The rise of 'shadow stand-ins'
After graduating from college in 2019 with a degree in education, the Gen Zer found work at a Chicago publishing company. She did not love it. Most of her colleagues were decades older than her, and their struggles to use basic software forced her to become a one-woman IT operation. The work itself was uninspiring and relentless: On most days she juggled presentation slides, managed spreadsheets and databases, and formatted page layouts.
The pandemic provided a respite from the tedium of in-office interactions. But it didn't lessen her workload, and she quietly began asking her boyfriend, a STEM major working in a lab, for occasional help. Certain she'd be fired for it, she didn't tell her employer.
Remi was appointed executor of the estate, and settling her mother's affairs was a never-ending nightmare: wading through countless gambling debts, maintaining the crumbling family home, and distributing the few remaining assets. Though she took a leave of absence from work and continued to rely on her boyfriend when she returned, she couldn't keep up. Soon, she also turned to a childhood friend, who was unemployed and needed money. Remi proposed a plan: She'd pay her friend $100 a book to help with editing and formatting, saving her hours of work every week. The friend eagerly accepted. Her colleagues, meanwhile, remained clueless.
And just like that — although she didn't know it — Remi had become part of a hidden movement that went far beyond her Chicago publishing company.
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