Jackie’s story

Jackie began to cry out of anger. She showed me a picture. It was supposedly the staff room for her and her colleagues to take a break during the day or shelter when it was raining. The room was little more than a small toilet with a microwave on a nearby shelf. The toilet was broken and circled by brown stains on the floor around it. She hated her job. It reduced her to tears most days and she told me about the sense of dread she experienced before she went to sleep and, in the morning, when she awoke about what the day would bring.

Jackie and her co-workers were under pressure to meet ever tighter and more demanding targets. They were traffic wardens working for a private contractor and the targets they needed to meet were handing out as many parking tickets as possible. Boosting the number of tickets meant providing zero leeway for drivers. A second over the allotted parking time and a ticket was issued, even if the driver was approaching and the car park was far from full. Irate rows with drivers were common, adding to the friction of the day. Users of the car park and the traffic wardens became locked into a conflictual relationship, each seeing the other as some form of enemy.

It wasn’t the fractious tension with drivers and the shabby working conditions she hated. It was how her job had changed over time. A private contractor had taken over the council’s traffic warden operation. When she was employed by the council, she had enjoyed her work. She was not based in a car park but covered the streets in a neighbourhood. There was no pressure to rack up numbers of parking fines issued. She could use her discretion to allow people a few more minutes to move on, or turn a blind eye if she felt that they were having a bad day. Most of her day, in fact, was spent walking around the neighbourhood. She became a known and trusted face to the locals, someone who could be asked to keep an eye on a house if the owners were on holiday, or would say hello and chat to older people if they were on their own.