Is the big secret of many jobs that people fake being busy?

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Most people just BS their way through life. Everyone seems to skive off at all the jobs I’ve had in my life, which is a lot.

I would prefer to do an honest days work, myself.

I do that and yet I’m see as lazy while the ones slacking off are seen as hard workers and good employees.
Starting to wonder why bother.

I’m not even sure the “fakers” even think they’re faking. It depends on the culture of the company/division/department.

I worked in a very fast-paced, high-stakes environment where people would sometimes yell and make people cry but everyone there was competent (most were hyper-competent) and they rewarded good work because the higher-ups really paid attention. Frankly, if you sucked or messed up severely they let you go. But they were always receptive to feedback and whenever I found questionable content (even as a throwaway comment) they always addressed it.

I also worked at a “nicer” place but people there... I honestly don’t understand how the upper management people got their jobs and succeeded other than having attended the right schools, saying the right things and knowing the right people because I never got the feeling that they did any real work. (They would drag an underling to important meetings, hash out ideas, then make the underling do all the hard work.) There was practically a template for this and it was infuriating how much credit people took for non-concrete ideas that other people slaved hours to bring to fruition. My boss couldn’t tell you what I actually did in my job. Excuses were always made for the people who didn’t do real work or actually did damaging work out of laziness. (I informally internally reported people several times for things that would’ve gotten the company sued.) These folks thought they were doing real work though. The attitude was always that they had gone through such a thorough screening/recruitment process that the higher-ups always believed that they would come through in the end.

That last job really scarred me. It’s been hard functioning in life after all the dysfunction at that place. There are times when I wish I just went along with their nonsense and then turned around and reported them to the authorities as a whistleblower.

In some places figuring out what to say is the "work."

Management is getting the underling to do the work.

The problem with the talkers in that second job I mentioned is that a lot of what they said was not really productive and they did not comprehend how much effort and investment went into creating the tools they were pitching to clients (they were ridiculously data-focused) so they kept burning through underlings to the point that all the competent underlings (the folks who could easily find jobs elsewhere) kept quitting. (My former department was dead within two months after I left.)

Management in that first job I mentioned actually paid attention to people at different levels in the company, knew what was going on (down to the mail room) and rewarded the work.

I know I’m on the spectrum but it was almost night and day sitting in meetings with brilliant people and sitting in meetings with the BS crowd. Maybe it’s because I was more focused on the content than all the other politics and body language.

I wouldn't even be complaining if there was any way to be productive, credit or no.

I sit here all day, every day, thinking about how much else I could be doing with this time. All the projects I could be working on, places I could be going, skills I could be learning. So much wasted opportunity and hours I'll never get back, adding up to months, years.

I dread going to bed and waking up. I get headaches and I've developed a snacking habit through sheer boredom. I struggle to talk to coworkers because I'm just so tired and zoned out all day.

This book (LINK) might be of interest, 'BS Jobs: A Theory' [the term 'theory' is more often than not a misnomer in this book].

Through the eyes of both NTs and Aspergers, how are publications focusing (or re-focusing) on the topic of "BS jobs" interpreted - esp. for people who are all too familiar with pointless jobs?

Increasingly, a small but growing consensus acknowledges the presence of pointless jobs as sometime like, "cutting off the nose in spite of the face!"

LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Sometimes, I have to "fake being busy."

I never fake being busy. If I have nothing to do I go home.

I can't do that....

Bathroom attendant

Elevator operator

Psychologist




Some jobs are useless


Some jobs hurt more than they help:

Weapons manufacturer

Cigarettes

I was told "walk quickly and carry a clipboard" by a colleague.

^Same, except it was a piece of paper. Clipboards were harder to come by. But walking like you're on a mission helps.

Also, I was told to spread my books and papers wider than my shoulders on my desk, or to tap my pen in meetings.

Yes, that's everyone's secret. That's not a formula and that's what confuses us, because there are some people out there who take their jobs beyond seriously. Also, there are people out there who will deny that truth to you no matter what, when in fact that's all they are doing: faking 'til they make it. These things make the world all the way more difficult to understand for us because they aren't consistent.

It all depends who you ask, too. If you ask one workaholic person, he/she will probably say that's a wrong, immoral behaviour. You ask a regular co-worker, you may or may not hear the facts. Have you ever heard that "the world is a stage"? It certainly is. Everybody is faking it. Everybody! And when I say "everybody", this doesn't mean literally 100% of people but they are a large number.

I know it's not a very comforting thought that people are most of the time faking it in a way or another but it's best to know about that as soon as possible. I wish my parents told me this from day one. Having to figure it out by myself was a horrible journey, I can assure you.

This is a beauty.

I've noticed in many jobs the most unpopular person is the one who manages to look the busiest while actually shoving the hardest work onto other shoulders which eventually cave, buckle and quit while the selfish busypants continues happily in the job and management wonders why none of their other employees are ever as good as busypants.