{"id":87111,"date":"2018-05-04T22:00:25","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room-the-rise-of-the-pointless-job\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T23:04:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T16:04:01","slug":"i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room-the-rise-of-the-pointless-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room-the-rise-of-the-pointless-job\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I had to guard an empty room\u2019: the rise of the pointless job"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nCopying and pasting emails. Inventing meaningless tasks for others. Just looking busy. Why do so many people feel their work is completely unnecessary?One day, the wall shelves in my office collapsed. This left books scattered all over the floor and a jagged, half-dislocated metal frame that once held the shelves in place dangling over my desk. I\u2019m a professor of anthropology at a university. A carpenter appeared an hour later to inspect the damage, and announced gravely that, as there were books all over the floor, safety rules prevented him from entering the room or taking further action. I would have to stack the books and not touch anything else, whereupon he would return at the earliest available opportunity.The carpenter never reappeared. Each day, someone in the anthropology department would call, often multiple times, to ask about the fate of the carpenter, who always turned out to have something extremely pressing to do. By the time a week was out, it had become apparent that there was one man employed by buildings and grounds whose entire job it was to apologise for the fact that the carpenter hadn\u2019t come. He seemed a nice man. Still, it\u2019s hard to imagine he was particularly happy with his work life. Continue reading…
\n
\nSource : theguardian.com
\nRead more…\u2018I had to guard an empty room\u2019: the rise of the pointless job<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copying and pasting emails. Inventing meaningless tasks for others. Just looking busy. Why do so...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-mF1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":83043,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/reading-rooms-the-story-of-an-authors-house\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":0},"title":"Reading rooms: the story of an author\u2019s house","date":"March 18, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\r John Boyne\u2019s home is now a colourful and peaceful retreat in the heart of DublinAny book lover would find it hard to leave John Boyne\u2019s home. One room is devoted to English literature, another to Irish and American books. On floor-to-ceiling shelves, fat trilogies, slender novellas and tall folios,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":125772,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/shelf-promotion-the-art-of-furnishing-rooms-with-books-you-havent-read\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":1},"title":"Shelf-promotion: the art of furnishing rooms with books you haven\u2019t read","date":"April 8, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Ashley Tisdale admitted she\u2019d bought all her books for a photoshoot \u2013 and as Adele and Gwyneth Paltrow will attest, her hankering for a brainy backdrop is anything but novelThere may be two kinds of bookcase owners: those who own more books than they can accommodate, cramming tomes into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":46173,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/from-bookworms-to-earthworms-my-top-five-gardening-books\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":2},"title":"From bookworms to earthworms: my top five gardening books","date":"March 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\r World Book Day isn\u2019t just about works of fiction. Neil Miller, head gardener at Hever Castle, picks his favourite books for the green-fingeredWhile most people\u2019s literary heroes include the likes of Shakespeare, Keats, JK Rowling and Jane Austen, those of us with green fingers worship a different band of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134226,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/reading-is-precious-but-the-cult-of-book-ownership-can-be-smug-and-middle-class-rhiannon-lucy-cosslett\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":3},"title":"Reading is precious. But the cult of book ownership can be smug and middle-class | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett","date":"January 24, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\r I have started giving away my books \u2013 sometimes even putting them in with the recycling. Why keep a novel that could delight someone else?I used to have, or rather hoard, a lot of books. Still do, I think, at least by the standards of the average home, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":138513,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/the-minimalism-trend-has-waged-a-war-on-bookshelves-but-im-not-ready-to-marie-kondo-my-home-library-paul-daley\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":4},"title":"The minimalism trend has waged a war on bookshelves \u2013 but I\u2019m not ready to Marie Kondo my home library | Paul Daley","date":"July 27, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Sure, with more than 70 metres of shelves in my home, my books have a housing crisis. But what if I miss them when they\u2019re gone?When moving house and cities some years ago there was a conspicuous absence in so many of the potential homes we inspected \u2013 bookshelves.And\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":140242,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/its-about-owning-and-projecting-an-aesthetic-the-rise-of-the-stealth-wealth-shelf\/","url_meta":{"origin":87111,"position":5},"title":"\u2018It\u2019s about owning and projecting an aesthetic\u2019: the rise of the stealth wealth shelf","date":"November 10, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\r A ceramic pot or two. A few sprigs of eucalyptus. White books as a plinth. And absolutely no kids\u2019 paintings. When did shelves become more about status than storage?My induction into the world of \u201cstealth wealth shelves\u201d began while I was house-hunting last winter. It was the 43rd place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}