Have you heard of the human library?

I stumbled across the human library the other day.

I’d never heard of it, but the idea is that instead of borrowing a book, you borrow a human and listen to their life story. It’s a conversation over a table, and you learn how they became who they are. You sit with them for thirty minutes with the goal being to fight prejudice. Each person has a title such as unemployed, bipolar, transgender, refugee and more. Listening to their stories is designed to avoid people judging a book by its cover.

The movement started in 2000 in Denmark, and is now working in over 80 countries around the world. It’s such a great idea. I love it.

So, I wondered what the story would be if you sat down with someone labelled Banker for thirty minutes, and I think the conversation would go something like this:

Hi, my name is Will, and I’ve been an investment banker for the past ten years, but I lost my job last year. This is because I burned out. I tried hard to keep up with the 18 hours a day culture of the bank, but my body could only manage 14. That’s why I lost out. After all, you need to sleep for a few hours and have a life outside the bank, but that’s not the way it works.

The good news is that by working 18 hours a day, I earned a lot of money. I earnt so much that I have three houses; a spouse, a partner and another one we don’t talk about; holidays worldwide at 5* hotels, as well as a few million dollars of assets hidden in near-shore islands.

It was a good life for a person in their twenties, but then I was laid off. I guess it was due to the drink and drugs, or maybe the expenses. Taking clients to strip clubs, and listing my cocaine as a valid part of entertainment expenses didn’t go down well. I should have hidden it better.

And now, I am so down as I am only working here, for free, for eight hours a day. It’s pretty awful. I meet people like you – normal people – and realise that you are not normal. What is normal? My normal is not your normal. My normal is throwing a few million dollars as a bet on a trade, followed by an evening of champagne and meth. Yours? You look like you just eat at McDonalds and drink coffee. How dull.

You’re probably wondering what I want to do now?

Well, I could retire, but I’ve decided to help people like you. That’s why I’m here at the Human Library. I want to be human again.

When I worked at the bank, I stopped being human. I was more like that guy in American Psycho – have you seen that film? It’s about a guy in a bank who feels that people who are homeless are worthless, so he kills them. Obviously, it is a total fiction. I mean no one in their right mind would do that, would they?

Thing is that I quite like this film. It stars Christian Bale who had days like mine: working over-the-top; doing drink and drugs over-the-top; delivering over-the-top results for the bank every day; and then getting caught out. I won’t spoil the ending, but the book and film are interesting as it’s nothing like working for a bank in real-life, is it? I mean what banker would kill someone for fun …

At this point, the conversation ended as the listener no longer had their head attached … but of course, this is all a fiction isn’t it.