Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Working: What We Do All Day’ On Netflix, Where Barack Obama Looks Into The Lives Of Working Americans

Working: What We Do All Day is a four-part docuseries where former president Barack Obama and the series’ filmmakers (all the episodes are directed by Caroline Suh) talk to workers in three different sectors — hospitality, home care and tech — about what their workdays are like and the challenges they face. One of Obama’s favorite books was Working, a 1974 book by Studs Terkel, where the late author did exactly what Obama and company are doing: Talk to people about their jobs and how they feel about them.

WORKING: WHAT WE DO ALL DAY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Barack Obama walks into his offices, greeting the people who work for him.

The Gist: With this series, Obama’s intention is to talk to people at all levels of the sectors they chose, and in the first episode, service jobs are the focus. In subsequent episodes, he talks to mid-career types, C-suite occupants and people working their dream jobs.

We follow three women around in the first episode: Elba, who works as a housekeeper at New York’s Pierre Hotel; Randi, a home care aide in Mississippi; and Carmen, a delivery driver for Uber Eats in Pittsburgh.

Elba has been doing this job for over 20 years, and she has found that the security of its steady paycheck has allowed she and her husband — who also works at the hotel — to live a solid middle-class life in New York’s outer boroughs. There’s a scene where she brings in food for the staff; they eat and talk about how, despite the physical challenges of this job, it’s a whole lot better than some of the work they did when they first came to the U.S.

Randi wants to help people, which is why she trained to become a home care worker. We see her at the apartment of her first elderly client, getting help with the time-management system from her supervisor. She finds the schedule to be hard because she has a baby daughter and can’t just grab a shift at a moment’s notice at all hours of the day. Obama joins her and her daughter on a supermarket trip, where she shows that a box of cereal costs her basically one hour of pay at her job.

Carmen went to dental school, but a knee injury kept her from doing that as a profession. Right now, she’s in the gig economy, working a few different jobs while trying to get her business as a makeup artist off the ground. Her dream is to be a professional makeup artist for celebrities, as well as TV and film productions.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Working: What We Do All Day feels a bit like Dirty Jobs combined with the tone and pacing of CBS Sunday Morning, hosted by the former president.

Our Take: Working takes a very respectful, reverent look at work in America, from those who are working the jobs many of us take for granted to CEOs of big corporations. What we liked is that the show doesn’t weigh the viewers down with a ton of statistics; there are a few key stats thrown out by Obama in his narration, mainly having to do with the number of workers in service jobs and their relative pay, but they’re there to demonstrate how severe the income gap is in 2020s America.

What the show concentrates on instead is the people doing these jobs, what they actually do in those jobs, and how they struggle — or don’t struggle — with making ends meet. It’s here where Obama makes an effective host. Despite the gaudy resumes of him and his wife Michelle, who both are producers of this series under their extensive deal with Netflix, they both have more than enough institutional memory of living middle-class lives and helping those who are struggling to be able to relate to the people being profiled.

In his narration, Obama doesn’t shy away from how tough it has been for people to even reach a middle-class existence, given the escalating costs of housing, healthcare, food, and other life necessities. And in the segments with Elba, unions and the protections they provide, especially in an environment where jobs get eliminated, is well demonstrated.

We just wonder what we’re going to see in the episodes that have Obama interacting with people higher on the corporate ladder. Will they be more out of touch with the reality of working in this country? Will the people profiled have their own difficulties that are relatable? And how will Obama react there? He’s completely comfortable pushing a cart through the Piggly Wiggly with Randi and her little daughter, but this is also a man who’s been around world leaders, massive celebrities, and the wealthiest people in the world. Will that sheen of relatability fall away when he’s around CEOs?

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We see scenes of the women profiled in this episode and some of the people being profiled in the next. “What if, instead of making $9 an hour, you made twenty?” says Obama. “Could you finally make that step up to middle class and stay there?”

Sleeper Star: The sleeper stars are everyone doing hard jobs for little pay, especially home care workers like Dani. Believe me, we’ve seen home care workers in action and we know how tough that job is.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While we hope the show, and Obama, stay as grounded as it does in the first episode, Working: What We Do All Day is still a good glimpse at just what work is like in America, especially in these post-pandemic times.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.