No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

My GP writes notes straight onto the com­puter, and I’ve seen stu­dents try to keep up with lec­tures by typ­ing on an ipad. In these days of cheap laser jet print­ing, where even the smal­lest of busi­nesses can usu­ally afford to type up their signs, and there are few spaces left for pub­lic dis­plays of…

Search is the meta­phor for the inter­net age (Stark, 2009). Google’s a verb, and you can access the world from your smart­phone. And so who has any use for the fat, heavy paper dir­ect­ory, search­able only in the sense that entries are organ­ised in alpha­bet­ical order? Well, someone still wants and needs it, and someone…

Of course not. Bore­dom, one of the ‘minor’ and ‘non-cathartic’ Ugly Feel­ings that fas­cin­ate Sianne Ngai (2005), is the lot of the ser­vice sec­tor worker. Whether bored by the repe­ti­tion of script — of which ‘have a nice day’ is the most clichéd, and ‘who’s next please?’ the most com­mon — or bored by the…