Boring Work:Chapter 3

To crush, to annihilate a man utterly, to inflict on him the most terrible punishment so that the most ferocious murderer would shudder at it beforehand, one need only give him work of an absolutely, completely useless and irrational character.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries in Europe saw a transformation of the nature of work, from an agricultural to an industrial mode. The changes were very great. In Feudalism the seasons, the extent of daylight, the nearness of the fields to the farm, and whole families including children working together, all were normal features of daily life. All this changed with industrialisation. The majority moved to the towns, where covered factories and offices with artificial light were introduced. These new factories and offices meant that the same work could go on in all seasons of the year. Later women and children were taken out of work in these factories with laws protecting the purity of the women, and extending the provision of education for children. Finally, work was not always within walking distance from the home as the cities grew fast in the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century home and work had been separated geographically, and socially. Paid work in offices and factories was for men only. Typically unpaid domestic labour was for the woman remaining in the home. In the early years of the twentieth century nearly all clerks, and even typists were men.

Until about the 1880’s factory workers were organised in gangs with a foreman. This organisation of work was perhaps the last surviving element of the organisation of Feudal work on farms. In America the concern about increased productivity, and reducing the power of the foreman, led “Speedy Taylor” (Taylor, 1947) to conduct experiments to discover the one right way to do every job; and so increase productivity. This had some success, but was associated with many similar repetitive movements of the body. This created the problem of boredom at work.

Another attempt to increase productivity at work was called the “Human Relations” movement (Rose, 1975). This involved more experiments to discover informal friendly work groups. Groups of workers who knew one another were set up. Various aspects of the working day were changed. The lighting was changed, as was the forms of payment, and rest times, and so on. All of these changes produced increased productivity. But when the researchers left, then productivity fell to the levels existing before the experiments started. It appears that the attention paid to these workers by the visiting psychologists was what increased productivity. The experiments were exciting. When the experimenters left, work became boring again.

Attempts to make boring work more acceptable have seen a variety of managerial initiatives over the last 50 years in America Britain, and Japan. Some initiatives, like more flexible working times, working from home, paternity leave, crèches in the firm’s premises, are real gains for many workers. Other initiatives involving quality circles, total quality management, re-engineering departments within firms, and performance related pay, are more questionable. Details apart these latter initiatives are essentially about managing beliefs, values, and even the personal identities of workers. Put simply, these are attempts to create loyalty to the organisation. This is partly a return to entrepreneurial values, but also a concern to focus on the continual improvement of the product or service of the firm. Annual pay is then related to the improvements, or performance, achieved by each individual. This can have the consequence of increasing competition between individuals for higher pay; which conflicts with the need for co-operative effort, when working in a team.

Other initiatives like flatter structures, which reduce the number of levels in old-fashioned bureaucracies, are also questionable. The new work teams, with most members in their 20’s or 30’s, experience severely reduced access to senior and older managers, many of whom have taken early retirement. This can produce a degree of informality, even friendly, behaviour. There is also considerable competition, and fears about job security, among these executives. So young executives may tend to choose a bank because it offers more training than other banks. So, if one loses one job, one is well placed to get another.

This presents a picture of career planning as the responsibility of the individual worker, and not the employer. The employer does provide training, which can be seen as a form of human capital, and which is the private property of the individual. This raises questions about loyalty to the firm, especially when there are possible redundancies. The ability to get another job with a level of skill training relatively higher than other similar workers puts one at an advantage. But increasingly the concern will be with the individual acquiring new skills from new employers, and not with any long term loyalty to any existing, or even future, employer.

Are these initiatives any more successful in reducing boredom? For senior, and some middle, managers there was always some commitment to the firm; and some of the excitement mentioned in earlier chapters. For the younger, lower level, recently promoted managers, some aspects of their work may be less boring. Perhaps there are fewer bureaucratic forms to fill in. More time is probably spent in meetings. Some meetings may be boring to some of those attending. On balance, the greater responsibility which flatter structures produce for younger managers may well have produced less boredom, and more excitement.

For non-managerial office and factory workers various studies suggest that there still is boring and repetitive work. In some cases of factory work the job is so tightly defined that each movement of the hand and eye is pre-programmed. Office workers entering routine data into computers, or answering telephones in call centres are also pre-programmed in terms of the style of conversation, and sales technique. Close managerial surveillance is achieved by listening in on conversations with clients, and regular interviews with workers. This keeps workers in the pre-programmed mode and avoids merely pleasant conversations on the telephone, which may not result in a sale (Taylor, 1998).

There is evidence of this regime being undermined by giving difficult customers the wrong in formation, or just ending the call. This can cause great excitement for a while; which is itself an indication of the prior level of boredom.

What these studies show is that boredom is more likely to occur, and be more widespread below the level of manager. Managerial work has often been described as inherently exciting, moving quickly from one problem to the next in any one working day. There is also the excitement of entrepreneurial values described earlier. But workers below the level of management are more interesting. Why, given 50 years of attempts to reduce boredom, has this failed? Is it because low level work is inherently low skilled, or even unskilled? Have the more recent quality initiatives some inherent flaw in them?

Mass production, meaning producing large numbers of a standardised product, is an achievement of the 20^th century. In particular Henry Ford observed how the dead animals were brought to the butchers on a moving assembly line in a Chicago abattoir. He applied the same principle to the manufacture of motor cars. So workers did not have to walk from task to task. The task came to them. Much production time was saved. However the tasks became more standardised. Mass production was seen as creating meaninglessness in workers lives. Recent achievements of computerised technology have meant that fewer workers are needed for the same amount of production. This has indeed reduced the number of workers engaged in standardised work. But those who remain still have standardised work to do. It is still boring.

In a study of young school leavers carried out in the 1980's it was found that not only was work experienced by many as boring, so had school; and long periods of unemployment were also boring. This rather bleak study paints a picture of no escape from boredom for young workers. However, this sensitive study attempted to distinguish different types of boredom. The boredom at work was similar to that at school in that the task was imposed by others. At work, when the foreman rather rudely ordered a young unskilled worker to "Do that!" (Wallace, 114: 1987), it was experienced as a lack of respect. The work was done but

"that brings out the negative in me. I'll do it , but they won't get the best out of me. I'll be too narked to concentrate."

This creates a situation where an ordered set of practices have to be gone through to complete a task. However, as these practices are not being concentrated on, the actual experience of this active manual work is one of boredom. Similarly, being told in school to open the book and read certain pages can be seen as not only boring, but a preparation for future experiences of authoritarianism, lack of respect, and consequent boredom at work. This was called boredom imposed by others. There was also self imposed boredom. This was described as "doing nothing" (Wallace, 78: 1987), mostly at home. Doing nothing was actually a series of regular activities, listening to music, reading a book, going for a walk; but these activities were not seen as worthwhile. They were not worthwhile for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, they were not part of a series of activities that were part of paid work. This indicates a sort of preference for paid employment, even though it was seen as largely boring. There was the possibility of having a laugh at work with one's peers. This made work not at all boring, for at least some of the time. Secondly, doing nothing did not provide any money for consumption. This was very important as these school leavers wanted the kind of leisure activities that their old friends from school, who had paid work, engaged in. Leisure had been commercialised, it had to be bought in the pub, cinema, night club etc.. The activities of walking, reading and so on were a part of doing nothing, and could not be seen as a part of leisure. Thirdly, doing nothing for over 5 years meant that one saw those in work marrying, with an expensive ceremony, and then buying a house and car. This was not an option for the unemployed. Rather one cohabited in one's parent's house, and a child was born. This meant that there were three generations in a house designed for two.

Doing nothing was contrasted to doing something. This involved wild adventures like,

"before when I used to get bored I just used to jump the trains and go up to London or something. Or do something. But now I've got a bit lazy and I've not being doing much. Been more sort of boring. If I get bored I just go and have an argument with someone".

This doing something was a definite change from doing nothing, It was an experience of excitement initiated by oneself, as opposed to passively receiving instructions at school and work. Something could also happen spontaneously, like an invitation to got to a friend's house. These wild adventures could easily become criminal ones, but there was little evidence of that in this study; although it seems that a train fare was not paid. This changing mixture of doing something and nothing was boring, but was seen as preferable to being bored at work. This was because one was in control of the sequencing, whether one was doing something or nothing. At work one's activities was controlled by someone else, producing boredom imposed by others. A good example comes from Mike:

"At Abbott's they used to give you the women's job. Just sticking labels on bottles or just putting bottles on a conveyor belt. Just doing that all day. Just sitting there. Your mind wandered, you're thinking of something, you fall asleep".

A second study of workers in the catering industry found high levels of boredom, with some interesting complexities. Firstly, the introduction of more sophisticated technology in food production, like freezing food and micro-wave ovens, had increased productivity enormously. This had also removed much of the traditional skills many of the workers had before they got this job. Indeed, one cook who introduced some individual flavouring to her particular dishes was very popular with the consumers and her work mates, but not so popular with local management. This was because great effort had been made to standardise production of food, in order to achieve the increases in productivity. This standardisation was threatened by individual changes to the standardised procedures. The cooks began to use the word "factory", as opposed to the word "kitchen", to describe their place of work. One consequence of this largely successful standardisation was boredom.

"This is not really catering, more like working in a factory. The product is irrelevant, it's not like cooking at home - you just have to do everything by the book, the same day in day out."

This standardisation is in tune with the ideas of F. W. Taylor's Scientific Management with it's search for the one right way of doing any job. The assumption is that the workers cannot do the job on their own, as they are not seen as having the requisite skills. So the job is broken up into a small number of repetitive tasks, with little daily variety. This gives the boredom element to the job, but it also makes no use of the traditional cooking skills possessed by the workers. This leads to the charge of bad management from the workers, meaning here a lack of respect for the worker.

"They're dead formal and impersonal. I am older than them, and still they call me by my first name, but they insist on being called Mr and Mrs."

Most of the time production ran smoothly, and little management intervention was needed. This however, raised the suspicion that the managers were redundant, and that the kitchen ran itself. Further, management interventions tended to happen on the few occasions when things went wrong. This produced criticism and blame. On the other hand, there was no praise when things went smoothly. The very design of the production process gave one greater productivity, but also less face to face management intervention, and increased boredom together with a belief that management was poor, and without respect for their workers.

However, not all of the workers were bored in the same way. In the most standardised part of the work the food was frozen, and the fact that management was not often present in this space meant that the workers had some opportunity to vary the pace of the work. They could finish the day a bit earlier, or rotate jobs amongst themselves, or divide the work up evenly amongst themselves. This introduced some little self management, which made the boredom more bearable. But the most important gain for these workers was the ability to have a laugh at work.

"It's a good job that we get on together because the job itself is not much good ... The girls here must have a sense of humour in order to cope."

Making jokes about a situation which is boring, and with uncaring disrespectful management, can release much tension. It is also a celebration of the group, and helps to make the experience of work more than bearable, even occasionally pleasant. But this occasional pleasantness is got at a high price. The workers accept the very standardisation which is largely the cause of their personal troubles.

Other workers in catering in fast food retail outlets have yet another variant of boredom. Here, standardisation of the food processing and delivery to the customer is at a much higher level. There is a period of training apart from the job, in one case called a University, where an elaborate rule book is learned. One training instruction goes as follows:

"WHAT IS IMPORTANT is that you should understand WHY YOUR work has to be done in a certain way and that you do it properly, to the best of your ability. NOT BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO, but because YOU WANT TO. In the end this is the BEST WAY."

"There are no short cuts in this job; they have perfected the best way of doing things and you have to stick to it. You just follow the rules."

This paints a very different picture from the kitchen. The opportunity to self manage appears to be non existent! The aim is to satisfy each customer within four and a half minutes. So although each task is defined in minute detail, the exact amount of tomato sauce etc., there is also some flexibility about who does each task. In busy times even the local managers serve customers. Most of the day is busy, but at midday there is real pressure. There seems to be no time to be bored!

"Although the job is not interesting, once you've got into the routine, you are so busy all the time, you don't feel bored. Only after the end of your shift, you keep asking yourself what you have achieved. ... There is pressure in this job, but no intellectual stimulus." (Gabriel, 102: 1987)

What is interesting here is that the pressure, the speed of work, the physical exertion which requires only young workers, is so great that no boredom is experienced. At least, boredom is not experienced whilst at work. After work, at the end of the shift, or after leaving the job very negative feelings surface.

" I've never been back since I stopped working there, to tell you the truth I even avoid walking past it,. I just try to avoid everything to do with it."

Even in this strict regime, and despite what one worker said earlier, there were some short cuts in the work. Once the rules have been mastered, including the 25 rules regulating the frying of chips, and how to smile, then all that matters is speed. Some workers are faster than others. But there are two ways of being faster. One is to follow all the rules, the other is to short circuit them. By following the rules, and getting your queue of customers shorter, and in less time than your colleagues, you may enjoy a certain prestige. By breaking the rules you see what you can get away with. You may cut out some of the steps in a process, and do less work. You may also produce less edible food!

"The book says that you should make hamburgers in sixes; you try and make 18 all at once. You should only fry 4 pieces of fish in the basket; when your manager is not looking, you put 5, or 6 or 7. You constantly try to build up stock by cutting corners. Sometimes, the managers themselves turn a blind eye, because they know that if you didn't cut corners you couldn't keep up with the customers."

What this shows is firstly that the rule book is not only not always followed, but that on occasion it cannot be followed. Secondly, the managers themselves recognise this, and collude in this. Thirdly, there are some potential health risks here from the style of production, quite apart from concern about raw materials. Fourthly, and most important, the managers who collude in this style can often be seen as good managers who make for a happier working relationship, as we are all breaking the rules.

In order to remove even these few possibilities for rule breaking some firms, like Mc Donald's pre-cut, pre-slice and pre-prepare the food by technology, before it arrives at the restaurant. All that needs to be done is heat and serve. The drinks are pre-measured in quantity, and a sensor stops the glass overfilling. A bell or buzzer rings when the food is cooked. So technology can be used to remove deviant acts at work, which might relieve the boredom. The only space where the details of the job are not so clearly defined are the cleaning of the floor in the area where customers eat their food.

The concern expressed above that much of food preparation is becoming like factory work is well founded. Recent studies of factory work influenced by Japanese methods seem to show even more clearly defined and repetitive tasks than in Mc Donald's. In the Matsushita plant in Cardiff workers fit 80 components per minute! There is bell to bell working. This means that no informal breaks are permitted between the ringing bells. Typically there is one half hour lunch break, and two ten minutes tea breaks. The start and finish of these breaks are all announced by bells ringing. In the case of the ten minute breaks however there is a warning bell after seven minutes. This is intended to give the workers three minutes to walk to their work station, and pick up their tools. Then they are ready to start work promptly on the ten minute bell. What tended to happen was that the workers would have another drink or cigarette in the last three minutes, Then there would be a thirty second sprint to the work station (Danford, 50: 1998). Talking on the line was a disciplinary issue. This removed the possibility for sociability, which is always seen as one of the positive aspects of paid labour. If the line broke down, then workers would be moved to an alternative line. The possibility of creating some time buffers where one could rest seems to have been sharply reduced.

Perhaps the most extreme example of the reduction in time created by the workers was at the Nissan plant in Sunderland (Garrahan & Stewart, 1992). This resembled Mc Donald's in that there was such stress at work that the workers were too tired to be bored. Nonetheless it was clear that the work was mostly repetitive and boring. The process of production of motor cars is called Just in Time. This means that there are no large stocks of parts held in the factory, they arrive from local suppliers Just in Time. This obviously creates the possibility of much disruption. To deal with this problem all tasks are made as simple as possible. This makes them easy to learn. Each worker is trained in a number of tasks. This is called multi-skilling. So if there is some delay in necessary parts, because of heavy traffic on local roads, or some accident; then workers can easily be moved to other tasks, where there is no delay. However all these tasks are very simple and so boredom is still a real possibility, although one has to recognise that being moved from one's 'normal' task to another one may relieve that boredom somewhat.

If one were to work a bit faster to have a rest period from all this stress, then one would seen as having nothing to do. This was called idle time, and was seen as a waste. This waste would be dealt with by finding another task. This was called the management by stress process. If one could find time to do nothing then one had too many resources of time, or too few resources of materials. The solution was to take time resources away from you, and give it to other workers who not only could not manage increased speed to get a breather, but who often could not keep up with the standard times. These slower workers might find stress reduced, but more was now expected of them. Taking a breather to reduce the boredom even if the increased resources made this possible, was not encouraged. It would be waste again!

What the studies in this chapter tend to show is that there is a great deal of boring work about; much of it recently created. The need to increase productivity, and reduce costs in a very competitive environment has meant that many workers not only experience more stress from intensive work practices, they also experience more boredom because the tasks are so simple. Rising levels of academic success in terms of school exams taken and passed, may also mean that what previous generations found acceptable at work, to-day's school leavers find boring. Attempting to deal with this by team working, being multi-skilled, and taking a pride in high levels of efficiency and product quality, did have some success at Nissan. However, in the first three months of employment there was a very high labour turnover. Many simply left, despite this being an area of high unemployment, and some rigorous assessment procedures before one was employed. A recent study in Wales found that there was little or no pride in the work, and no identification with the company (Delbridge, 2000).

Arguably what is going on here is some recognition by many employers that the work is largely boring, and a variety of ways are attempted to deal with this. For those who leave these attempts are probably a failure. For the majority who stay there may be a sense of respect for the enormous productivity gains. But also there is a recognition of increased physical tiredness at the end of the day. Further, if the only alternative locally is unemployment, then an acceptance of this form of paid work provides more income than state benefits. However, the acceptance of boredom at work is not proven.

An optimistic future scenario is one where technology takes even more of the work tasks from humans. This creates a situation of either mass unemployment; or more tasks where one is operating this new technology; rather than being controlled by it. In the first case some increase in state benefits would be necessary for the ex-workers to live. There is some political support for this Social Wage, as it gives some dignity to the recipients. In the second case there is a massive need for education to provide the necessary skills to operate these new machines. Even here there is an assumption that sitting in front of a computer screen all day is not in itself very boring.

More pessimistic scenarios see ever increasing productivity gains, with work tasks being made more simple, and so more boring. This creates a situation where avoiding this kind of work is only possible with more and more educational certificates. So more boys and girls are staying on at school after 16 years of age, more are taking exams and more are passing , and at higher levels. Finally, more are going to higher education where qualifications are provided, and increasingly seen by employers as a first step in entering work. For the students this certification may be a way of avoiding boring work.

A way of discovering how important work is in peoples’ lives is to ask if it is an important value in their lives. A recent international questionnaire posed the question was work “a person’s most important activity?” (Russell:88 1998). The table below gives the percentages of those agreeing.

Country 1989 1997 Change

Britain 33 25 -8

Western Germany 35 39 +4

Italy 49 46 -3

The relatively low figure for Britain indicates that the commitment to work is very low, and has fallen over eight years. This is some indication of the extent, and growth of boring work over recent years. The author explains the British figures by arguing that it is related to much recent job insecurity. This may well be true, although unemployment figures are currently falling. It may well be related to the actual experience of work as well. The fact that only a quarter of British workers now see work as their most important activity is a measure of the need to change the experience of work.