Work Won't

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o
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You Back

How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

a book by Sarah Jaffe

Tag: interviews

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Press Work Won't Love You Back

Why loving your job isn’t always a good thing and can be a trap at Elle Spain

Marita Alonso interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back for Elle Spain. She writes:

“You’re a freelancer, right?” We’re two minutes into our conversation and essayist Sarah Jaffe has already warned us from the way I talk about work that I don’t know what a payroll is. I confess to her straight away that I was not, am not, and will not be one of those people who claim to 
“love their job” above all else, and that’s precisely what she talks about in ‘‘Trabajar. Un amor no correspondido’’ (Capitán Swing, 2024), a book that examines why “doing what you like” is a recipe for exploitation that generates a new tyranny of work in which we happily accept tasks that take over our lives. We have grown up with the idea that work is not just a way to make a living; but a vocation that completes us and that we love. Jaffe assures us that this lie prevents us from seeing the cracks in the labor system and drives us to fall into formulas of exploitation and accept precarious working conditions in the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, things will change…

Read the whole thing at Elle Spain
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

«I started to wonder if we are taught to love our work as a kind of anesthesia» at Ethic

Ariadna Romans interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back at Ethic. She writes:

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” goes a popular saying. But Sarah Jaffe says that’s a lie. The American writer and journalist has spent years specializing in labor struggles and political power, exploring how work affects our daily lives and our ways of understanding human life. She has worked for outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Nation, and has also been a waitress, a bicycle mechanic, and a social media consultant, cleaned up trash, served ice cream, and explained Soviet communism to high school students. She now devotes her working time to her column in The Progressive and co-hosts the podcasts Belabored and Heart Reacts. Her book 
Trabajar: un amor no correspondido (Capitán Swing) has just been translated into Spanish.

Read the whole thing at Ethic
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

“Work isn’t designed to make us happy, it’s designed to do something else” at La Voz de Galicia

Alejandra Ceballos interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back for La Voz de Galicia newspaper. She writes:

That work absorbs us, that we no longer have fair wages, that housing prices are rising, but not salaries; that young people are lazy; that nobody wants to work; that we are better off now than before. The discourse on working conditions in this century in the Western world is disparate, however, Sarah Jaffe has a very clear position. She arrives in Spain with her book Trabajar, un amor no correspondido (Capitán Swing) and exposes how the system makes things difficult for the working class.

Read the whole thing at La Voz de Galicia
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

“We’ve realized that your boss doesn’t care if you die” at El Confidencial

Hector Garcia Barnes interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back for El Confidencial. He writes:

Since Sarah Jaffe published Trabajar: Un amor no correspondido Captain Swing), three of its editors have left their jobs. Although they have generally continued in the publishing world at a slower pace, one of them has opted for viticulture. The New Orleans-based journalist tells the story perhaps to point out that the first English edition of the book, published in the middle of the pandemic, was 
a premonition of what was about to happen around the world .

Read the whole thing at El Confidencial
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

“No one wants to admit that they are rich or poor. Everyone wants to be middle class” at El Pais

Rafa de Miguel interviewed me for El Pais! He writes:

Essayist Sarah Jaffe (Norwood, Massachusetts, 44 years old) knows the world of work and all its variants from top to bottom. She has been a waitress, repaired bicycles and has been a social media consultant; she has sold ice cream, cleaned and explained Soviet communism to high school students. Her book ‘Trabajar. Un amor no correspondido’ (Capitan Swing publishing house) is a slap in the face that opens our eyes to fictions such as love for the profession or myths such as that of the ‘white working class’. The working class is a concept that evolves, and today takes the form of immigrant carers who are exploited in the dependency assistance sector.

Read the whole thing at El Pais
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

El Pais: “The ideology of love for work is a scam”

More Catalan press! Noella Ramirez of El Pais interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back:

The journalist Sarah Jaffe (Massachusetts, 43) always heard the same story. “I’ve been writing about work for most of my career. And the story was constantly repeated of people who had landed their dream job and suddenly discovered that the conditions were terrible: they worked a million hours a week, they didn’t rest, they didn’t get paid much and they had perhaps moved to an expensive city that they couldn’t afford”, he explains through a video call from London this reporter, one of the first to report on Occupy Wall Street or Fight for $15 (the movement demanding a federal minimum wage of $15 in the United States) and who has worked for publications such as .The Atlanticor The Washington Post

What’s going on with work? How is it all different compared to other periods? The answers to these questions can be found in The job will not love you (Ara Llibres, translation by Pau Gros), an essay that puts historical context and social question about why we have so quickly forgotten that “eight hours to sleep, eight to work and eight to live” and ended up mired in a work culture that has appropriated our identity, exhausting us and keeping – us isolated from the rest.

Read the rest at El Pais.
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

Nuvol: “We are made to believe that we like to sacrifice ourselves for work”

More Catalan press! Santi Dommel at Nuvol interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back, and writes:

Climate change, political polarization, the precariousness of everything and the rise of inequalities are the main challenges that are eroding the social pact that emerged from the ruins of the Second World War and, above all, the lives of people Because that’s what it’s all about, in the end, living under dignified conditions. But everything seems to indicate that the system continues to perpetuate and reproduce structural faults. By Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won’t Love You (Arallibres ), the prevailing system inserted a seed, now about fifty years ago, which, little by little, has grown to the point of structuring our morals: the love of work. The umpteenth pirouette of late capitalism which, according to the author, has made us believe that we like work, a coercive mechanism par excellence. Jaffe destroys myths with a feminist and progressive perspective, while delving into the past to trace the origin of the inequalities that make up the current labor market. It also manages to expose the labor problem with cases that can be fully extrapolated to other non-Anglo-Saxon realities, revealing the unsustainability of the working life of a whole range of profiles. From artists, athletes or scholars, to computer programmers, teachers, through domestic workers – historically carried out by racialized women -, or by the highest levels of international women’s football with , Jaffe goes into the gears of “the love of work” to refloat witnesses who seek to recover a lost solidarity. We met with the author online to find out more about a book with a coherent and clever plot.

Read the rest at Nuvol.
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

Rac1: “That people don’t want to work? Very low wages, precariousness, and they expect us to wake up smiling and happy?”Rac1:

More Catalan press! Rac1 interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back. Rosanna Carceller Squire writes:

Love of work is a scam, and devotion to professional dedication keeps us exploited, exhausted, and alone. This is what American journalist Sarah Jaffe (1980, Massachusetts) explains, specializing in power politics, who works for media such as The New York Times, The Guardian or The Nation .  

Now publishes in Catalan Work will not love you (Ara Llibres), a volume which is his second work and which The Times has defined as “one of the best books of the year”. Jaffe makes an interesting reflection on labor rights and a thorough analysis of how capitalism has manipulated our feelings to take advantage of our work relationships. 

Read the whole thing at Rac1
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

La Vanguardia: “The relationship with our jobs is more toxic than any other love affair.”

Work Won’t Love You Back came out in Catalan from Ara Llibres and I did several interviews for that edition. Lara Gomez Ruiz at La Vanguardia wrote:

Jaffe emphasizes “the importance of understanding that work does not liberate us or make us happy. It is true that, sometimes, it gives us good moments. I get satisfaction from interviewing certain people and when I was a waitress I loved the spontaneous conversations that arose with some customers. That is to say, I agree with taking advantage of the occasions that bring us joy during the work day. But that’s not enough to hold it all. Longing for total happiness in the workplace is an unrealistic concept imposed by an outdated society. And we are in the 21st century, let’s modernize and start acting as such,” she concludes.

Read the whole thing at La Vanguardia
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Press Work Won't Love You Back

Work Won’t Love You Back at Morning Brew

Susanna Vogel at Morning Brew interviewed me about Work Won’t Love You Back. She writes,

In her book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, Jaffe offers a message that flies in the face of C-suite hand-wringing over so-called quiet quitting. Jaffe argues that workers, particularly those in fields that recruit on the promise of purpose, are often unfairly expected to make sacrifices—taking unpaid internships, working long hours, or accepting low wages—to do what they love, and that pursuing a job for passion often leads to being exploited.

Read the rest