This week there’s a small change in the infrastructure that I wanted to tell you about.

Since the start of this site back in the halcyon days of 07, there have been two parallel blogs that were linked into it. Those who went to the Crazy Bosses site and the Bulls**t Jobs site at the top of the page got a chance to do a lot of stuff – take quizzes, look at galleries of crazy people who have run big enterprises, bask in examples of jobs even more weird, bent and twisted than their own, that sort of thing.

Those links will continue. They live on. I exhort you to try them, if you haven’t already. You will think you died and went to heaven. Sure, they’ve been there for a little while, but as an old ad campaign for a television network once said about their reruns, If you’ve never seen it, it’s new to you.

The meat of those blogs, however, were not the incredibly entertaining and instructive things I whipped up for your amusement and professional delectation. Of even greater interest was the input that came in from you, dear reader.

On the Crazy Boss blog, there was a satisfying and ever-growing assemblage of horrendous senior officers offered by those who suffered under them.

On the Bulls**t Jobs blog, you lobbed in a very interesting group of them, some of which I had, quite honestly, never heard of before.

In virtually all cases, some more than others, reader contributions elicited reader comments, and those were there too.

As of today, both of these entries are now incorporated into this main site. Click on the links to your right – where Reader Crazy Bosses and Reader Bulls**t Jobs are Boldfaced and in Bigger Type–and you will find nicely aggregated the entire corpus. Hope you delecti.

And if you have an interesting stories, by the way, to add to the trove, please don’t hesitate to contact me at bingblog@gmail.com. I’m there, 24/7, Googling myself. Oh, and don’t forget those asterisks when you’re search out those bulls**t jobs. We don’t want to be a bad moral influence on you or anything.

A reader from Syracuse writes…  

When I was in the Air Force I had a job manning the O.R. desk.  We were a combat F-4 fighter squadron based in Thailand in 1973. O.R. stood for ‘Operationally Ready’ and referred to the maintenance status of an aircraft.

My boss noticed that as the flight crews stood in line in the maintenance debriefing room after a mission they would listen to other pilots ahead of them describe problems they had with their aircraft and then when their turn came they would relate some of the same problems or having had time in line to think about it, come up with something else to complain about.

So he made me the ‘O.R. Debriefer’ with a separate desk and a sign to that effect. If a pilot had an O.R. aircraft he could bypass the line, sign a form I had already filled out and pop out the door headed for the O-Club. Our O.R. rate skyrocketed! Most of the time I wasn’t doing anything so I would bring two books from the library every day so that when I finished one I had another to start on.

What do you think? Is a person in charge of taking forms that state that everything is okay engaged in a BS activity?  

A reader from Pennsylvania writes…  

Analyze and interpret other peoples’ work in order to pass on requirements in order for other people to continue doing said work. You get to tell people what they already know and tell them what they already expect. You get to attend “”Meetings”" that are not much more than stating problems and pawning off the responsibility of fixing said problems to someone who actually knows something and gets paid far more because they actually have a skill/trade.

The Business Analyst is the facilitator of time consuming numbness. As simple as a monkey opening a banana.

What do you think? Is it simple for a monkey to open a banana? Or is it just that it has a lot of practice?

A reader from Washington, D.C. writes…

This is not my job, but I have been the trapped innocent victim of the “”strategic planning consultant”" who has held captive scores of us in meetings that go for hours and it’s ALL BULLSHIT! Hours in planning that results only in more BS meetings to talk about “”next steps, mission, vision and goals”" …that means they can invoice for thousands of dollars to inflict miindnumbing pain that morphs one into a coma-like state despite coffee, peanut m&m’s and “”break out groups”" – your only chance for brief respite to vent if you have any sane people in your group.

But no – you only have the true believers that barf out all of the buzz words, phrases and acronyms that have been droned on about the first part of the day from hell. So, in the small breakout group, emerge the “”leaders and visionaries”" of this group and Oh shit..another strategic POD professional has been cloned.

Like a cult, another true believer is born and ready to be part of this BS industry!

Me? I’m the one with a mental block about how any of the verbage means productive outcome for anyone other than paying for a new beach house and a vacation in Tuscany. So, after 8 hours you leave with a presentation folder full of charts, color coded “planning sheets”, “technique tips”, “” tools”" and the “”notes”" area that is blank except for doodled “”HELP ME”" and “”UGH!”" entries. Coffee-logged but desperate for freedom you stumble out of hell and do all you can to avoid the follow up conference call in six weeks to report progress on …BS.

Living in Washington DC there is an endless amount of BS jobs – it’s the absolute BS mecca of the world! Here all BS who BS are highly regarded. The political hacks, the government agency bureaurcrats on local and federal levels, the corporates that pour in and out and their PACS, the endless nonprofit, international and academic realms – all full of BS jobs that go on without limits. From what I can tell only sanatation workers and Starbuck’s baristas work.

What do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from Massachusetts writes…

Duties: Oversell limited back pain treatments as a fountain of youth.

$$: New graduates work as associates for very low pay, around $60k per year which isn’t much considering that you are $100k in debt before you start. Opening your own shop is more lucrative but risky, 50% of them close in five years. If you survive you’ll probably make 90k. Hire some underpaid associates of your own and you could make 140k/yr. Little wonder why the highest paid people in the field are seminar vendors or run schools.

The upside: Making your own hours. Successful high volume clinics often work about 30 hours per week.

The downside: High pressure to succeed, sleazy sales tactics, high student loans and quacks for colleagues.

The dark side: If you fail you’ll be stuck with those loans for life.

What do you think? Some people swear by these guys. Others just swear at them.

A reader from Ohio writes…

In college, I worked for a consultant studying the impact of strip mining in Louisiana (My supervisor was later offed by vigilante mobs who poured anti-freeze down his throat). My job was to water and fertilize the grass in the test beds. The test beds measured 10 x 10 feet. There were five test beds. I got paid $15/hour in 1981 dollars. I had all day to water and fertilize. I did my job in about 30 minutes, 15 min in the a.m. and 15 min in the p.m. I worked 10 hours a day and got paid 2 hours of overtime each day. Love it!

What do you think? Is the job bulls**t? Or the title? Or both?

A reader from Boston writes:

Upside:  Ride the bureaucracy wave, take more time than necessary to do everything, because nothing truly important is given to you to do because only real engineers are allowed to do actual engineering work.  Copy data from one form of spreadsheet into another.   Repeat.  Gain immense entertainment from people who’ve decided to dedicate their adult life to having meetings about the size, shape and color of stupid things like electrical connectors or wires and spend hours brooding over such things.  More $$  than any other intern or college student, and most entry-level teachers as well.

Downside:  Learn nothing, dread coming to work, immense boredom, stare at a computer monitor all day.

Darkside: Depression over career choice, occasion casual pressure from higher-ups.

Where you go from here:  Anywhere.  No one knows you’ve done nothing, both at this company and any other company that views your resume.  Continue earning massive $$ for doing nothing, at least until you graduate.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from San Francisco writes:

Good job … make sure everyone else is doing their job up to some standard using some methodology employing some practices that only you know of and can decide whether are appropriate for ‘this project’ or not.

Reviews how other resources are performing their job vis-à-vis methodology they are following and picking fault with an appropriate number of things they do and can ‘improve’. 

Guru of methodology; guru of some internationally recognized operational standard (to which everyone seems to aspire to and eventually gain some of the benefits everyone else apparently has gained); guru of management practices.

Comfortable existence; low stress; $125k + per year.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from Washington writes:

Get paid to write estimates for repairs, not actually perform the work. If you miss something, the shop will call, it’s actually quite common.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in Colorado writes:

Bull## Job description:  If working in major agency: get up at crack of nine, cruise into work post rush hour, fiddle with files at your desk, think about making calls, spend 3-4 hours per day drinking coffee and going out to lunch.  Hang out with other agents and talk about the one that got away.  My advice to new agents back when I was a decorated agency trainer, paraphrasing John Savage:  “Next Monday when you tell your wife/spouse/partner/significant-other you’re going to work, try it.  Before you know it you’ll be working 3 or 4 hours per day!”

Upside:  Better than BO or Multilevel marketing for getting undesirable seatmates to shut up on crowded airplanes.

Downside (if single):  Better babe repellant than BO or Multilevel marketing.

Dark side:  Professional meetings same average age as a mainline denomination.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from Savannah writes:

A buddy of mine helped me get a job as a maintenance assistant at an apartment complex.  Easiest money ever.  I was hired with zero experience, paid 12 an hour to basically touch up the walls with paint whenever people ditched the apartment. One apartment would take me, at my leisurely pace, 1 hour.  Of course I’d drag the hour out to 4.

What did I do in between?  Cruised the complexes (there were two) in my really cool golf cart, ran laps around the complex for exercise, practiced my karate with my buddy, chilled at the pool on hot days, and take extended trips on my golf cart to the store for strawberry shortcake ice cream bars.  Normally I’d take 3 to 4 of these extended trips which would take about 30 mins each.  Lunch was 90 mins or more, which were spent playing guitar at my buddy’s place or watching his extensive collection of dvd’s.

Our boss was super cool and she hardly ever bothered us except to tell me what room I had to do next.  She’d even track us down on our way to the ice cream to put in a request for smoothies and stuff.

My favorite time of the day?  When my buddy would ask me “WHAT TIME IS TI?!”
“IT’S STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE ICE CREAM BAR TIME!!!!!”

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader writes:

I have an offering for the ‘BS Job’ title that I am not sure I have seen listed on the site before (it’s my bro’s job, not mine.. I swear!):
 
Title: User Interface Design
 
Be artistic w/o being an artist; be psychological w/o being a psychologist; make cool virtual stuff w/o being an programmer.
 
Pay: Variant.. though if it’s affiliated w/ Google (and what isn’t these days?), you’re set!
 
Good: Get to act pretentious and be around pretentious people. Transition between work, computer games, and on-line chat is seamless.
 
Bad: May require some prestige – such as entry in to CMU or the like - and luck to get into. Also may have to learn everything you can about Adobe Illustrator.
 
Ugly: Seeing what happens to your designs when the coders try to actualize them.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader from California writes:

Person who tells the bank what your house is worth

$$: $50-$75K working for a bank as a staff appraiser; but $150K+ if you open up your own shop and hire lots of trainees to do all the grunt work

The upside: A month of online schooling and a 125 question multiple choice test set you on your way to making $$$; once you have the trainees trained you can sit on your ass all day checking emails and making phone calls to get more business. The sky is the limit if you know how to run an office and organize schedules well.

The downside: 50,000+ miles of driving PER YEAR if you do all the work yourself, lots of alone time spent in said car, government organization OREA breathing down your neck every time a bank disagrees with your opinion of the house value, carpel tunnel syndrome by 30

The dark side: Getting yelled at and/or threatened by retarded, inbred, incredibly rude loan officers for having a property’s value cut by a bank when you as the appraiser have ABSOLUTELY no control over what a bank does to a property’s value; also the potential to accidentally get sucked into a “gray area” financial scam is out of your control

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in Dallas writes:

This involves “taking the initiative” to investigate IT system outages and to identify their root causes. This sounds like a necessary position, but it’s more like the fifth – or sixth – wheel. You are the middle-man in a situation where the actual analyst could do the work himself. This is all talk, conference calls, paper, audit-talk, beauracracy, and general nonsense. We are told to use “tools” to do problem solving, such as “the five whys”, and other mystical approaches which appear more like a trip to Oz than to real problem solving, which requires just some basic and rock-steady detective work. I miss the days when I did some real work

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in San Francisco writes:

Provide in-depth technical analysis for decisionmakers to base their decisions on. Their decisions rarely if ever match the recommendations of your analysis and if there is a way to squeeze efficiency and save taxpayers tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year, you will watch the government decisionmakers go in the exact opposite direction to justify inflated budgets and to protect their turf.

The good: You get to watch government in action and get paid a buttload of money and world class retirement benefits.

The bad: You get to watch government in action burning your tax dollars under the guise of a competent management decision when you know in your gut it should land them in jail for fraud, waste and abuse.

The dark: Take ownership of anything and you will be politically tossed under the bus as it will be your decision. Try to make all decisions as a group so that no one person can be held accountable.

The future: Pina Colada and Margarita sipping in Belize, Panama or Costa Rica just about as far away as anything technical as one can get.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in Jacksonville writes:

My job while in the USAF was to sit in the weightroom and watch men sweat. I assisted new members on how to use some of the equipment, made sure there were enough towels to mop up the sweat and try not to drool on the guys as they are pumping iron.

Downside – Late night sweat smells yucky.

Upside – Watching all the hot military guys work out. My military uniform was a pair of shorts and golf shirt. Plenty of time to study college courses.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in Florida writes:

Basically, what I do is find the easiest classes on my college’s campus and enroll my student-athletes in them. Then, if one of my students stops going to class, I call up the professor and beg him/her to give Star Jock the benefit of the doubt and pass them with a ‘C’. If the prof isn’t immediately cooperative, I happen to notice we have some decent seats to a couple home football/basketball games available for the upcoming season.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in California writes:

Salary: Low Six Figures plus Great Bonus and Bene’s

Job: Manage cost, schedule and ensure quality on IT projects.

The Real Job: Set up meetings, sit on calls, say as little as possible.

Upside: Great Pay for basic clerical work.  Free Office Space, plenty of time to manage, explore outside interests

Downside: Have to share free office space with extremely incompetent people some of which have borderline personality disorder.

Darkside: reports directly to someone with borderline personality disorder

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in Ft. Lauderdale writes:

Analyze past data to tell people in the present, in terms they cannot understand, what WRONG decisions they already made and why, and get paid, a lot, to do it.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?

A reader in California writes:

I had a job that paid $8/hr for 8 hours a day and 5 days a week where I had to lock myself into a small room with a desk and phone.  My job was to answer the phone if some unseen person left their desk because the phone needed to be answered during business days.  They made helicopter parts for the federal government.  I worked there for 6 months, answered the phone 3 times (“Hello, can I send you to voice mail? Thank you”), and read a small library of books.  This was before the internet.

Readers, what do you think? Is this a bulls**t job?