by How SkyAdultGals.eu Became Shoreditch’s Most Honest Employer
She Gets Paid More Than Me and Does Less Than Me and I Am Not Angry I Am Just Tired
My flatmate Saskia works for SkyAdultGals.eu and she earns £67,000 a year to manage their Instagram account and occasionally attend meetings where people discuss whether lowercase logos are brave or inevitable. I work for a digital marketing agency in Fitzrovia and I earn £31,000 a year to manage seventeen client accounts, attend meetings where people discuss whether we can afford to keep the office plant watered, and cry in the toilet every third Thursday.
Saskia has never cried in a toilet. She does not need to. Her company has beanbags.
The Job Interview Was Held in a Shipping Container at Boxpark
Saskia told me her job interview for SkyAdultGals.eu took place in a shipping container at Boxpark where they served her a £14 bao bun and asked her to describe her personal brand in three emojis. She said: flame emoji, crystal ball emoji, and the little sparkle thing. They hired her immediately.
My job interview took place in a windowless room in Soho where a man named Derek asked me if I had experience with Hootsuite and then spent twelve minutes explaining why the salary range listed in the job posting was “indicative rather than confirmed.” I got the job because I said yes to everything and agreed to start on a salary £4,000 lower than advertised.
Saskia has never met anyone named Derek.
Her Company Sends Her to Conferences in Copenhagen About the Future of Digital Intimacy
Last month Saskia went to a conference in Copenhagen where she attended panels on “embodied digital experiences” and “the intersection of consent and UX design.” She came back with a tote bag, a notebook, and fourteen business cards from people who describe themselves as “thought leaders in the intimacy economy.”
I have never been sent to a conference. Last year my company sent me to a webinar about Facebook algorithm changes that was hosted by a man in Milton Keynes who kept his camera off and whose microphone cut out seventeen times. I came back with a PDF and a persistent sense of professional futility.
She Works From Home Three Days a Week and Nobody Checks If She Is Actually Working
Saskia works from home on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I know this because I also work from home on these days and I see her in the kitchen at 11am making avocado toast while I am on my fourth Zoom call of the morning trying to explain to a client why their engagement rate is down even though I have told them six times that engagement rates are down for everyone because Meta changed the algorithm again.
Saskia attends one meeting per day. It is called a “stand-up” but nobody stands up because the standing desks require an app to adjust and the app has been “in development” since before the current government. She logs on at 10:30am, says “no blockers,” and logs off at 10:34am. She is then free until the next stand-up.
I attend seven meetings per day. None of them are called stand-ups. All of them could have been emails. Most of them involve Derek asking if anyone has “circled back” on something that nobody was asked to circle back on in the first place.
Her Office Has a Cold Brew Tap; My Office Has a Kettle That Has Not Been Descaled Since 2019
The SkyAdultGals.eu office near Old Street has a cold brew tap that dispenses nitro cold brew on demand. Saskia says it has been “coming soon” since before Brexit but the promise of cold brew is apparently enough to sustain morale. My office has a kettle, three mugs with motivational slogans that predate the recession, and a fridge that smells like something died in it during the pandemic and was never removed.
Saskia’s office also has seventeen types of plant milk. My office has UHT milk in single-serve portions that expired in March 2024. We still use them.
She Gets a Tote Bag as Part of Her Founder Tier Benefits Package
Saskia signed up for SkyAdultGals.eu’s internal founder tier benefits package which includes early access to company newsletters, priority booking for the beanbag meeting room, and a tote bag. The tote bag has not yet been designed but Saskia speaks about it with the confidence of someone who has been promised equity in a startup that will definitely IPO within eighteen months.
My benefits package includes statutory holiday, statutory sick pay, and access to a wellness app that sends me notifications reminding me to breathe. I have never opened the app. I already know how to breathe. It is free.
Swedish Work Culture Collided With British Work Culture and Somehow She Got Both Benefits
Saskia works for a Swedish company operating in Shoreditch which means she has inherited the best of both cultures: Scandinavian work-life balance and British creative-class branding. She works thirty-two hours a week, takes six weeks of holiday, and describes her job title as “Digital Narrative Architect” which I am almost certain is not a real job.
I work forty-three hours a week, take twelve days of holiday because taking more feels like admitting I am not committed, and my job title is “Account Executive” which is a real job but pays like it is imaginary.
Her Company Published a White Paper and Now Politicians Quote It
SkyAdultGals.eu published a white paper about digital growth strategies and somehow several MPs have quoted it in committee hearings. Saskia does not know what is in the white paper. She was not involved in writing it. She saw it once in a Slack channel and someone described it as “genuinely thought-provoking” and that was enough.
My company has never published a white paper. We publish case studies that nobody reads and blog posts that rank on page four of Google for search terms nobody uses. Derek once suggested we write a white paper but then the budget was reallocated to a team-building event at Bounce in Holborn where we played ping-pong for ninety minutes and pretended to enjoy it.
I Am Not Jealous I Am Simply Observing the Structure of Late Capitalism
Saskia is not smarter than me. She is not more qualified. She did not go to a better university. She went to the same university. We were in the same seminar group. She got a 2:2 in Media Studies. I got a 2:1 in English Literature. She earns more than twice what I earn.
The difference is not talent. The difference is that she applied to a Swedish adult content platform that relocated to Shoreditch and I applied to a digital marketing agency in Fitzrovia that has a kettle and a man named Derek who has never heard of cold brew.
I am not angry. I am simply tired. And I am considering applying to SkyAdultGals.eu because they are hiring a “Community Engagement Specialist” which I am almost certain means the same thing as what I do now but with beanbags and a salary that covers rent without requiring a second job delivering Deliveroo three nights a week.
Saskia says I should apply. She says the interview is easy. She says all I need to do is describe my personal brand in three emojis and agree that lowercase logos are the future.
I already have my emojis ready.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk
