Chris turned 49 last week. And since he started work at 16, he’s had “hundreds” of jobs. He has narcolepsy, a rare neurological condition that finds sufferers unable to regulate their sleep cycle – and it’s made it difficult for him to find work. “Narcolepsy isn't like what you see on TV,” he explains. “Most of us don't just fall asleep on the spot; we get very tired over half an hour or so and then need to take a nap. To find a job that accommodates that is near on impossible.”

During the 1990s, when Chris first started working, he had jobs that he says lasted a couple of days, a few hours or even less.

So when he was offered a job in the travel industry in 2003, working as a rep, he jumped at the chance. The role was flexible: living and working in a hotel, Chris would help guests for a few hours before being able to go back to sleep. He also frequently took tourists to and from the airport on a shuttle, which gave him another opportunity to get some sleep.

But in 2015, the landscape had changed. Booking holidays online and automated customer service had reduced the need for holiday reps; at the resort Chris worked at, just a quarter of the roles that had been available fifteen years earlier still existed. With complex needs, Chris was unable to continue in his role, and he was forced to leave.

Automation hasn’t just cost him his job, either – it’s also made it more difficult to find new work. “I used to be able to just walk into a shop with a CV, hand it to the manager, if they liked it I’d get a call for an interview,” Chris says. Now, most job applications are automated: you upload your CV and apply online. Job sites often require a lengthy sign up process, as well as regular monitoring of newly available roles.

For someone with narcolepsy, this can be difficult: Chris says he can only look at a computer screen for around thirty minutes to an hour. He describes the process of applying to a part-time, minimum wage role in a charity shop as testing: there were multiple pages and forms to fill in, questions about his past experience as well as screening questions.

Chris has been working with the Shaw Trust for several months, which he describes as an altogether more positive experience. His mentor, Luke, is a trained employment advisor, whose role includes helping people search and apply for jobs, coaching them and helping them develop new strategies to approaching work.

In a sea of unfriendly, impersonal websites, Luke is a breath of fresh air for Chris. “He talks to as a person,” he says. “It’s a much more relaxed atmosphere but the same kind of service as the Job Centre – the first day I went there, I walked out with two jobs to apply for. They were a lot more help.”

As you might expect, Chris is not so positive about automation: he sees it as a way for companies to “maximise their profit”, and would prefer employers to take a more compassionate view of cutting staff roles.

Retraining is an option for workers, he says, but does have concerns about whether this constitutes a robust futureproofing. “How can you be sure that what you’re retraining for isn’t also going to be automated away? There’s no crystal ball, we can’t tell what the workplace is going to be like five years down the line.”

His real hope is for a universal basic income, an idea proposed by economists and social scientists and recently trialled in Finland, which guarantees a fixed monthly income from the government. “That would help me immensely,” he says. “To know that there’s something to fall back on. People work 30 or 40 hours a week now, and they still can’t afford to pay for everything.”

For now, the job search continues. “I'm intelligent, I'm creative, I've got a life experience, a lot of common sense and logic,” Chris says. “Anyone hiring me would be getting a bargain.”