Your whole post but especially the last paragraph prompts me to inform there exists a splendid movie that shall definitely bring a smile on your face: it's a french movie called "La Couperette" or "The Axe" is the English title. It's about a highly qualified person who loses his job and decides to "beat" the competition.

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There are many theories of economy (capitalism, socialism, communism, ...) but one of them is hardly known and heavily censored since the 19th century. It is starting (in a much milder form) to resurface as the concept of "bullshit jobs". The old theory is roughly the following:

1) From the perspective of governments, as soon as productivity is sufficient to support survival (i.e. there is no longer a material lack of basic necessities), the next threat to government is disobedience. So the government supports in various ways the pacification or neutralization of disobedience. This can happen in various ways: by sorting pupils in all levels of school (elementary, high school and up) not just by skill (which ensures survival) but also by attitude (so that the disobedient don't gain too much intellect, and equivalently so that the resultant intellectuals are significantly obedient). Most of us with higher levels of education have vague memories of kids getting expelled from school due to disobedience, they all slowly got concentrated in less educational schools (for the disobedient). It is hard to emphasize we didn't realize how ridiculously obedient we were because our yardstick of obedience were other highly obedient pupils who had not yet been filtered away. Another way is welfare even if there is plenty of material wealth (for survival) if it promotes obedience. When or how does welfare promote societal stability? That depends on the individual: a disobedient person with free time and resources is relatively more dangerous than an obedient person with free time and resources.

2) From the perspective of employers, employees should be replacable, if they aren't replacable as if they were simple cogs and gears in a machine, survival would hinge on these select individuals. Regarding obedience, from a managerial bossing around perspective there is much more satisfaction from managing a disobedient person than an obedient person (the former is an achievement, while the latter is a given). People do what they like to do, so when a manager chooses to spend his time micromanaging specifically over a disobedient person, he is probably enjoying it.

3) From the perspective of the employee: the goal of jobs is first and foremost survival, but once survival is satisfied, individual goals starts kicking in, perhaps ideology, perhaps greed.

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So the effective modus operandi of the total system is: neutralize or pacify rebellion by

1) minimizing the intellect and skills of the disobedient and maximizing the skills and intellect of the obedient during education, while

2) prioritizing jobs to some unavoidable fraction of the skilled intellectuals that turn disobedient, in order to keep them busy with work. If a person is murdered, and a number of people are suspected, the unemloyed person falls under the highest suspicion.

Consider obedient person O and disobedient person D of the same level of skill, and a free job position at that level of skill, then the system has 2 options: put O on the job while D has free time, or put D on the job while O has free time. What would you choose if you were the system, trying to ensure stability post scarcity?

The "bullshit jobs" aren't bullshit jobs, at least not from the perspective of the status quo: it's just keeping people who are assessed as disobedient busy.

The last people to recognize this emergent behaviour are typically the most obedient people (the moment they realize they slowly become more and more disobedient, a process the already disobedient experienced during their education). Why are so many people reporting "aholes" at work? Because there actually are people acting as disobedient "aholes" at work. Some of this acting may be genuine, some of it is purely feigned to keep the job. It is unknown what percentage of disobedience is feigned disobedience to keep the job, or genuine disobedience. Any genuinely obedient person who eventually understood this working principle in society, and hence feigned disobedience in order to be assigned a job paying better than welfare, is afraid to speak out about it: the moment he describes this modus operandi, he is effectively revealing he isn't in fact disobedient, so he can be safely put back on welfare and make place at work for the neutralization by employment of a genuine disobedient person.

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In short, you may want to start signalling your dissatisfaction with society in order to be classified as slightly more dis-allegiant and thus a good candidate for being kept busy:

perhaps in subtle ways like replying the question "Why were you unemployed between ..." with "Yes, there is an attitude problem between me and the rest of the world, but the problem is not on my side"

perhaps in more obvious ways, like starting a blog and posting semi-extreme perspectives on society, with lots of normative and prescriptive language.

Anyway good luck, and don't forget to watch "La Couperette", it is genious!