professional world. If your rival has a goon, you need one too, even if neither of you actually adds value to the world.
The third category is perhaps the most frustrating: Duct Tapers. These are employees whose entire job is to fix a leak or a glitch that shouldn't exist in the first place. Instead of fixing a broken system, a company hires a human to manually bridge the gap. Closely related are the Box Tickers—people hired to allow an organization to claim it is doing something (like "diversity initiatives" or "safety audits") when, in reality, they are just producing reports that no one reads. Finally, there are the Taskmasters, who either assign extra work to those who don't need it or, worse, create bullshit tasks for others to manage.
The "spiritual violence" Graeber describes comes from the psychological toll of knowing your labor is a sham. When we look at the course dashboard and see our peers discussing the efficiency of AI, we have to wonder: will AI finally fire the Duct Tapers? Or will it just become a new tool for the Box Tickers to generate even longer, even more useless reports?