Will I love Bullshit Jobs?

This book has the tone of someone looking around an office, raising an eyebrow, and finally saying the quiet part out loud. 

It is sardonic, occasionally funny, and often grim in the way that only recognition can be. I laughed, then felt slightly implicated. Graeber focuses not merely on hard, boring, or mismatched work but on a particular misery: work that feels unnecessary, performative, or maintained for reasons no one will name without sounding rude.

The worker stories landed for me because they echo what people have thought but never said in the lunchroom. I appreciate how it breaks through… show more.

Fun fact: I wrote my book while recovering from a period of intense work burnout that someone more dramatic could call a nervous breakdown. During that time, I was coming to terms with the fact the job I love has broken my brain and likely made it very easy for other people to exploit me. 

I read this book during this period, and it helped me understand not only how toxic but also how unnecessary our relationship with work was. It helped me detangle my identity from employment and realize that a job is just a part of my life–not… show more.

The main thing I love about this book is that it made me laugh so much! Don’t get me wrong; it’s a really serious book about one of the worst aspects of our economic system, namely that so many of us are trapped in jobs that are either pointless (in the grand scheme of things) or actively making things worse.

I really appreciated the readable style and use of humorous terminology that made it easy to understand what might otherwise be complicated topics.