Real Girls, by Laurie Penny

This is the first in a series of short stories that appeared in the Wired Magazine January 2018 issue on work.  They are paywalled.

Real Girls starts with a protagonist with a newly minted degree in English, a lot of debt, and no direction.  Good recipe for desperation.  His girlfriend is ready to give up on him.  Thus he ends up with a gig as a "robot" girlfriend for someone 8 hours away.  The girlfriend is supposed to be a chatbot, but they aren't good enough at it so the company hires text actors.  He's making some money, and his girlfriend is getting interested again--but he can't quite bear things staying just the same.

It's a nice story but not too intense or engaging.  The ending is kind of not motivated by the rest of the story.