Alexandra Jones
(Picture: ES / Natasha Pszenicki)Here’s a story that might get me arrested: when I was an intern at Condé Nast in 2011 — working for minimum wage at society bible Tatler (probably the only person in the entire editorial staff who’d gone to a state school but that’s a story for another day) — I regularly stole toilet paper from the office bathrooms. All in, I was getting paid around £750 a month, which covered the rent on my single room in Holloway (prison cell small, and it didn’t come with a wardrobe), bills, some travel and left me with about £1.65 a day for food.
Mid-recession this all seemed like a very good deal, given that most of my peers interning at other publications were doing so for free. I was grateful but the fact remained that I was often too broke for luxuries like toilet paper. It started with the odd roll here and there, but by the time I left I’d developed a system whereby each Friday I’d bring in an empty weekend bag — pretending that I was going away — and fill it with loo rolls, which I’d stockpile at home. I was never caught, and as far as I’m aware no one suspected — though, admittedly when my contract was up, I was cheerfully let go, despite the fact that an entry-level position had become available by that point.
Anyway, this tale of woe came to mind yesterday when an email landed in my inbox. According to a poll of 6,000 white-collar professionals, undertaken by recruitment consultancy Robert Walters, 66 per cent of 18-24 year-olds have some form of “side-hustle” and three-quarters of under-24s claim having just one job is “risky” (Stick with me here, I’m not suggesting that stealing toilet paper counts as a side hustle).
There was a time when I believed that being broke was part and parcel of being young. Having no money was hard — and often embarrassing — and in the end I quit journalism for two years to work as a PA as I couldn’t face any more tinned-soup dinners. I figured that at 23 I was just paying my dues.
A decade on and the dystopia has been dialled up to 11. Young people have entirely lost faith in the idea that a job can sustain any kind of lifestyle — and who can blame them? Priced out of zones 1 to 3, they face grindingly expensive (and often disrupted) commutes to insecure jobs that, in real terms, pay less with each fiscal quarter that passes. Gen Zers are the first to enter the job market with this as a bleak reality — and they’re attacking it with admirable verve: no petty theft for them, if one job won’t cut it, get two!
But the fact is, no one who is gainfully employed should need to stack up jobs, one on top of the other, just to survive — particularly not the youngest in society, who have yet to even be burdened with the responsibility of mortgages or families. There’s paying your dues and then there’s operating in a ruthless, exploitative climate with no sense of safety or stability, despite all that toil. It might have been hard back when I was younger, but we still dared to hope.
