Comment 1 for bug 878322

For the benefit of others stumbling on this, here's my workaround:

status myjob VAR=val \
| {
  set -e
  read name goal_status rest
  case "$goal_status" in
    start/*)
      # no action needed
      ;;
    *)
      start myjob VAR=val
      ;;
  esac
}