Hired

Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain

By: James Bloodworth

Narrated by: Alister Austin

From the Orwellian reach of an Amazon warehouse to the time trials of a council care worker and the grim reality behind the glossy Uber app, Hired is a clear-eyed analysis of a divided nation and a riveting dispatch from the very front line of low-wage Britain.

We all define ourselves by our profession. But what if our job was demeaning, poorly paid, and tedious? Cracking open Britain's divisions, journalist James Bloodworth spends six months living and working across Britain, taking on the country's most gruelling jobs.

He lives on the meagre proceeds and discovers the anxieties and hopes of those he encounters, including working-class British, young students striving to make ends meet and Eastern European immigrants.

From the Staffordshire Amazon warehouse to the taxicabs of Uber, Bloodworth narrates how traditional working-class communities have been decimated by the move to soulless service jobs with no security, advancement or satisfaction. This is a gripping examination of Brexit Britain, a divided nation which needs to understand the true reality of how other people live and work before it can heal.

©2019 James Bloodworth (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

Critic reviews

"A very discomforting book, no matter what your politics might be...very good." (Sunday Times)

"Potent, disturbing and revelatory." (Evening Standard)

Not quite what it promises

The first and last parts (Amazon and Uber) are interesting. The other two parts (homecare and call centre) ramble on about other things, such as the history of coalmines and working class in general, and hardly mention the jobs he was supposedly working. I assume the author didn't really have enough material for a full book, so he added some fairly irrelevant stuff to make it longer. In short, the parts where the author actually talks about "working undercover" are interesting, while the rest of it is tedious to listen. While I'd find listening to a former coal miner interesting and their stories deserve to be heard, it was not what I picked this book up for. I also think the author only concentrated on the negatives of each job - in particular the call centre job did not sound horrible, but since he didn't need to stay working there, he was able to write any offered "perks" off as silly and argue that they should pay people more instead. He also earned what Uber told him he would, but then complained that he spent a lot of it on expenses such as renting a car and paying someone to clean it. All in all it was a fairly shallow book. Some of it was interesting, a lot of it wasn't. The narrator I thought did okay, he didn't have a lot to work with.

Complaints without solutions

Interesting peak behind the curtain of the newest form of crappy jobs...but what is the point? Is cleaning a toilet better or worse than driving an Uber? All societies have jobs of all types. A much better book is Woke, Inc which better calls out the hypocrisy of big corporations and now the masses that have been tricked into supporting them.