Can't be doing rEaL woRk unless you're flipping front panel switches to input machine code instructions.
Like take finance where people just email broken spreadsheets around all day. If they stop doing that then farmers can't get loans to buy crops which means crops don't get planted and so on-so-forth.
Certainly emailing spreadsheets doesn't seem very "real" but there's actual value in providing liquidity it's just not physically demanding.
On the flip side, professional sports is very physically demanding but can you really call what kids do for fun "real work"?
Just to clarify, if said hole had no point, then would it be real work or not? What if the hole was merely a step in a grand plan? As in, if the end result provides a sense of pride, then does the aggregated amount of real vs. fake work that lead to final product have any bearing on the pride of the final product?