Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 2nd November 2025

There was a post going around social media last week about a young autistic man losing his work experience at Waitrose.

There’s rightly been a huge amount of outcry about this, but some of it has missed the mark, I think.

So, the facts are that Tom had been working as a ‘volunteer’ two mornings a week at Waitrose since 2021. This was under the banner of work experience, which he started as part of a college course. His job was to put stock out and tidy the shelves. He kept going, as his mum says, ‘purely because he wanted to belong, contribute and make a difference’. When his mum asked if Tom could get ‘just a few paid hours’, he was told he no longer had any job.

So much to unpick.

Test Five is all about purpose, and the more I explore this in my everyday life and the lives of my kids and my friends, the more I’m beginning to feel it’s potentially the most important test of all. The days we feel we have no purpose are never the best days in our lives. Having purpose, that reason to get out of bed in the morning, is such a key part of our humanity and the reason why the very wonderful Maff Potts from Camerados reminds us that the six most important words in the human language are, ‘can you do me a favour?’

Purpose isn’t always paid work – far from it and I can absolutely see and respect how important Tom’s work experience was to him, but I personally don’t think it’s okay that a big organisation like the John Lewis group would feel okay about continuing to use someone skills gifts and talents (for no return) until they don’t suit them anymore. Where is the outcry about the fact that Tom has put in 600+ hours of unpaid work for a large organisation that prides itself on its customer service and treatment of its workers?

Lots of the comment in the article was on strengthening the rights of people who volunteer, but that is massively missing the point. Volunteering is a beautiful and important way of all of us having purpose, and I have worked as a volunteer in different roles throughout my life. I’ve done the afternoon tea and cakes round at my local hospice, played with cats at the animal rescue, and I still help families know their rights under the Care Act or in the special educational needs and disabilities system. All of these are places where I get to use the things that I am good at, passionate about, or know about for a greater good in ways that also make me feel good.

Historically, particularly people with learning disabilities and people in the mental health system have been offered volunteering roles doing work that I wouldn’t do voluntarily. I remember chatting to a woman a few years ago who told me excitedly that she had a volunteering job in a local pub washing dishes on a Saturday night. Really?

It’s not so much the content of the volunteering as the context. When he took early retirement at 58 from being a teacher, my dad went and helped his friend set up and expand his garden centre. Lots of what my dad was doing would easily have been seen as paid work, but my dad was happy to do it because it was there for his friend. I can imagine helping my friend out who owns a pub if they needed a couple of hours of pot washing, and I’d do it for love because they are my friend. I wouldn’t do it as a formal volunteering role, and I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t either.

There is a difference between work experience and volunteering. Many young people seem to need to get experience via unpaid internships these days, but most rightly expect that a 6-month unpaid grind will lead to a paid role. It’s not volunteering.

The other, more subtle issue for me is the lack of expectation and the language around Tom’s experience.  The response from Andy Burnham (who I hugely admire) wasn’t to be outraged about the years of exploitation but to offer to make sure the man was found an ‘appropriate placement’. Now I’m going to take a punt and suggest that Andy wasn’t suggesting the passive, inhuman dictionary definition of placement, which is, ‘the action of placing someone or something somewhere,’ but was getting sucked into the language of social care, where what we do is to ‘place’ people. This ties beautifully back into the work that  Bryony Shannon and I do as part of our Gloriously Ordinary Language programme and the reasons behind the work that we do, which is that the words we use affect what we think it’s okay to do.

Tom is autistic and doesn’t use many words – I’m sure he’s described somewhere as complex. We need to find a placement to make sure his week is full and meets his agreed outcomes. Maybe pay attention to his need for a clear routine.

Sorry, I can’t help myself, but where is the expectation of paid work using Tom’s amazing gifts and skills?

So, shall we get back to the basics of Test Five and remember that to be human is to be needed …AND that a starting point of being paid for the work we do is a good one?

PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode 14 is here. You'll hear that I am absolutely thrilled to introduce you all to the lovely ⁠⁠⁠Marianne Selby-Boothroyd⁠⁠⁠, who's joining the Gloriously Ordinary Lives team... that's right, the Gloriously Ordinary Lives team! How exciting is that? Have a listen, and we'd love to hear what you think!