Scan Magazine – August 2018

Issue 115 | August 2018 | 85

Scan Business

Keynote 85 | Business Profiles 86 | Business Calendar 87 | Conference of the Month 88

86 87 88

Steve Flinders is a freelance trainer,

writer and coach, based in Malta,

who helps people develop their

communication and leadership

skills for working internationally:

[email protected].

An article about the current job market
and another about Wembley Stadium
made a serendipitous connection in my
head the other night.

David Graeber, an anthropologist at the
London School of Economics, writes
about “bullshit jobs”. He claims that
more than a third of British workers re-
gard their jobs as essentially pointless
and argues that many meaningless po-
sitions exist largely to satisfy the vanity
of managers, desirous of demonstrating
their status and power. “There is an al-
most perfect inverse relation between
how much your work directly benefits
others, and remuneration,” he says, and
thinks that much current resentment
derives from this.

Will Magee’s wonderful piece about the
sheer awfulness of Wembley – “the noth-
ing beyond all nothings” – also makes
reference to the French anthropologist
Marc Augé’s notion of the non-place. Air-
ports, shopping centres and Travelodge
bedrooms are all non-places. To these
I would add the hundreds of thousands

of soulless workplaces, entirely indistin-

guishable from each other, designed by

non-benevolent employers. Call centres

are the direct spiritual descendants of

18th century cotton mills.

But there is hope. Artificial intelligence

will combine with the Universal Basic

Income to liberate us in our millions.

After all, isn’t the British Conservative

Party already proving that it is no longer

the party of business, telling business

leaders with Brexit warnings to go and

stuff themselves, and even suggesting

that there might be something wrong

about executives earning hundreds of

times more dosh than their minions?

With precarious workers starting to

win court cases over their employment

rights, perhaps the tide will now turn

against rampant zero hours, outsourc-

ing, and wage poverty. Money will flow

back to labour from capital, reversing

the historical trend identified so shock-

ingly by Thomas Piketty. And, as labour

reasserts itself, employers will be com-

pelled to provide decent, interesting

Nothing jobs in nowhere places

By Steve Flinders

workplaces suitable for humans rather

than hamsters.

This was my dream after reading these

two pieces. And then I woke up.