In 2019, the Dutch supermarket company Jumbo began reserving some of its checkout lanes for those who wanted to stop and chat with the cashier on their way out. The move was a response to widespread loneliness, with the store’s chief commercial officer explaining that “it’s a small gesture but it’s a valuable one, particularly in a world that is becoming more digital and faster”. In a new book, the Last Human Job, the sociologist Allison Pugh writes of the consequences of a world that is accelerating away from, among other things, the time when “grocers knew their clients intimately; clerks kept close track of shoppers’ desires, their habits, and their families, soliciting views and peddling influence”.
The emphasis on speed, efficiency and profit has hollowed out work as a site of everyday, local human-to-human relationships. Jumbo’s approach was a Dutch collective finger in the dyke. Prof Pugh suggests that others will have to follow. She argues that current trends, which are most pronounced in the US, will be bad for society, not least because advanced nations are moving from being “thinking economies” to “feeling economies”, where an increasing number of jobs – from therapists and carers to teachers and consultants – are relational in nature. The academic describes as “connective labour” the jobs that rely on emotional understanding for their success. Underlying this work is “second-person neuroscience” that looks not at the knowledge inside individuals but at what exists between them.
