Rent-a-desk deception: China’s unemployed pay to keep up work appearances

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - We’ve all heard of coworking spaces, where people rent desk space by the hour or by the day. In China, there are now offices catering to unemployed people. — Pexels.com pic

BEIJING, Jan 22 — In China, the stigma of not having a job can be particularly hard to bear. For fear of judgment, some unemployed people try to hide their situation from those around them.

To meet this need, some companies offer them the possibility of renting offices by the day, so that they can pretend to have a job to go to.

We’ve all heard of coworking spaces, where people rent desk space by the hour or by the day. In China, there are now offices catering to unemployed people.

An internet user filmed such a space in Hebei province, in the east of the country, reports the South China Morning Post.

“For 29.9 yuan (about RM18) per day, you can ‘work’ here from 10am to 5pm, with lunch included,” the individual explains in their video.

It’s an ideal way to hide unemployment from friends and family.

Some companies are taking the concept a step further, offering unemployed workers the chance to pose as a “boss” in a leather chair, complete with photos to show off to friends and family.

This comes at a price of 50 yuan, according to the South China Morning Post.

The man behind the initiative explained on social networks that he had a vacant office and imagined that “this could give the unemployed a space to stay and connect.”

These initiatives have divided public opinion on China’s social networks.

Some internet users see them as a clever way of reducing the stress associated with unemployment, by offering jobless people a place where they can feel like everyone else.

Others, on the contrary, fear that these fictitious offices will demotivate the unemployed in their job search, delaying their reintegration into the job market.

Unemployment as a source of stress

Although marginal, this phenomenon testifies to the central place that the “value of work” still holds in Chinese society.

The major economic reforms of the 1980s put an end to the notion of lifetime employment, encouraging the Chinese to invest themselves fully in their careers, notably through the “996” week (in the office from 9am to 9pm, six days a week).

But this relationship with work is evolving as a result of growing frustration among young people. As elsewhere, young people in China are demanding more respect, more time for themselves and more meaning in their work.

They don’t benefit from the same opportunities as their elders at a time when China’s growth is slowing, and so refuse to work themselves to death in silence.

Even so, the social pressure to work remains strong.

Many Chinese people don’t dare talk about their professional inactivity to their nearest and dearest, for fear of what people will say.

“Unemployment is stressful, but I did not want to pass that negativity onto my family,” a former e-commerce employee called Jiawei told media outlet Yunxi Technology, the South China Morning Post reports.

After his employer went bankrupt, he now spends his days in a café, browsing job offers, and returns home at the same time as before, so as not to alarm his family.

According to Zhang Yong, professor of social work at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, these concealment strategies can have a major impact on the morale of the unemployed.

“They need to take an honest look at their situation, understand the job market, be open with their families and build a healthier mindset about career choices,” he told the South China Morning Post.

But in a country where professional success is held up as a model, it may seem simpler just to rent office space for a few hours and keep pretending to go to work. — ETX Daily