From the sex worker to the lorry driver, the hedge fund manager to the veteran-turned-teacher, this is the poignant, entertaining and deeply insightful story of work in twenty-first-century Britain, as told by workers themselves.
For the best part of three years Charlie Colenutt travelled the country to talk to a hundred strangers, from all walks of life, about their jobs. They met in coffee shops and chain pubs and front rooms or on video calls. He found out the number of birds killed a day in a poultry factory, the order in which patients are woken up in care homes, and the reasons why you shouldn’t smile when you are shown your bonus in an investment bank. Together, these interviews form a polyphony of stories about the one thing that most British adults have in common – work.