JOBSWORTH NOUN (PEOPLE AND SOCIETY)

An employee or official who upholds petty rules and bureaucracy for their own sake. Etymology: A contraction of the phrase 'it's more than my job's worth (not) to'--the supposed justification that such a person would give for petty insistence on the rule. History and Usage: A peculiarly British word, jobsworth has been in colloquial use since the early seventies. It was brought to greater prominence from the early eighties by television comedians; when, in September 1982, the well-known television consumer programme That's Life invented a jobsworth award (in the form of a gaudy commissionaire's hat) for the official who insisted on the silliest rule, its place in the language was assured. Introducing the award, Esther Rantzen said it was for 'the stupidest rule and the official who stamps on the most toes to uphold it', and Jeremy Taylor sang a song entitled Jobsworth--actually composed some years earlier for a revue--in honour of its first presentation, to a council which would not allow a woman to erect a white marble headstone on her husband's grave. Andropov turned out to have learned nothing at all since, as the imperial governor-general in Hungary in 1956, he carried out the crushing of the Revolution; a bureaucratic jobsworth, his reign was as useless as it was mercifully brief. The Times 9 Mar. 1987, p. 12 Now, we all know park-keepers--'jobsworths' to the man. ('It's more than my job's worth to let you in here/play ball/walk on the grass/film my ducks.') Punch 20 May 1987, p. 47 I was suddenly accosted by a Jobsworth who uttered the classic words, 'You can't do that in here.' Personal Computer World Dec. 1989, p. 122