I have been a Private Investigator for over three years now and the journey has not been without its hurdles.
France is a country that has many different schools and programs to become a Private Investigator. The programs are relatively well-developed; we are taught about criminal, civil and privacy laws, ethical behavior, security, surveillance techniques, etc.
Universities make a good point to tell us that only a small percentage of us will make a living as Private Investigators, but they do not tell us why.
That is something we learn from the moment we are sent out on our first 400-hour mandatory internships. Universities do not help us find agencies, nor do they give us a list of trusted professionals. They do not want the word out there that they trust some companies more than others, but they absolutely should. Because in doing so they put us in danger, and that is especially true for women.
It is not a secret that this profession is dominated not only by men, but by a specific type of man. The man who did not study to practice this profession, the man whose behavior has been excused for decades, the one who willfully ignores professional boundaries and who counts on our silence and our shame.
Needless to say that my first internship was short-lived, and after I did everything that I could think of to make sure that students could be safer, I reluctantly went back out there to search. Luckily, I found a good environment in which I spent a year working on every aspect of the job.
It was a wonderful experience until I was faced with the second obstacle that universities leave out of their teachings.
Private Investigations agencies in France are not willing to hire Private Investigators. They decide that employees get too lazy once they have a steady paycheck, so they prefer to work with independent contractors. They wait for us to graduate and become self-employed, and then they call us and send us out on assignments.
It does appear to be good practice, as we all prefer to be independent rather than to have to punch a clock and report on our hours, when they are already so inconsistent and complex to manage.
But it isn't a good practice at all. Because those agencies who refuse to hire employees are also reluctant to let us be independent investigators. They want us to be available at all times to work on their cases, and to put their assignments ahead of any other. They want to make sure we do not have time to develop our own client-base or expertise, and that we work exclusively for them. They want us to act as their employees, without paying the taxes required. They do not care about our health, mental or otherwise. We are profit makers.
On top of the fact that it is contrary to labor legislation, this creates a hostile environment between professionals who compete with each other to work for agencies that only have their own interests in mind. Competition as opposed to collaboration.
Contrary to popular belief, our line of work isn't an entirely lonely journey. In fact, to maximize the success rate of a case, one needs at least two investigators collaborating together on it. Which means that we often find ourselves working long surveillances with colleagues.
What happens when you do a fifteen-hour surveillance with a competitor instead of a partner? The success rate goes way down.
Once the mistake occurs, professionals turn on each other to justify the failure to the agency, which will pretend not to understand where the problem lies.
Trust between peers will shatter, and if you decide to stick to your values instead of protecting your profits, you will feel impossibly lonely.
Because more often than not, the people at the head of the agencies who want to use us as employees are led by the aforementioned men. Those individuals whose mindsets and practices are shamelessly stuck in the 1940s and who have been given the power to control the career of young professionals.
We are told to quietly put up with it because we need those people in order to work, pay the bills and put food on the table. These people stay at the head of businesses and we indulge their absurdly inappropriate stories and behavior because, well... we do need to keep the heat on.
Young professionals who get into this line of work because they want to help people find themselves in situations where they have to abdicate their intelligence and dignity at the service of people in power who barely acknowledge them as individuals.
These are the actual reasons why a small percentage of us will make a living as Private Investigators.
Because when you speak out, the phone stops ringing.
This profession is not one that is chosen by default or because it is the obvious choice. It is born out of a spark that we hope to turn into a full-fledged fire. We encounter it in novels, games, movies or TV Shows and cross our fingers that it is in fact a real job.
And while most depictions out there do not do justice to this line of work, the idea that persists is the one where a Private Investigator can make a contribution and a difference in a person's life.
So we take the leap and sacrifice financial security, vacation time, long nights of sleep, birthday parties and Christmases, for the very notion that we can help someone.
The sacrifices we shouldn't have to make are those of our convictions, our standards, our identities and our dignity.
Some of us quit during our studies, some quit as a direct reaction to their internship, some even leave town and change careers altogether in an attempt to erase their experience.
Some start working and simply stop, disheartened and exhausted by the exploitation, the abuse and the realization that profits prevail over human decency.
Businesses violate labor legislation, collaborators turn on each other and law professionals have little to no understanding about what we do and why we do it.
Unfortunately for them, some of us will remain in the fight. We will pivot, start over, read and educate ourselves on the many different specialties that this beautiful profession is made of. We will keep searching for the people who sacrifice so much to help others, and we will join their journey.
Most of all, we will not stop speaking out, no matter the cost.
HPI
- Image by John Towner on Unsplash -