On the Clock
What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
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4.4 • 16 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age," (Salon) the bitingly funny, eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved world of hourly low-wage labor
After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she travelled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.
Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. Offering an up-close portrait of America's actual "essential workers," On the Clock examines the broken social safety net as well as an economy that has purposely had all the slack drained out and converted to profit. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest - and how low wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity.
On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane for millions of Americans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this spiritual sequel to Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 Nickel and Dimed, journalist Guendelsberger takes jobs at an Amazon fulfillment warehouse, an AT&T call center, and a McDonald's franchise to investigate the sheer implausibility of living on minimum wage and the Kafkaesque features of service industry work. These include the Tylenol- and Advil-dispensing vending machines at the Amazon warehouse, a symbol of the excruciating pain that is an expected part of the job; bosses changing time sheets to deduct minutes employees spent in the bathroom; and screaming customers flinging condiment packets. Guendelsberger's coworkers are charismatic and charming, and completely unaware that they deserve a lot better from their employers: one of her fellow employees suffers a panic attack that requires emergency services and another attempts dental surgery on herself. Interspersed throughout are references to early 20th-century moguls like Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford (who pioneered the use of assembly lines to control workers' pace, a predecessor to Amazon's pace-tracking practices), giving historical background on how the plight of today's overburdened working class came to be. Guendelsberger's narration is vivid, humorous, and honest; she admits to the feelings of despair, panic, and shame that these jobs frequently inspire, allowing for a more complex and complete picture of the experience. This is a riveting window into minimum-wage work and the subsistence living it engenders.
Customer Reviews
Love the work. I also found one minor error in Spanish.
I love the work Emily Guendelsberger is doing here.
I want editors to be aware of one error: Guendelsberger quotes a Cuban man as saying, “Siempre va a te ver.” As can be confirmed by any Google Search, the only place this phrasing seems to be found is in her book. Any Spanish speaker would naturally say “siempre te va a ver” or “siempre va a verte”. It is possible that the person she quotes said it like this, but weird. For example, if I say “They are going to see you always” and am quoted as saying, “They are you going to see always,” the “you” (or, “te”) would just sound weird in that part of the sentence.
Much thanks to Emily Guendelsberger for the this valuable work. I hope this especially creative response to the loss of her job will raise awareness of and for working people in this country and around the world!
Fabulous writing
Written by a news reporter. Extremely well researched. The reader gets to meet so many people they can easily feel they know and empathize with them.
This books strikes me as required college reading. So much discussion worthy events.
It is changing my shopping habits and calls to customer service. Dining choices, as well, are changing.
Consumers need to understand the shopping experience better and this book will really clarify.
Totally a five star book.
On The Clock
The author got side tracked a lot explaining the evolution of the fight or flight response, Fredrick Taylor’s scientific approach to labor efficiencies, etc. I found myself skimming a lot of the book the didn’t deal with the specifics of working at the three companies she was investigating. It felt like there was way too much extraneous filler. I finished the book, but I have to say I think the author missed an opportunity to tell a bigger story about 21st century jobs in America.