Is This Working?

<p><b>'Utterly compulsive'</b><i> The Times</i><br><br><b>‘Fascinating and often moving’</b> - <i>The Sunday Times</i><br><br><b>‘Unique and unexpectedly movin it’s a choral work of frustration, pride and despair’ </b>- <i>The Telegraph</i><br><br><b>‘Charlie Colenutt’s intense and revealing interviews </b>capture the raw voices of people talking honestly about work . . . <b>Read this, as each one opens a hidden window on the way we live now’ </b>- Polly Toynbee<br><br><b>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: <i>What did they do for a living? Why did they do it? Did they like it?</i></b><br><br>They met in coffee shops, chain pubs or front rooms. Through hearing people tell their stories, he found out the number of birds killed per 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.<br><br>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 organizer, not pressured by hours or targets, but by the cause.<br><br><b>Together, the voices in <i>Is This Working?</i> tell a story about the one thing that most British adults have in common – work.</b></p>