A jobsworth is a person who uses his or her job description in a deliberately un-cooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner. Their underlying and completely inflexible attitude to any given situation is that "the rules are the rules are the rules". Jonathon Green (see Bibliography) defines "jobsworth" as "a minor factotum whose only status comes from enforcing otherwise petty regulations".

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  • A jobsworth is a person who uses his or her job description in a deliberately un-cooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner. Their underlying and completely inflexible attitude to any given situation is that "the rules are the rules are the rules". Jonathon Green (see Bibliography) defines "jobsworth" as "a minor factotum whose only status comes from enforcing otherwise petty regulations". The term comes from the phrase "I can't do that, it's more than my job's worth". "Jobsworth" is an almost exclusively British term. Phrases such as "that's not my department", "that's not in my job description", and "that's not my job" roughly reflect the attitude of a person to whom the term applies. One of the first recorded uses of the term appears to be in the 1965 Beatles movie Help!_(film) when the assistant scientist character Algernon, exclaims "Well it's more than my job's worth to stop him when he's like this, he's out to rule the world... if he can get a government grant. " Another early use was by UK folk-singer Jeremy Taylor in a song he wrote in the late 1960s: Jobsworth, Jobsworth, It's more than me job's worth, I don't care, rain or snow, whatever you want the answer's no, I can keep you waiting for hours in the queue, and if you don't like it you know what you can do. The term became widespread in vernacular English through its use in the popular 1970s BBC television programme That's Life! which featured Esther Rantzen covering various human interest and consumer topics. A "Jobsworth of the Week" commissionaire's hat was awarded each week to "a startling tale of going by the book". The term remains in use, particularly in the UK, to characterise inflexible employees, petty rule-following and excessive administration. It has largely supplanted the older term, "Little Hitler"
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  • A jobsworth is a person who uses his or her job description in a deliberately un-cooperative way, or who seemingly delights in acting in an obstructive or unhelpful manner. Their underlying and completely inflexible attitude to any given situation is that "the rules are the rules are the rules". Jonathon Green (see Bibliography) defines "jobsworth" as "a minor factotum whose only status comes from enforcing otherwise petty regulations".
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  • Jobsworth
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