would you trade lives?
anonymous · text only · no accounts

a profession seen from many lives

life as a retail worker

6 strangers working as retail workers have shared an anonymous fragment of their life. Average happiness 4.5 / 10, average stress 6.3 / 10. 38% of voters say they would trade lives with someone in this work; 45% would not.

averages across this group

6
lives
4.5/ 10
happiness
6.3/ 10
stress
6.1h/ night
sleep
11.7h/ week
free time
$820/ month
avg income

how strangers vote on these lives

would trade38%
would not trade45%
unsure17%

532 voices

how this group feels to strangers

  • lonely31
  • meaningful28
  • stable24
  • exhausting19
  • peaceful19
  • stressful19

six retail workers have shared an anonymous fragment of their life from 5 countries, most often Philippines, Argentina, and Brazil. every entry is one person describing the shape of their own days — hours of sleep, money, stress, what they actually feel — to be read and weighed by strangers who never know who they are.

they report an average happiness of 4.5 / 10 and an average stress of 6.3 / 10, they sleep around 6.1 hours a night and have roughly 12 hours of free time per week, the median reported monthly income (across 6 fragments that disclosed one) sits near $820 USD-equivalent.

asked whether they would trade lives with retail workers, 532 strangers have answered. the result is split almost evenly: 38% would trade, 45% would not, 17% are unsure.

the reactions readers most often leave on retail workers' fragments are: lonely, meaningful, and stable. these tags are picked from a fixed list, so the words above carry the weight that strangers actually placed on them, not anything we paraphrased.

the fragments are spread unevenly across the world. by volume, the top countries for retail workers in our dataset are: Philippines (2 lifes, 36% would trade); Argentina (1 life, 33% would trade); Brazil (1 life, 43% would trade); France (1 life, 50% would trade); India (1 life, 36% would trade).

where retail workers have shared from

recent fragments