Is This Working?: The Jobs We Do, Told by the People Who Do Them
Mar 2025 · Pan Macmillan
Ebook
400
Pages
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Eligible
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About this ebook
'Fascinating and often moving' - The Sunday Times
'Unique and unexpectedly moving: it’s a choral work of frustration, pride and despair' - The Telegraph
'Charlie Colenutt’s intense and revealing interviews capture the raw voices of people talking honestly about work . . . Read this, as each one opens a hidden window on the way we live now.' - Polly Toynbee
For the best part of two years Charlie Colenutt travelled the country to talk to a hundred strangers, from all walks of life about their jobs: What did they do for a living? Why did they do it? Did they like it?
They met in coffee shops, chain pubs or front rooms. Through hearing people tell their stories, 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. He spoke with the church minister who, maddened by his email inbox, has come to feel more like an administrator than a spiritual leader; the cleaner that became so frustrated by the lack of change in her local area that she ran to be a councillor and won; the baker who used to hate touching flour; and the trade union organiser, not pressured by hours or targets, but by the cause.
Together, the voices in Is This Working? tell a story about the one thing that most British adults have in common – work.
'Unique and unexpectedly moving: it’s a choral work of frustration, pride and despair' - The Telegraph
'Charlie Colenutt’s intense and revealing interviews capture the raw voices of people talking honestly about work . . . Read this, as each one opens a hidden window on the way we live now.' - Polly Toynbee
For the best part of two years Charlie Colenutt travelled the country to talk to a hundred strangers, from all walks of life about their jobs: What did they do for a living? Why did they do it? Did they like it?
They met in coffee shops, chain pubs or front rooms. Through hearing people tell their stories, 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. He spoke with the church minister who, maddened by his email inbox, has come to feel more like an administrator than a spiritual leader; the cleaner that became so frustrated by the lack of change in her local area that she ran to be a councillor and won; the baker who used to hate touching flour; and the trade union organiser, not pressured by hours or targets, but by the cause.
Together, the voices in Is This Working? tell a story about the one thing that most British adults have in common – work.
About the author
Charlie Colenutt studied history at the University of Oxford, where he won the Gibbs Prize. After his undergraduate studies, he stayed in Oxford as the Amelia Jackson scholar, completing a postgraduate degree on the history of the United States. He then had a brief turn as a commercial barrister, before leaving law to work as a writer and freelance consultant. He lives on a hill near High Wycombe.
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