On: The rise of the pointless job

[rayiner]

Packing your own groceries is work and boring though.

[gtvwill → rayiner]

If packing your own groceries fills your definition of work and doesn't just come under "shit you just do to get something from one place to another because you need it in your life". You REALLY need to get out and perform a variety of jobs. Like damn you gotta be about as useless as tits on a bull if you think pulling the food your going to eat that is NECESSARY FOR YOUR SURVIVAL off a bench and into a bag is work.

[rayiner → gtvwill]

Growing food is necessary for my survival but I don’t do that myself. Grocery bagging is also not trivial. You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it.

There is a big difference between a job that creates convenience for other people and one that’s redundant or pointless.

[_pfxa → rayiner]

> You can’t just throw things into a bag in random order, you need to think about it. A well packed set of shopping bags is a big convenience, and I don’t want to spend the bandwidth to do it.

Please tell me that you say this only to win the argument, because, come on. Putting things into something else is as trivial as it gets, and I can assure you that, even though I have never seen one, a person whose job is to fill the bits someone else bought into bags for them will give absolutely zero fucks about how he puts them things into them bags. Except maybe it's somewhere like Harrods, I guess, if they are paid high enough (now I recalled this: there was a comment or an article recently about an employee of Harrods whose job was to get fired when customers came to complain about other personnel).

[rhino369 → _pfxa]

You probably only think this because you don't do a good job. There are strategies and methods for bag packing that produce better results.

You figure out how to build a base, how to seperate items by contimination risk, learn how to fill a bag up.

People who do it poorly give you 15 bags when 7 will do.

The biggest incentive is to do it faster. The job is boring as sin, so you just want to get it over with.

It's also a good job for mentally challenged people. It's low stress, something they can learn, and something they can do well at.

[briandear → gtvwill]

Except while I am putting things on the conveyer belt I can’t exactly be bagging at the same time. In France, checkout lines are slower because you have to run from one side of the checkout belt, to load, then to the other side, to bag and then you have to pay; meanwhile people are waiting. That “useless” job increased efficiency since bags can be filled while I am attending to the transaction. Unless you buy just a few things at a time, it’s a huge timesaver.