The way we work: tales from the coalface

What does it take to scratch a living in the UK today? We questioned workers, from copywriters to cam girls, cab drivers to cops, and the answers were surprising. Between 2021 and 2023, I spoke to 100 strangers about their jobs. I asked them, what do you do all day? Why do you do it? And do you like it? Their answers filled a book, Is This Working? It is a record of life and work in the listless British economy of the early 2020s, a “services economy” in which 85% of us, from the cam girl to the accountant, spent our days producing intangible products.

It’s a vague idea, the services economy, but it does at least capture the growing sameness of modern work. One theme in the book is the spread of administrative work. Time and again, my interviewees spoke of workdays being consumed by admin tasks that had little to do with the jobs they had signed up for. As the matron I interviewed put it, “Things you did routinely but never wrote down now take five pages [of forms] on a computer.”.

Taken together, with their recurring tales of stress and of satisfaction, the interviews say something about the ways in which our work can at once diminish us and magnify us. But perhaps that is putting it too strongly. After all, it’s just people talking about their jobs.

30s, male: “You don’t know when you’re going to have a great idea… Then boom!”. I’d heard of a uni course for advertising. I got in. As soon as I started ad school, I was like, this is who I’m supposed to be. These are my people. This is the kind of work I want to be doing.

In advertising, you work in pairs, a copywriter and an art director. I’ve been partnered up with my art director since ad school. I do the words, he does the pictures. It’s been great to have someone to work with. It’s like having a work spouse – the language you use, how you have to keep an open dialogue between the pair of you, always being honest. It can be delicate and tense, but rewarding.

They say that there’s a chucker-upper and a siever in any creative team. I think I’m the chucker-upper. Then he sieves, “That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit.” You don’t know when you’re going to have a great idea. It could be in the client brief when you’re fresh to it or it could be like, “I’m stressing. I’ve got nothing to show the client.” Then: boom.

To come up with ideas you have to learn how your brain works and be quite self-aware. Everyone’s different. My place is in the pool when I’m swimming. That’s the only place where my brain is truly quiet. And that’s when a lot of my ideas come. I love the freedom of being weightless and I think better in motion. I have a notebook that I take in my gym bag because of how often stuff comes to me. It isn’t always good, but some of it has been. In fact, some of the funniest ideas I’ve had, I’ve had underwater.

20s, female: “Clients think they’re using me, but I’m the one that’s financially gaining”. Before I started working for OnlyFans and a nude modelling site I was having to rely on food banks at the local churches. My student maintenance loan only covers three-quarters of my rent.

On Tuesdays, I tend to have uni during the day, then from 7pm until 10pm I do the online modelling. On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays I tend to focus on my uni work. On Fridays I’ll work the morning shift (5am to 9am) on the cam-site. This is quite busy. For some reason men want to log on and pay people before they go to work. Who knows why?.

I have one client who’s into financial domination. Before our sessions he tells me what he earns, what his outgoings are and what his budget for the call is, so I know exactly what he’s got to spend. Part of my interaction with him is belittling him for not tipping me enough. If he sends me some money, I’ll say, “Come on, you can do better than that.” It’s the easiest call I do. The public perception of sex work is that it takes place in a dark alley, your stereotypical prostitute in a red-light district. Don’t get me wrong, there are still dark aspects to the industry with people being exploited, but there isn’t that darkness to my sort of sex work.

I want to work in the corporate world one day and when I talk to all these men who are all quite high up in companies it’s like I’m building connections in that world. You have to earn enough to pay for these sessions because each one costs about £2 a minute.

It’s been good for my confidence too. I’m on dating apps like any normal person is. If anyone gives me attitude on those apps, I think, screw you, people pay me for my sex work. My partners do struggle with it. I’m very upfront with them that I do sex work and I’m not going to stop. “Other men have seen your body. Blah, blah, blah.”.

The clients think they’re using me, but in reality, I’m the one that’s financially gaining from the relationship. It’s using misogyny for my benefit, really. 40s, female: “A caller threatened to kill himself because he couldn’t return a tool”.