What is your professional job title? What value do you contribute, create, or improve within the scope of your job title? With the United State of America being regarded as one of the richest countries in the world, arguable all foreign nationals flux to 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. Let’s know more about What are some of the meaningless job titles?
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 though were not famous for remuneration, they had titles. Everyone responsible for that task or activity was titled by that provide 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 title 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.
2.1 Why the 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 (youtube). 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.
2.2 Are the categories of meaningless jobs?
There are three unfavorable reasons for having wrong job titles to both the worker and the employer, firstly when an employee is fired or has resigned finding a replacement could be tough, secondly worthless job title could impact negatively on the job-hunters ability to be employed and to 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 societies (an inhouse corporate lawyer).
- “The taskmaster” _ people employed to monitor and manage employees that don’t need to be managed thus disregarding effective management.
Which Jobs are 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 to that 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 sector 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 varies differently between men and women 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.
- World marine asset financial analyst_ Mm, I also don’t know what they do.
- Director of first impressers_ 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.
- Wet leisure specialist_ I’m certainly not familiar with this role.
- Compliance worker_ employed to assure banking quality control.
- Petroleum transfer engineer _ gas jocker
- Domestic technician_ Housewife
- Student-paper writer_ writes college students’ essays and term papers.
- Parking lot attendance_ Do you attend to parking or parking cars? Arg, am not sure.
- 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 are 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.
- Patron saint of academic studying_ I assume this individual to be a tutor
- Part-time czar_ 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.
- Pneumatic device and machine optimizer_ is a simple factor worker
- Chief biscuit dunker_ I ask myself what these individuals do?
- Creator of happiness_ if they not selling happy pills at the chemistry that I don’t know.
- Actions and repercussions adviser_ these people recommend disciplinary actions against an employee; the HR office has a back lock of cases LOL.
Employees who felt that their jobs are needless are mostly office workers and seem to be intense in departments such as clerical, administrative, supervisory, and managerial.
3.1 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 to 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.
