In my Day, We Worked Hard

2012.

I’d just got out of university and spent the entire summer looking for a way out of my supermarket job because I just couldn’t stand it anymore and felt I probably needed to put my degree to good use.

None of this is to say there’s anything wrong with working in a supermarket. I do feel there’s always been a degree of snobbery with which people regard frontline customer service jobs. There’s nothing wrong with them, but they were definitely wrong for someone like me with a long history of mental health problems. In 2012 I was incredibly sensitive and something about being in a shop removes people’s basic standards of courtesy. Its like being on the internet. A lot of the time, online creators can respond to a nasty comment with “would you say that to someone in real life?” and I can comfortably say: yes, people would say “you’re a piece of shit, go die in a fire” in real life, because I have the experience of working in frontline retail.

Anyway, I was desperate. I basically spent all my free time scouring job websites, not even for full time office work, just unpaid internships. I wanted any route out. I did volunteer work, ended up running into a full time job offer almost by accident, and I was glad. Then came time to hand in my notice at the supermarket.

Here I hit a bit of a wall. My self-confidence was at rock bottom and I was uncertain if I would be able to handle the job that was on offer. My then-new boss had told me when he’d first considered me for the job that they hadn’t actually fired the guy who was in my prospective role yet but were building up to it because he was genuinely hopeless at it. This was one of the most nerve-wracking things I’d ever heard. What if I would end up being like that? Hopeless and just waiting to be fired.

So I was stuck at a crossroads: what if I take the job, suck at it, get fired, and I’ve left the supermarket now, so I’ve come out of it with no job at all. You NEED a job. Even if its one you hate like that supermarket.

So what I did was I arranged with my boss at my new job and the supermarket to work the minimum 10 hours at the supermarket AND my full time job just to see if I was good at it and there was a future for me at my new workplace, THEN hand in my notice. I worked at the supermarket AND my new job for a week, realised I was probably worrying over nothing and gave my two weeks notice at the supermarket and worked my last shifts.

You may have spotted that I bit off way, WAY more than I could chew. These were the most physically draining weeks of my life. I was working about 45 hours in London, 10 at the supermarket with about 3 hours of commuting daily. This may have been the cautious option but it made me fucking miserable. I couldn’t even celebrate the fact I’d soon be leaving a job that I still have nightmares about all these years later because I was totally exhausted.

Looking back though, I’m not entirely sure WHY I did that. Even if the worst had happened and I’d lost both jobs, I would have found something again eventually. I could have gone to beg for my old job back if I’d lost the new one.

Part of the reason I thought this was the safest option was the climate of austerity at the time. This was back when benefit claimants of all stripes were in the news all the time, treated as the lowest scum of the earth. Every other article in every newspaper was something along the lines of “SCUM WITH 27 KIDS AND A BIG HOUSE LIVING OFF THE STATE”. You didn’t want to be like them, did you? You want to be a hard worker. You want people to respect you. And I’m sure that some people are going to read this story of me working a full and part time job at the same thinking I did the right thing, but I’m really not sure I did because I’d bought into this idea that its more important to prove yourself as a hard worker than it is to actually take care of yourself. Manage your health, both physical and mental. Rein in your stress levels, because a lifetime of stress will catch up with you eventually. Now I’m 33 and I’ve got pre-high blood pressure.

As much as I utterly despised the near-constant rhetoric in news media at the time that millennials such as myself were “all workshy entitled layabouts who think they deserve an easy life paid for by somebody else”, I’d subconsciously bought that lie. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a layabout. I was a hard worker.

I still read the news about people’s attitudes to work. Its an endless fascination to me as to why we’re supposed to value being productive more than being happy, because paradoxically, being happy will lead to being productive, and yet we’re not supposed to value being happy.

Recently I read this article in which the government ordered councils trialling 4 day working weeks be shut down despite the fact those trialling 4 day working weeks have seen no decline in productivity at all, and actually this scheme was helping fill hard to fill roles because an easier schedule is beneficial for prospective workers. It offers a healthier work-life balance, 4–3 days instead of 5–2. The Tory minister that ordered this get shut down didn’t offer any real explanation. Some guff about being sure “residents’ value for money is being protected”. But how is it value for money if a 4 day week is actually making things BETTER?

However, what this guy said about the 4 day week kind of makes sense because the 4 day week just SOUNDS unfair, doesn’t it? Its not that it IS unfair. It SOUNDS unfair. I’m never going to get a 4 day week. Why should anyone else? You’re actually not wrong to have this reaction, even if its illogical, its only natural.

For example, there’s been a lot of talk in news media recently reporting ‘experts’ (and Liz Truss) have been saying that in the UK we apparently NEED to raise retirement age to 71. There might be legitimate reasons for this, but personally, given how unfair it SOUNDS to my generation, I think it should be a legal requirement for anyone making this argument in public to phrase it as follows: “my own retirement age is 67, but I think yours should be 71 and here is why” — see how far you get with the argument then. See how popular that makes you. (I mean the argument is just batshit to me anyway. The employment market is very dry when it comes to work for people over 50 because of what I said a few paragraphs ago about blood pressure. None of these ‘experts’ seem to have put any actual THOUGHT into what would need to happen if the retirement age is raised to 71.)

Everyone always thinks they work harder than everyone else, but do we NEED to? Why did the government NEED to kick back against councils trialling 4 day working weeks for any reason other than “I’ve worked 5 day weeks all my life and its not fair that you get to only work 4”.

We always try and prove how hard we work. So hard that like in those 3 weeks in 2012, I barely saw sunlight.

Of course, I’m sure when I tell this anecdote, while some might be impressed at how hard I worked, some people are going to tell me “you think that was hard for 3 weeks? Try working X amount of hours on my salary for years!” Yes I’m sure you have worked and continue to work harder than me. But why do you HAVE to? Why does life HAVE to consist of work till you drop? Is that really a life well spent?

Well, its the economy, stupid. Obviously. In this economy, can you blame people for HAVING to work so many hours? I was terrified of having no place to go in the midst of austerity because jobs were scarce and pay was low. We still live with the spectre of joblessness like the sword of Damocles even now. Apparently the UK’s going to enter recession again in a few days time, but did we ever actually get OUT of recession last time? When did things get BETTER in this country? Because I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t this climate of terror when it comes to the prospect of joblessness when I read employment-related news.

And even though I’m questioning the purpose of a life spent constantly on the hamster wheel, I must admit that I’ve never changed. I shifted between a part time job and a full time job for a few weeks in 2012, but I’m always giving myself things to do. I maintain my YouTube channel, put hundreds of hours of research into dipping my toes into the film industry. Still working my full time job with 3 hours of daily commuting. I allow myself a few hours at the weekend to just stop and touch grass, but not much of it. I have to prove myself. I have to work hard to prove to those news articles from idiotic journalists in 2012 that millennials aren’t workshy layabouts.

In my day, we worked hard.

This idea that I work harder than everyone else still haunts me, even though I know I don’t have to, and if I don’t, it would probably be good for me.