Sofio Koridze faces an occupational identity dilemma. The 30-year-old Tbilisi resident graduated with a degree in journalism, but a lack of job opportunities pushed her into the customer-service sector. For four years, she has been enduring long shifts, low wages, and a deep sense of confusion about the disconnect between what she aimed to be and what life pressured her to become.

She is one of thousands of so-called “precariats” crowding Georgia’s job market.

In his book “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class,”British economist Guy Standing defines “precariat” as a working class formed by people with unstable and low-income jobs. In his view, the precariat lacks an “occupational identity” -- the degree to which a person’s self image is attached to his or her career. In Georgia, this is particularly true of the customer-service sector.

Jobs in the sector get among the most damnable ratings in the country on www.jobrate.ge, a website that allows employees to rate anonymously the companies they work for.Employees complain about slavery, nepotism, unbearable conditions, undervalued work; some go as far as to compare their workplaces to gulags.

Certainly, Koridze’s four years of work have not been pleasant. On her first job, she worked 12-hour night shifts in the call center of a private security company, from 9pm until 9am. Struggling to make ends meet, she added several hours for extra cash. It meant a killer schedule of up to 16 hours straight every other day.

“I have changed jobs many times, but I encountered the same problem everywhere. I don’t write some of the jobs in my resume as I don’t want employers to think that I am unreliable.”

Employees like Koridze were contracted as consultants on salaries ranging around 400 laris (163 $) per month, according to the TK. That compares with an official average monthly wage of 940 laris ($384).