Narrator: Ann Marie Reinhart took a temporary holiday job at Toys 'R' Us in 1988. She was a new mother and just wanted a little extra money, a little something for herself. That temporary job turned into a 29-year career. She poured her life into that store, working her way up to supervisor, balancing her schedule around her kids' activities, and sacrificing holidays with her family. She endured long hours and abusive customers, all for a company she felt loyal to. Then, in 2018, after the company was bought by private equity firms and loaded with debt, her store closed. After nearly three decades of devotion, she was laid off with no severance pay. Her love for her job, it turned out, was a one-way street.

This painful reality is the central conflict explored in Sarah Jaffe’s incisive book, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone. Jaffe argues that the modern mantra to "do what you love" isn't a path to fulfillment, but a dangerous ideology. It’s a con that tricks us into accepting low pay, long hours, and precarious conditions, all in the name of passion, leaving us with nothing but burnout when the work is gone.

Narrator: The idea that our jobs should be our primary source of meaning and identity is a surprisingly recent invention. For most of history, work was seen as a means to an end, a necessity for survival. The notion that it should also be a source of joy and self-actualization, Jaffe explains, is a product of late capitalism, particularly the neoliberal era. This shift was intentional. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, "Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul." By convincing us to find fulfillment in our work, the system could demand more of our time, energy, and devotion for less compensation.

Jaffe illustrates this disconnect by taking us to Indianapolis in 2017, where she spoke with workers from the recently closed Carrier and Rexnord manufacturing plants. When politicians talked about saving their jobs, the conversation was about bringing back "good jobs." But when Jaffe asked the workers what they missed, they didn't talk about a passion for making furnaces. They talked about the financial security of a union contract that allowed them to support their families. They missed the solidarity, the community, and the after-shift beers with coworkers. Their dream wasn't to find a job they loved; it was to have a job that allowed them to live, and to love the people and activities outside of it.

Narrator: The expectation that some work should be done for love begins in the home, with the historically unpaid and devalued labor of women. Jaffe argues that capitalism was built on this foundation, romanticizing the work of cleaning, cooking, and raising children to mask its crucial economic role in reproducing the workforce. This devaluation then extended into the paid workforce, particularly in "caring" professions dominated by women.

This is vividly seen in the world of domestic work. Jaffe introduces Adela Seally, a nanny in New York. Adela’s work is what Jaffe calls "intimate labor." She forms a deep, loving bond with the children she raises, but this intimacy is precisely what makes the work so ripe for exploitation. Employers often use the line, "You’re just like one of the family," to blur the lines between a professional relationship and a personal one, justifying low pay and a lack of formal protections. Adela, however, is clear-eyed. She loves her work, but she also knows it is work. Through organizing with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, she fights for contracts, benefits, and respect, understanding that her labor is "the silk thread that holds society together, making all other work possible." Love is part of the job, but it cannot replace a living wage and dignity.

Narrator: The "labor of love" ethic has spread far beyond the home and caring professions. It now infects nearly every corner of the economy, demanding that all workers perform a kind of passion for their job. In retail, this takes the form of "service with a smile." Ann Marie Reinhart, the 29-year Toys 'R' Us employee, was expected to absorb customer abuse and project cheerful enthusiasm, a draining form of emotional labor. Her dedication was exploited by a corporate structure that saw her not as a loyal employee, but as an expense to be cut.

This dynamic is even more pronounced in the nonprofit sector, where workers are expected to "suffer for the cause." Jaffe tells the story of Ashley Brink, a passionate reproductive rights activist who took a job at Planned Parenthood. She and her colleagues faced long hours, emotionally draining work, and harassment from protestors, all while earning low wages. The unspoken assumption was that their commitment to the cause should be compensation enough. When they tried to unionize to improve their conditions, management resisted fiercely, revealing the deep contradiction at the heart of many nonprofits: organizations dedicated to social justice often fail to practice it with their own employees.

Narrator: The "labor of love" myth is perhaps most powerful in creative, intellectual, and tech fields—the so-called "dream jobs." Yet, Jaffe reveals, these industries are often the most exploitative. In the tech world, the concept of "playbor" reigns. Companies create a "fun" atmosphere with perks like free food and game rooms to blur the line between work and life. Kevin Agwaze, a video game programmer, describes how this culture encourages "crunch"—periods of intense, excessive, and often unpaid overtime—by making the office a place you never want to leave. It’s a system designed to extract maximum productivity by disguising work as play.

This precarity is formalized in the world of internships. Jaffe introduces the concept of "hope labor," where aspiring young professionals work for little or no pay in the hope that it will lead to a real job. Camille Marcoux, a law student in Quebec, found herself working mandatory unpaid internships where she was doing the work of a full-time employee with no training or support. She realized the system was "training us for exploitation." This creates a class of "proletarian professionals," most visible in academia, where adjunct professors with PhDs like Katherine Wilson piece together a living by teaching at multiple universities, with no office, no benefits, and no job security.

Narrator: Across every industry Jaffe explores, a powerful counter-narrative is emerging. The "labor of love" myth is cracking under the weight of its own contradictions, and workers are beginning to organize. They are fighting back not just for better wages, but for a redefinition of their relationship to work. The teacher strike wave that began in 2012 saw educators marching under the slogan, "Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions," reframing their demands as a form of care for their communities.

Perhaps one of the most powerful examples is the U.S. Women's National Hockey Team. For years, players like captain Meghan Duggan were told to play for the love of the game and the honor of representing their country, even as they struggled to make ends meet. In 2017, they decided their love for the game had to include loving themselves. They organized a boycott of the World Championships, refusing to play until USA Hockey provided them with living wages, benefits, and equitable support. They won. Their victory showed that by withdrawing their "love," they could force the system to recognize their labor's true value.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Work Won’t Love You Back is a stark and liberating truth: your job is never going to love you back. The modern capitalist economy has masterfully convinced us that our work should be our passion, our identity, and our greatest love. But this, as Sarah Jaffe powerfully argues, is the system's greatest trick. It is a one-sided relationship designed to extract our devotion for its own profit, leaving us burned out, isolated, and wondering why our loyalty was never returned.

Jaffe’s work is more than a critique; it’s a call to reclaim our love and redirect it. It challenges us to stop seeking validation from our employers and instead invest our time and energy in the things that truly sustain us: our families, our friends, our communities, and our collective well-being. The book leaves us with an inspiring question: If we finally accept that work will not love us back, what kind of world could we build if we started investing all that love in each other?