According to the Independent (UK), in Sweden there was a job offer that sounded very attractive: You could spend all day doing whatever you want, or not doing anything, but still get paid.
Worth mentioning, this career opportunity is open to all candidates from all over the world.
To complete this task, the selected candidate will go to the under-construction Korsvägen train station in Gothenburg, Sweden every morning to clock in.
After clocking in, employees are free to spend the rest of the day doing what they want, until work time ends, then return to check-out and turn off the lights.
The job description states `anything an employee in this position does constitutes work,` meaning the employee can stay or leave the station if desired.
In addition to a salary of 2,320 USD/month (about 55 million VND), you also enjoy the same benefits as other regular jobs, such as annual salary increase opportunities, vacations and pensions.
This dream job even comes with stability, as it will be maintained `for life`, as long as the employee wants to continue in their current role.
It sounds like this job is too great to be true, right?
In 2017, the Swedish Public Art Agency joined forces with the Swedish Arts Transmission Administration to invite artists to `influence the design` of three new stations in Gothenburg’s West Link district.
Two artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby have proposed a plan to recruit a position that can experience the following 3 states:
– Extreme work boredom (appears when the amount of work is too little, the nature of the work is repetitive, causing boredom).
– Feeling motivated to innovate own projects or creative challenges.
– Enjoy permanent idle status.
`Forever Jobs` not only brings a different understanding of work and workers, but also questions the concepts of growth, productivity and progress, which are essential elements.
The two artists said, `In the face of mass automation and artificial intelligence, the threat/expected thing is that we all become redundant in terms of labor productivity.`
According to the Washington Post, the proposal of Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby won with a prize money of up to 750,000 USD (about 17.7 billion VND).
Swedish news site vision.se said that the above bonus amount, along with the project’s rate of return on capital, is estimated to be enough to pay the new position’s salary for… 120 years.
Goldin and Senneby said the only condition is that the selected candidate cannot work two jobs at the same time, meaning you cannot do another job while working at the station.
Although according to the original plan, this position would not be available until 2025 (a few months before Korsvägen station opens in 2026), competition among candidates is already very high.
Already in 2020, vision.se said, there have been hundreds of applications from Sweden and other countries/territories such as Pakistan, Senegal, Taiwan and the US.
However, unfortunately, by January 2022, Cision News said, the Management Board of the Swedish Art Transmission Agency decided that the proposal of the two artists Goldin and Senneby would no longer be implemented due to its nature.
