This project is an exploration of how humans interact in this city. How people behave towards others that work within the service industry. They refuse to treat them as individuals, instead they interact with them much like they would with a machine.

“Okay, so I work for TFL and the rudest thing that’s probably ever happened to me at work is, I was approached by a male customer and he asked me where a specific station was. I can’t remember what station it was but because I’ve got a speech impediment, I was slow in my response and I couldn’t get the words out. His response was like: ‘Rah they’re hiring disabled people now?’ And I just froze on the spot. I just walked away to the messroom and relaxed. Yeah that’s probably the rudest thing that’s happened but I was in shock.” 

“Okay, let’s start with something random. Yesterday I was serving a customer and one was talking in Spanish and the other in English. They were together, I don’t know if they were family or something like that. I start making them a sandwich and I try to speak a little Spanish because one of them didn’t understand English at all. I speak Italian, English and a little bit of Spanish. I’ve always had customers from that country and it’s a little bit similar to my language. So once I’d finished making the sandwich they go to eat, even though I don’t know spanish that well, because it’s like a third language for me, I overheard them say:
‘This one is dumb, he’s like that...’ The issue was I was there, I couldn’t go out because I’m working and I just had to listen to them insult me.”

“A customer approached my collegue to order a coffee and called her the wrong name, he got her confused with another member of staff. When my collegue corrected him and told him he used the wrong name and he says ‘yeah whatever’ or something like that... it’s been a while so I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along those lines.

I was shocked, this is even worse than seeing coffee cups instead of a human face. Choosing to reject a person's name is like choosing to not even consider them as a person.”

This project was made with the support of Magnum Photos, Lua Ribeira and Create Jobs. 2018