EXPOSED
This is a residual catch-all — companions and sitters, wedding and funeral attendants, chaperones, bath and locker room attendants, doula-adjacent and non-medical support roles — and the modal worker spends the day physically present with a client, escorting, assisting, supervising, and reassuring. Almost none of that is text or screen work AI can take, and no robot can walk a frail client to the bathroom or calm a nervous bride. What is exposed is the coordination layer around the work: scheduling, client matching, intake paperwork, activity planning, and the platform middlemen who currently connect these workers to clients.
Tasks largely resist digitisation. Walking a frail companion client to the toilet, holding a bride's train at the church door, or staying awake overnight as a sitter are tasks no software executes — 15 rather than 18 because the paperwork these workers do carry (intake forms, activity logs, shift notes, mileage and hour reporting) plus the client-matching and scheduling that fills the gaps is already being absorbed by apps.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. The work happens in other people's homes, hotel ballrooms, funeral chapels, locker rooms and pool decks — uncontrolled spaces with wet floors, unpredictable stairs, agitated or grieving people, and physical contact from a steadying arm to lifting a wheelchair footrest, which is why this sits at 16 and not higher only because it rarely involves heavy machinery or clinical procedures.
No licence, no signature requirement. Companion and sitter work is specifically carved out of most state nurse-practice acts precisely because no licence is required — a background check, CPR card, and sometimes a food-handler or pool-attendant permit is the ceiling, so a 3 reflects screening, not credentialing, and the agency's insurance carries the exposure rather than the worker's name.
Some relationship component. A family choosing a sitter for their mother, or a funeral home sending the same attendant to greet the same congregation, is buying that specific person's manner — but 12 rather than 16 because agency and platform staffing means substitutions happen weekly, shifts get covered by whoever is available, and most wedding or locker-room assignments end when the event does.
Meaningful discretion. Real calls happen — deciding a client is confused enough to phone the family, deciding a chaperoned teenager needs to be separated from a group, deciding a guest is too intoxicated to drive from the reception — but the standing instruction is escalate to the agency, the nurse, or the family, so at 8 the discretion is about recognising a situation, not owning the resolution.
Has AI actually changed your work?