Why I’m touchy about being asked what I do for a living

In former times I had acquaintances of long standing, or even friends, who never once asked what I did for a job and neither did I ask them. In the new equitable era I seem to be always introduced to people who badly want to know before proceeding.

Here’s how it goes. We are introduced. We exchange platitudes. I am difficult to place on the social scale, it’s true. The accent, for one thing. The question is shamelessly put just after the off: ‘So what do you do?’

(I complained about it to my American friend Vernon. That’s nothing, he said. In the United States they ask you how much money you make before they let go of your hand.)

I used to tell these social scientists who asked straight away: ‘Fudge packer. And you?’ These days I take a ghoulish pleasure in revealing the truth. ‘Do you mean, what do I do for a job?’ ‘Yes, for a job.’ ‘Well, I sort of splash around in the shallow end of journalism. Why do you ask?’ ‘You’re a journalist then?’ ‘I am. Sort of.’

Presenting the face of a Zurbaran ascetic, I watch and I wait. Eventually it comes.

‘And for whom do you write?’

‘I write for a magazine,’ I say. Again I watch and wait. Less insensitive inquirers might at this point smell a rat. But in spite perhaps of a dawning realisation that as a definite parvenu I’m touchy about being asked what I do for a living within the first three minutes, the majority simply cannot help themselves.

‘And for whom do you write?’

I state the name of this august paper.

Every British expat in this neck of the woods not only takes The Spectator but also reads it from cover to cover each week and has done so for many years.