Pocket – by André Spicer, Aeon
Each summer, thousands of the best and brightest graduates join the workforce. Their well-above-average raw intelligence will have been carefully crafted through years at the world’s best universities. After emerging from their selective undergraduate programmes and competitive graduate schools, these new recruits hope that their jobs will give them ample opportunity to put their intellectual gifts to work. But they are in for an unpleasant surprise.
Smart young things joining the workforce soon discover that, although they have been selected for their intelligence, they are not expected to use it. They will be assigned routine tasks that they will consider stupid. If they happen to make the mistake of actually using their intelligence, they will be met with pained groans from colleagues and polite warnings from their bosses. After a few years of experience, they will find that the people who get ahead are the stellar practitioners of corporate mindlessness.
One well-known firm that Mats Alvesson and I studied for our book The Stupidity Paradox (2016) said it employed only the best and the brightest. When these smart new recruits arrived in the office, they expected great intellectual challenges. However, they quickly found themselves working long hours on ‘boring’ and ‘pointless’ routine work. After a few years of dull tasks, they hoped that they’d move on to more interesting things. But this did not happen. As they rose through the ranks, these ambitious young consultants realised that what was most important was not coming up with a well-thought-through solution. It was keeping clients happy with impressive PowerPoint shows. Those who did insist on carefully thinking through their client’s problems often found their ideas unwelcome. If they persisted in using their brains, they were often politely told that the office might not be the place for them.
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‘ Those who did insist on carefully thinking through their client’s problems often found their ideas unwelcome.’ They don’t want thinkers they want workers.
I think the majority of those employed in the cubicle/paper pushing industry are there for a variety of reasons, but none of which are actually for necessity to fulfill daily operations.
They are employed to justify a paycheck, taxes, insurance allotment, etc and to generate dollars to be spent at the OTHER hucksters businesses as well.
It gives the proles a little something to do and keeps them perpetually distracted and builds wealth for those who head the “machine”.
Case in point, when a large company has layoffs to ensure the ceo’s and upper management get the same salary, they hit the paper pushers en masse. Worker numbers get cut in half and yet somehow, the “productivity” and functioning of the rat trap corporation proceeds with business as usual. If they were “necessary ” in the first place, it would have an adverse effect, and the bean counters would never have hired them in the first place.
And historically, the bean counters will do anything for an extra shekel. Name it and they’ve done it and are doing it right now.
Sounds like the movie “Office Space”….the only office jobs I ever had I actually got to be creative in some ways. That’s what happens when you can “do the math.” (Bookkeeping was part of it).