The series Severance centers on the work of “Macrodata Refinement”. It is an absurd distillation of modern office work: seemingly endless rows of numbers are displayed on computers, and the refiners select numbers that ‘feel scary’ to stack away in boxes. Refinement is, as a video game website has pointed out, game-like, “a play on gamified busywork, complete with addictive-looking animated flourishes ... and a satisfying crate-opening action.”
It takes two seasons before workers or viewers get an explanation for what kind of data is being refined. I think the fictional function matters less, however, than how well it visualizes what David Graeber terms bullshit jobs. The anthropologist contrasts these with shit jobs, which are completely essential but often underpaid. Bullshit jobs, are overpaid but serve little purpose.
If shit workers stop working, everything goes to shit. If bullshit workers stop, it could take years before anyone notice. Depending on political inclination one may imagine bullshit jobs as a result of ballooning bureaucracy, yet profit-maximizing corporations also contribute greatly to their expansion. Graeber makes the case that more than half the workforce today performs bullshit jobs. Status quo is maintained by giving people a bullshit sense of importance, of big paychecks received simply for staying busy on a computer sending e-mails and crunching numbers all day.
At some point, Spanish civil-servant Joaquin Garcia must have gotten fed up with his bullshit job. Having so little to do as a water waste treatment supervisor, he simply decided to not show up. Instead, he spent his days deep in reflection reading Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy. In a classical philosophical sense, Garcia was engaged in a beautiful endeavor, finding a just way of spending his time on earth.
Garcia's new pursuit posed a managerial problem. Offices remain places to carry out one’s duty in an organization, the central of which is simply being present (think of the post-pandemic corporate mantra of getting workers to return to the office). It took six years before anyone noticed that Garcia was not dutifully playing his games of numbers and letters. His absence was discovered when he was to be awarded for decades of service. Instead, he was sentenced to pay back a year’s salary.
If you are bored at work and find the prospect of skipping out to read philosophy too daunting and the consequences too severe, you could try the browser game Lumon Industries. It features numbers that tremble and grows disconcertingly, indicating that they should be refined. The numbers lack an aura of impending doom, however, and there is no actual mystery to their purpose: It’s a simple time waster to play at work.
Fig. 4: Lumon Terminal Pro, Apple Store Product promoting Severance.
What Do You Do at Work All Day?
