I arrived at work at 9.30am. I was excited. It was agency bar work for £7 an hour, but I was at one of the UK’s premier sporting venues and I had a view of the action. However, by the time I reached my workstation, I had completed three separate check-ins, queued for my uniform, locked my phone and wallet into a bag that couldn’t be opened until I signed out at the end of the day, and left all of my belongings in a cloakroom on the other side of the venue.

All of this took 45 minutes – 45 minutes that didn’t appear on my payslip at the end of the day. On closer inspection, neither did the 30-minute lunch break (required by law), nor the 45-minute check-out process. What I believed to be a 12-hour shift – because that’s how long I was booked for – was paid as a 10-hour shift because of the “required standard staff check-in and check-out process”. Welcome to the world of zero-hours contracts.

This is the reality of work for nearly one million people in the UK. The closer I looked at what my job entailed, the more I saw glaring faults in the system. The woman behind me in the check-in queue asked to keep her phone on her, rather than in a zip-locked bag. She was a single mother and needed to make sure that her young children had been picked up from their after-school activities. The compromise reached was that she could keep her phone – so long as it was in a sealed, clear plastic bag, through which she would have to type, when allowed to do so by her manager.

One young man had travelled in from outside London, only to be informed that he was a “spare” and not needed. He was sent home with three hours’ pay: enough to cover his train ticket, plus the cost of a sandwich on the way home. He was swiftly followed by the girl with purple braids in her hair, the boy who hadn’t shaved and the woman who had incorrect footwear – all headed home without pay.

At the bar, the customers were polite and in good spirits. One glass of the house sauvignon blanc cost £6.90 – nearly an hour’s pay. A four-pint round of Pimm’s was £34. A lot of the jollity was being fuelled by expense accounts.

A bar manager took to calling one of the girls “treacle”. The 19-year-old student was told she had “great wrist action” as she mixed a G&T. She visibly squirmed when he asked her to “stop flirting with him”, but she felt powerless. The overweight, balding 40-year-old was her temporary manager; if she started filing complaints, she was unlikely to be given a valuable 12-hour shift again. We agency staff were continually reminded how lucky we were to be working there.

Talking to my colleagues, it was impossible to avoid the subject of Brexit. Some saw it as an opportunity for more Brits to be employed in the long term; others pointed out that such employment was likely to be insecure fruit picking, late-night office cleaning or warehouse assistant jobs. One young man declared: “I’m gonna go drive Uber” – and was greeted with a chorus of laughter.

The eastern Europeans kept quiet during this chat. One woman in her late 20s from Poland was “completely burnt out”. She had a university education and serious office experience back home; she came to England to make a better life for herself. Her English was perfect, she was articulate, there was no joking around – she was there to work. Was this the life she imagined in Britain? “No, but it is so hard here. I work for three agencies and work as many hours as I can. Now, with Britain leaving the EU, I don’t know where I stand.”

When you see the zero-hours world up close, it is clear that no power resides with the worker. Not knowing where your next shift is coming from is a logistical nightmare when you have children, and when you are on a job you may have to surrender your rights to your wallet and phone, so that you aren’t seen texting in front of customers and can’t leave the venue with any misappropriated bank notes. Some managers even time your toilet breaks and take them off your hours.

We are used to hearing politicians and economists claim that “employment has never been higher”, but these are the sorts of jobs underpinning that statistic. Of course, some people like the temporary nature of these roles. However, for many others, they are an exploitative trap.