Term
Bartleby
The hero of Herman Melville's story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," a copier of documents in a Wall Street office who answers everything with "I would prefer not to."
The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han
Explained in
- The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han
- How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell
The copying clerk in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853), who responds to instructions with “I would prefer not to.”