By Josh Gardner, who blames his parents for not making him a nepo baby

LIKE most of my generation I have what, four, five jobs? No, six. Actually counting the dealing seven. Each a more precarious side hustle than the last.

When I’m not doing my shifts at the call centre, the bar, the other bar, selling tattoo designs on DeviantArt or Twitch streaming, I’m flipping my vintage clothes on Vinted for a profit pitched just barely above the delivery fees.

It sounds very cool and spiritually fulfilling, but it’s actually hard work. So, like a total Boomer, I thought I’d try a full-time job. Become an NPC.

Imagine it: clocking into an office at 9am, busily typing away until lunchtime then powering through until 5pm. As a concept it’s as wholesome and quaint as a Sylvanian Families playset or a commemorative Princess Diana Beanie Baby, but people used to do it.

At the interview the guy – I guess you’d call him my ‘boss’ – said it wasn’t an office but family. Green flag! And pretty sure he said we’d have unlimited holidays. I’d be living the pre-2008 financial crisis dream in no time.

But, as a fortnight limped by, this dream turned into a nightmare. Because what nobody told me was jobs are cringe. And stressful. I was asked to work past my contracted hours without compensation and my lunchtime streaming sessions were unfairly banned.

I kept on through it, head down, focused on my reward. Then I got paid and it was f**k all.

After taxes, pension contributions and something called National Insurance I think Rishi brought in, it was worthless. I asked if it would be more if they paid in Bitcoin, but no.

I had a choice. I could climb the corporate ladder while my soul was quietly dismantled, or I could slip back into a life of fairly similar poverty that sounds cooler when people ask what I do.

Eventually I settled on the latter because all the girls I fancy on Tinder claim to be Marxists. But don’t let my new-found Communism stop you from chucking a couple hundred quid into my Ko-fi. Rent’s due.