Work without freedom

Text 1: Living Indoors, by Henry Bulmer

An original autobiography written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

At fourteen I was bound to Messrs Garside and Pugh, linen drapers, of the High Street, and for six years I lived, as the trade says, indoors. I slept in a room above the shop with eleven other young men, two to a bed, and I ate at a long table in the basement where we were forbidden to speak until the senior assistant had said grace and taken the first potato. We rose at half past six to take down the shutters and we put them up again at ten at night, or later on a Saturday, when the gas was lit and the ladies of the town came in to finger the ribbons.

In the passage behind the counter hung a printed card of Rules for the Young Gentlemen of the Establishment, forty-two in number. We were fined for a spot upon our cuffs, for leaning on the counter, for allowing a customer to leave without a purchase, and for being in the street after half past ten, when the side door was locked and the key carried up to Mr Garside’s bedroom. No assistant might marry and keep his place. One young man of twenty-eight, who had courted a girl for seven years, was dismissed when he was seen walking out with her on a Sunday.

The work itself I did not mind. I liked the smell of new calico and the satisfaction of a well-folded bolt of silk, and I was a good salesman. What I minded was that there was no hour of the day or night which belonged to me. Even our sleep was regulated. When at last I left, to open a little shop of my own, I stood in my doorway on the first night at eleven o’clock, for no reason at all, simply because nobody could forbid it.

Text 2: Twelve Miles a Night, by Jordan Whitlow

An original contemporary article.

For eight months I worked as a picker in a distribution warehouse the size of eleven football pitches. My job was to walk. A handheld scanner told me which aisle to go to, which shelf, which item, and how many seconds I had to get there. If I was slow, the number on the screen turned amber, then red. On a good night I walked twelve miles. My phone counted them, which was the only thing in the building that seemed to be on my side.

People assume the worst part was being watched, and it is true that we were tracked every second. Breaks were timed. Bathroom visits showed up as ‘idle time’. You could not stop to stretch your back without a supervisor appearing at the end of the aisle like a ghost. But you get used to being watched faster than you would think. It becomes background noise.

What I never got used to was the silence. The aisles were too long and the targets too tight for conversation. I could go a whole ten-hour shift without speaking a sentence to another human being. The scanner beeped at me; I beeped back. Sometimes I passed another picker at the end of an aisle and we would nod, two people on separate desert islands. I started talking to myself, and then to the boxes. When I finally left, the thing I wanted most was not a day off or a pay rise. It was a long, pointless conversation with someone who did not need anything from me.

‘Both writers suggest that the worst thing about their work was the lack of freedom.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In your answer you should:

• discuss what we learn about the conditions each writer worked under
• explain how far you agree that lack of freedom was the worst thing for both writers
• compare the ways the writers present their working lives.

Support your response with quotations from Text 1 and Text 2.