It was 'life from hell' while working for the Hermes firm

On its website, the delivery company Hermes invites you to work as a “lifestyle courier” and a “local hero”.

Cherie Nolan, who was with the company for almost a decade, laughs bitterly.

“You don’t have a life with Hermes ,” she says. “You have to have Hermes running through your blood.”

For millions of workers, this is what it means to work for the “gig economy” – a cool, flexible version of serfdom that it has been claimed is actually more feudal than modern.

In the nine years that mother-of-three Cherie, 39, from Manchester, worked for the company, she says she delivered parcels for around 12 hours a day, six days a week, earning between 45p and 85p a parcel.

Her day started at 5.30am when she would download her orders and plan her delivery route.

Then she would drive to a depot to collect as many of the day’s parcels as she could fit in her car.

The remainder involved more unpaid trips to the depot.

“I haven’t had a holiday in seven years, and I only took three weekends off – when my grandad, great-uncle and granny died and I had to go back home to Northern Ireland,” she says.

“When my granny’s hearse was coming up the road, my field manager was still ringing me, telling me I needed to get back to work.”

This, she says, was despite the fact that other couriers were covering all her rounds for her.

“When my son was born in 2010, I worked on the Monday, gave birth on the Tuesday night and on Wednesday I heard they were trying to get people to take over my rounds,” says Cherie.

“That would have left me with no work when I came back. I ended up going back to work on the Friday, three days after giving birth, because I was so frightened I’d lose my job.

"When I talked about this to my eldest daughter Jade, she said the saddest thing – ‘That job ruined my childhood’.

"I never had time off. We could never go anywhere. I always had to have my phone on. By the time I left I was getting chest pains from the stress .

It pays to be your own boss. No matter how small you are. Its really not worth it.