Status
Available
Pages
xi; 335
Collection
Publication
New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member grandpahobo
The author paints a very disturbing and visceral picture of what millions of people are subject to in order to just survive in this country. The lessons I learned from this book are:
1) Be as pleasant and to the point as possible when calling an 800 number. The person on the other end is a PERSON,
2) There is no value in feeling guilty buying stuff from Amazon. The pressures on workers is systemic, its how the business is designed. If orders dropped by 50% tomorrow, they would do things exactly the same way, just with less than have the employees.
3) What this book describes is not capitalism, but modern feudalism. Treating people as disposable parts in a machine is the same, whether the machine is a modern company or a large plot of land owned by a lord.
1) Be as pleasant and to the point as possible when calling an 800 number. The person on the other end is a PERSON,
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just like you. And they have to deal with all sorts of pressures you could not dream of (unless you read this book).2) There is no value in feeling guilty buying stuff from Amazon. The pressures on workers is systemic, its how the business is designed. If orders dropped by 50% tomorrow, they would do things exactly the same way, just with less than have the employees.
3) What this book describes is not capitalism, but modern feudalism. Treating people as disposable parts in a machine is the same, whether the machine is a modern company or a large plot of land owned by a lord.
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LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
Frankly, this is an excellent book. I saw a review that has a problem with the author doing this as a "project". Does that change the reality of her experience. I think not. Emily was a journalist who recently lost her job when the publication she worked for in Philadelphia closed down. She decided
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to take work at Amazon, Convergys, and McDonalds. These are all companies that employ low wage people and use technology to track their every movement. Trying to turn them into the robots they hope will eventually replace them. When you realize that brick and mortar retail is being replaced by Amazon warehouse jobs, you see that this type of work does its best to dehumanized the work environment. For those of us who have always done well paid white collar work, I think it is important that we read a book like this and realize that 80% of the workforce makes less than $30 an hour($60k a year). We enjoy Amazon from the consumer side but it is important to see it from the employee side. It is not pretty. Employees in the fulfillment houses having to walk 10-15 miles a day(are you kidding me) and dealing with time clock pressure. Amazon does not care if you quit because you are easily replaceable. Trump tied into the discontent caused by this type of work environment. Emily's call center and McDonalds experience were equally bad as these companies understaff to wring out the most out of each employee without dealing with the fact that they are people and not robots. Although Emily was able to get out it did not minimize her experience or her observations. Low wage Americans(43% at $15 or less) are too tired and overwhelmed to go to the polls to vote. They are the ones who would benefit the most from real change but they don't have enough energy to react to Trump sound bits about making their world better(not so). For all of us white collar college educated workers who think we work so hard, this book is what you should read. See how most Americans live. Patching together 2-3 bad jobs just to be able to feed their families etc. No wonder real wage growth is way behind GDP growth. Most of the GDP growth goes to the well educated etc. resulting in increased income inequality. Unless we address this, don't be surprised if we continue to elect leaders like Donald Trump who promise a better life but of course don't deliver. Don't pass this book up. Show Less
LibraryThing member amysisson
Years ago, a journalist named Barbara Ehrenreich wrote "Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America", which Emily Guendelsberger credits as inspiration for her own book. Both are women journalists who "went undercover" (although used their real names and never lied about their journalism
In the new book, Guendelsberger does an Amazon "fulfillment center" (employees are not allowed to call them warehouses) during peak holiday season, a call center, and McDonald's.
I was eager to read the new book because I worked briefly at a call center years ago, and I did about 5-6 weeks of McDonald's drive-through during Covid. Her experiences were much worse than mine, but mine were none too good either.
Some take-aways for me:
1) Apparently fast food deliberately understaffs. Someone figured out that if an employee has called out sick, the other workers naturally band together to cover the gap. So the employers decided "Oh, well clearly they can work at this frantic pace all the time, so we'll schedule even fewer employees!" I will say that in the 5-6 weeks I spent at McDonald's, often doing 8 hour shifts overnight, I think I got an actual meal break only one time, in part because I was covering two drive-through lanes, taking cash at the first window, and was also expected to wash dishes in between customers and mop part of the kitchen.
2) Amazon warehouse workers are so physically taxed that they were lining up at the infirmary for over-the-counter pain meds, which wasn't "productive" for Amazon. So Amazon installed vending machines to dispense free OTC pain meds for workers, who swipe their badges to get the meds. Guendelsberger points out that while an initial reaction might be "oh, that's nice of Amazon to give away the pain meds for free," an *actual* nice way of dealing with the problem might be to give workers shorter shifts or more breaks.
3) Not only do call centers time their employees *to the second* on bathroom breaks, the one she worked at had a lovely little practice of changing employee's time clock records. For instance, an employee clocks in and then walks over to their desk, sits down, and logs into the phone system. Management went and changed the time clock records to reflect when the employee logged into the phone system, with the justification that the time spent walking to the desk and sitting down to log in was not "time on the phones" and was therefore not "time spent working."
I highly recommend both books.
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backgrounds), taking low-wage jobs to see what it was like. Ehrenreich did Walmart, hotel housekeeping in Florida, and housecleaning in Maine, if I recall correctly.In the new book, Guendelsberger does an Amazon "fulfillment center" (employees are not allowed to call them warehouses) during peak holiday season, a call center, and McDonald's.
I was eager to read the new book because I worked briefly at a call center years ago, and I did about 5-6 weeks of McDonald's drive-through during Covid. Her experiences were much worse than mine, but mine were none too good either.
Some take-aways for me:
1) Apparently fast food deliberately understaffs. Someone figured out that if an employee has called out sick, the other workers naturally band together to cover the gap. So the employers decided "Oh, well clearly they can work at this frantic pace all the time, so we'll schedule even fewer employees!" I will say that in the 5-6 weeks I spent at McDonald's, often doing 8 hour shifts overnight, I think I got an actual meal break only one time, in part because I was covering two drive-through lanes, taking cash at the first window, and was also expected to wash dishes in between customers and mop part of the kitchen.
2) Amazon warehouse workers are so physically taxed that they were lining up at the infirmary for over-the-counter pain meds, which wasn't "productive" for Amazon. So Amazon installed vending machines to dispense free OTC pain meds for workers, who swipe their badges to get the meds. Guendelsberger points out that while an initial reaction might be "oh, that's nice of Amazon to give away the pain meds for free," an *actual* nice way of dealing with the problem might be to give workers shorter shifts or more breaks.
3) Not only do call centers time their employees *to the second* on bathroom breaks, the one she worked at had a lovely little practice of changing employee's time clock records. For instance, an employee clocks in and then walks over to their desk, sits down, and logs into the phone system. Management went and changed the time clock records to reflect when the employee logged into the phone system, with the justification that the time spent walking to the desk and sitting down to log in was not "time on the phones" and was therefore not "time spent working."
I highly recommend both books.
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LibraryThing member bragan
Way back in the 1990s, while I was finishing college, I worked fast food for a couple of years. It was the worst, most stressful, most dehumanizing experience of my life, and when I left I swore that I'd live in a cardboard box on the street before I ever did it again. So I thought I had a pretty
Emily Guendelsberger worked three different notoriously terrible jobs in the course of researching this book (although part of that was because she'd lost her cushier journalist gig and needed the money). She was an Amazon warehouse employee over the Christmas rush, worked in a call center doing customer support for AT&T, and did a stint at McDonald's. And, again, even though I thought I knew just how bad this stuff could be, the results were still pretty eye-opening to me. Especially the call center. Hoooo, boy, do her descriptions of how these places work explain a lot about some of my own experiences with customer support. And as terrible as their practices make things for the customer, they're so, so much worse for the people who have to spend eight hours a day on the other end and are forbidden to ever hang up.
It's all infuriating and depressing, and, as Guendelsberger points out, it may also explain a lot about why so many people in America seem to be, not to put to fine a point on it, losing their f*ck*ng minds. Half of us are overworked to the point of actual insanity, and most of the folks with the actual power have no understanding whatsoever of what the problem is.
Infuriating and depressing as the subject matter is, though, Guendelsberger's writing is a joy to read. She's candid, thoughtful, warm, down-to-earth, and often funny. She's also not actually interested in doing a hatchet job on any of the companies she talks about here, and, indeed, is willing to credit them when they actually do something decent and to quote both the positive and negative things her co-workers had to say about them. It's the systematic problems with how we view work and the complete wrongness of expecting humans to function like robots that she's more concerned with. And, to that end, she delivers a lot of interesting, engagingly written, easily understandable background on things like the history of companies' obsession with maximally efficient operations or the effects of stress on the human body.
I definitely recommend it, whether you've ever been among the ranks of the burger-flippers yourself or not.
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vivid idea of just how bad these kinds of jobs are. But I was wrong, because at least back then we didn't have computers monitoring our performance, timing us to the second, and using algorithms to schedule workers such that there are always just enough people to almost handle the workload if they work flat-out to the limits of their mental and physical ability all the time. All of which is apparently absolutely standard practice these days, and has completely predictable negative effects on people... especially when you factor in pay too low to live on, lack of health insurance, and difficulty getting time off to deal with the rest of their lives.Emily Guendelsberger worked three different notoriously terrible jobs in the course of researching this book (although part of that was because she'd lost her cushier journalist gig and needed the money). She was an Amazon warehouse employee over the Christmas rush, worked in a call center doing customer support for AT&T, and did a stint at McDonald's. And, again, even though I thought I knew just how bad this stuff could be, the results were still pretty eye-opening to me. Especially the call center. Hoooo, boy, do her descriptions of how these places work explain a lot about some of my own experiences with customer support. And as terrible as their practices make things for the customer, they're so, so much worse for the people who have to spend eight hours a day on the other end and are forbidden to ever hang up.
It's all infuriating and depressing, and, as Guendelsberger points out, it may also explain a lot about why so many people in America seem to be, not to put to fine a point on it, losing their f*ck*ng minds. Half of us are overworked to the point of actual insanity, and most of the folks with the actual power have no understanding whatsoever of what the problem is.
Infuriating and depressing as the subject matter is, though, Guendelsberger's writing is a joy to read. She's candid, thoughtful, warm, down-to-earth, and often funny. She's also not actually interested in doing a hatchet job on any of the companies she talks about here, and, indeed, is willing to credit them when they actually do something decent and to quote both the positive and negative things her co-workers had to say about them. It's the systematic problems with how we view work and the complete wrongness of expecting humans to function like robots that she's more concerned with. And, to that end, she delivers a lot of interesting, engagingly written, easily understandable background on things like the history of companies' obsession with maximally efficient operations or the effects of stress on the human body.
I definitely recommend it, whether you've ever been among the ranks of the burger-flippers yourself or not.
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LibraryThing member DougAnn
Should be essential reading for everyone to help us all develop empathy for those working in low-paid service jobs.
LibraryThing member LAKobow
What a fantastic book! I've worked many crappy low-wage jobs in my life, but I've been out of that game for nearly a decade. Even if you think you know what it's like, if it's been 10 years or more, you likely don't know what it's like to work those jobs today. The low-wage work environment has
The author takes jobs at an Amazon warehouse, Convergys call center, and a McDonald's, and describes the experiences in harrowing detail. These types of environments are highly automated, expect employees to act like a robot, and encourage you to not be a messy human with biological and familial needs.
The point is not that these particular companies are terrible places to work, but that these industries have evolved unilaterally to be even more dehumanizing for workers, for very little pay. She also gets into some of the psychology of what this type of environment does to a person's outlook, and how it may have resulted in our Trumpian presidency.
This should be required reading for everyone.
P.S. This book gave me horrible visceral flashbacks to my call center days. Now I'm having nightmares, ugh!
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changed extremely swiftly, and it's only gotten worse for the worker.The author takes jobs at an Amazon warehouse, Convergys call center, and a McDonald's, and describes the experiences in harrowing detail. These types of environments are highly automated, expect employees to act like a robot, and encourage you to not be a messy human with biological and familial needs.
The point is not that these particular companies are terrible places to work, but that these industries have evolved unilaterally to be even more dehumanizing for workers, for very little pay. She also gets into some of the psychology of what this type of environment does to a person's outlook, and how it may have resulted in our Trumpian presidency.
This should be required reading for everyone.
P.S. This book gave me horrible visceral flashbacks to my call center days. Now I'm having nightmares, ugh!
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LibraryThing member BookAnonJeff
Intriguing Premise Hurt By Lack of Evidence. This is one of those books that has an intriguing premise and brings some often overlooked aspects to the table and is thus worthy of and even needed in the national conversation, but that is ultimately tainted by the author's own biases and lack of
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empirical evidence and lack of extensive bibliography. The author does a phenomenal job of showing what it is like to work in the environments she chose to work in - an Amazon Fulfillment Center, a call center, and a franchise McDonald's - and the people who work there. But as she admits repeatedly, she could always leave at any time she wanted - while she rarely if ever mentions what her husband does for work, she does mention during one ordeal at the call center that her father in law is a doctor - and the entire point of getting these jobs was to "test the waters" to see what people who worked them were really like and what their concerns really were. Very well written, just with significant flaws in reasoning due to her own biases, particularly in her ultimate conclusions. Could have been far stronger, but still a recommended read. Show Less
LibraryThing member Authentico
Wonder what it's like working at a low-wage job in America? This book explains what it's like, how they sleep, what their life outside of work is like, and how it affects more than just themselves.
"At SDF8, I pop Advil like candy all day, not even bothering to track when my last dose was. I don’t
While this book is really centred in America (and American companies), the experiences are applicable for almost any low-wage job in the world. If you don't like American-centred books then skip this one.
"but my smugness fades as I see that everything, including my car, has been aggressively coated in ice. It’s been a mild winter so far, but of course it’s freezing two hours before sunrise. You idiot."
"It’s been eight months since I’ve had a steady paycheck. My savings are gone, and Car Life seems like a mild inconvenience compared to jacking up my credit-card balance even further or having another miserable forty-five-minute commute every day."
There were some times that a word didn't make sense in context with the other words, I'm not sure if that's an error on editing.
The writer loved to include stories from the past, which got repetitive after a while, so I tended to skip over them, and I didn't miss out on any context or part of the writer's experience.
The writer knows how to included humour and good jokes, I wish they included them more to break up the book.
"Today, my bracelet recorded more than thirty thousand steps. I start giggling helplessly as I work out the math. That’s more than fifteen miles. Fifteen! F*ck*ng! Miles! It’s the funniest, most horrible thing I’ve ever heard."
"Scrooge literally has a better time-off policy than Amazon"
There is a huge amount of detail in this book, sometimes it's great to have, and sometimes I found it wasn't needed.
"But, more important, if Vicki’s saying what I think she’s saying—if it’s part of her job to change our official time-clock records to reflect only the time we’re logged in to the phones—that sounds an awful lot like wage theft."
The author touched on the different class system (like those who work low-wage jobs, and those who work in tech jobs). I almost wish the author spent more time covering that.
"Because if you don’t really know anybody outside your class, you can’t really understand the embarrassingly large disconnect between the actual working class and the kind of people who shape public opinion and policy."
"Do you want to win elections? Acknowledge that something’s wrong and offer people a different why.
So, why can’t employers find good workers to fill open positions? Because the drawbacks of the jobs they’re offering outweigh the benefits.
Why do people vote against their self-interest? Because when national politics hasn’t truly improved the lives of the non wealthy in decades and is covered like sports, why take it any more seriously than professional wrestling?
If the data says everything’s so great, why is America freaking the f*ck out? Because the systems we use to compile and analyze data don’t consider America freaking the f*ck out to be relevant information."
The conclusion chapter I found to be weird as it does wrap the book up, it does so in a way that requires you to remember almost random things that were mentioned in the book.
The author does include footnotes (in the eBook version) which I found helped to provide more context, and some provided humour.
Overall, an interesting book if you are interested in American low-wage jobs and what those people go through.
"After that, I knew not to be honest with customers in the same visceral way I know not to stick my hand in a fire."
"even the cheapest, most discounted motel is completely unsustainable for a single person making $9.50 an hour"
"some part of me finally accepts that you need walls between you and the customers to survive here, and I start building them. I still do everything I’m supposed to, of course. I just… stop caring. Caring makes you vulnerable."
"I get to leave"
"At SDF8, I pop Advil like candy all day, not even bothering to track when my last dose was. I don’t
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talk to anyone at break or lunch; I’m too tired. My head pounds, and I feel generally dull. By the end of my shift, I’m almost staggering from the stabbing pain in my feet and trying to lean some of my weight on my cart as I push it, as if it’s a walker."While this book is really centred in America (and American companies), the experiences are applicable for almost any low-wage job in the world. If you don't like American-centred books then skip this one.
"but my smugness fades as I see that everything, including my car, has been aggressively coated in ice. It’s been a mild winter so far, but of course it’s freezing two hours before sunrise. You idiot."
"It’s been eight months since I’ve had a steady paycheck. My savings are gone, and Car Life seems like a mild inconvenience compared to jacking up my credit-card balance even further or having another miserable forty-five-minute commute every day."
There were some times that a word didn't make sense in context with the other words, I'm not sure if that's an error on editing.
The writer loved to include stories from the past, which got repetitive after a while, so I tended to skip over them, and I didn't miss out on any context or part of the writer's experience.
The writer knows how to included humour and good jokes, I wish they included them more to break up the book.
"Today, my bracelet recorded more than thirty thousand steps. I start giggling helplessly as I work out the math. That’s more than fifteen miles. Fifteen! F*ck*ng! Miles! It’s the funniest, most horrible thing I’ve ever heard."
"Scrooge literally has a better time-off policy than Amazon"
There is a huge amount of detail in this book, sometimes it's great to have, and sometimes I found it wasn't needed.
"But, more important, if Vicki’s saying what I think she’s saying—if it’s part of her job to change our official time-clock records to reflect only the time we’re logged in to the phones—that sounds an awful lot like wage theft."
The author touched on the different class system (like those who work low-wage jobs, and those who work in tech jobs). I almost wish the author spent more time covering that.
"Because if you don’t really know anybody outside your class, you can’t really understand the embarrassingly large disconnect between the actual working class and the kind of people who shape public opinion and policy."
"Do you want to win elections? Acknowledge that something’s wrong and offer people a different why.
So, why can’t employers find good workers to fill open positions? Because the drawbacks of the jobs they’re offering outweigh the benefits.
Why do people vote against their self-interest? Because when national politics hasn’t truly improved the lives of the non wealthy in decades and is covered like sports, why take it any more seriously than professional wrestling?
If the data says everything’s so great, why is America freaking the f*ck out? Because the systems we use to compile and analyze data don’t consider America freaking the f*ck out to be relevant information."
The conclusion chapter I found to be weird as it does wrap the book up, it does so in a way that requires you to remember almost random things that were mentioned in the book.
The author does include footnotes (in the eBook version) which I found helped to provide more context, and some provided humour.
Overall, an interesting book if you are interested in American low-wage jobs and what those people go through.
"After that, I knew not to be honest with customers in the same visceral way I know not to stick my hand in a fire."
"even the cheapest, most discounted motel is completely unsustainable for a single person making $9.50 an hour"
"some part of me finally accepts that you need walls between you and the customers to survive here, and I start building them. I still do everything I’m supposed to, of course. I just… stop caring. Caring makes you vulnerable."
"I get to leave"
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LibraryThing member jonerthon
This is a pretty solid story on its own, and can be read as an updated take on what the recently passed Barbara Ehrenreich achieved in her Nickel and Dimed--getting a firsthand look at how it works (or doesn't work) to survive on low-wage entry level jobs by applying and working at them.
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Guendelsberger chose the decidedly 21st century jobs of an Amazon warehouse picker (in Kentucky) and an AT&T call center worker (in North Carolina), as well as at a McDonald's in San Francisco, to understand what it took to survive in each of them. This is an intriguing look at what's happening behind the scenes of these employers, but more than that a realization that generally these workers band together to keep one another going. The major example of this is when two of her call center coworkers even invited the author to move in with her, when they learned she was bouncing between a motel and sleeping in her car, clearly not circumstances that lead to one giving their best work. Show Less
LibraryThing member LyndaInOregon
I have only one recommendation: READ. THIS. BOOK.
Right now. Buy it. Borrow it. I’m not sure I can even stop short of saying steal it if you can’t lay hands on it any other way.
If you’re a Boomer at or near retirement, and you can’t understand why certain job sectors complain that they
If you’re a Gen Xer whose kids should be entering the labor market but are still living in your basement and you can’t figure out why – read this book.
If you’re in Gen Z and you’re struggling to comprehend why the older generations keep preaching the value (and rewards) of hard work but all you’re seeing are soul-crushing, spirit-destroying hell-holes that leave you sick, dispirited, and damaged – read this book.
Emily Guendelsberger has written an absolutely stunning, compelling, and deeply disturbing study of what low-wage work is doing to the blue-collar labor force “and how it drives America insane” – sometimes literally. It’s an update and an expansion on the same themes Barbara Ehrenreich tackled in Nickel and Dimed that goes beyond what it’s like to be caught in the low-wage maelstrom to look at why and how computerization, standardization, and megacorporations have combined to remove every last vestige of humanity from the 21st-century workplace.
After the small weekly newspaper for which she worked went out of business, Guendelsberger conceived a project that involved working for three of the 900-pound-gorillas of American industry – Amazon, AT&T, and McDonald’s, and reporting not just on the difficulty of managing to exist on what appears to be “market standard” (or higher) wages, but on the myriad ways in which corporate policy disrespects and abuses its workers. From Amazon’s restriction of bathroom breaks for its warehouse pickers (apparently ignoring the fact that Amnesty International considers denying or restricting excretory functions a form of torture) to AT&T call centers’ routine “adjustment” of employee timecards so that they are not paid for the minutes per day they may spend between the time they clock in and the time they actually take their first call (a practice which denies individual workers a few dollars per day but saves the corporation billions) to McDonald’s last-minute scheduling and general avoidance of giving employees a full 40-hour week (which gets the company off the hook for paid benefits), the author bucks up and does each job, but admits that the one thing that allowed her to survive was the knowledge that “I get to leave”.
She also looks at various scientific studies on the results of stress in lab animals, and extrapolates many of those same stress responses to contemporary issues and political movements, writing:
So why is America so crazy? It’s the inescapable chronic stress built into the way we work and live. It’s the insane idea that an honest day’s work means suppressing your humanity, dignity, family, and other nonwork priorities in exchange for low wages that make home life constantly stressful, too. Is it surprising that Americans have started exhibiting unhelpful physical, mental, and social adaptations to chronic stress en masse? Our bodies believe this is the apocalypse.
And on top of that, people with power seem totally blind to how dire life has gotten for much of the country. The state of the union is always strong. GDP is up. Unemployment is low. Everything’s fine. They’re so insulated from the real world that they don’t or can’t understand that, for most people, our current system is obviously broken. That’s why ‘Make America Great Again’ caught on while Clinton’s counter that ‘America Is Already Great’ didn’t – people aren’t stupid. They know something isn’t right.
Right now. Buy it. Borrow it. I’m not sure I can even stop short of saying steal it if you can’t lay hands on it any other way.
If you’re a Boomer at or near retirement, and you can’t understand why certain job sectors complain that they
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can’t fill vacancies even as people are falling into homelessness – read this book.If you’re a Gen Xer whose kids should be entering the labor market but are still living in your basement and you can’t figure out why – read this book.
If you’re in Gen Z and you’re struggling to comprehend why the older generations keep preaching the value (and rewards) of hard work but all you’re seeing are soul-crushing, spirit-destroying hell-holes that leave you sick, dispirited, and damaged – read this book.
Emily Guendelsberger has written an absolutely stunning, compelling, and deeply disturbing study of what low-wage work is doing to the blue-collar labor force “and how it drives America insane” – sometimes literally. It’s an update and an expansion on the same themes Barbara Ehrenreich tackled in Nickel and Dimed that goes beyond what it’s like to be caught in the low-wage maelstrom to look at why and how computerization, standardization, and megacorporations have combined to remove every last vestige of humanity from the 21st-century workplace.
After the small weekly newspaper for which she worked went out of business, Guendelsberger conceived a project that involved working for three of the 900-pound-gorillas of American industry – Amazon, AT&T, and McDonald’s, and reporting not just on the difficulty of managing to exist on what appears to be “market standard” (or higher) wages, but on the myriad ways in which corporate policy disrespects and abuses its workers. From Amazon’s restriction of bathroom breaks for its warehouse pickers (apparently ignoring the fact that Amnesty International considers denying or restricting excretory functions a form of torture) to AT&T call centers’ routine “adjustment” of employee timecards so that they are not paid for the minutes per day they may spend between the time they clock in and the time they actually take their first call (a practice which denies individual workers a few dollars per day but saves the corporation billions) to McDonald’s last-minute scheduling and general avoidance of giving employees a full 40-hour week (which gets the company off the hook for paid benefits), the author bucks up and does each job, but admits that the one thing that allowed her to survive was the knowledge that “I get to leave”.
She also looks at various scientific studies on the results of stress in lab animals, and extrapolates many of those same stress responses to contemporary issues and political movements, writing:
So why is America so crazy? It’s the inescapable chronic stress built into the way we work and live. It’s the insane idea that an honest day’s work means suppressing your humanity, dignity, family, and other nonwork priorities in exchange for low wages that make home life constantly stressful, too. Is it surprising that Americans have started exhibiting unhelpful physical, mental, and social adaptations to chronic stress en masse? Our bodies believe this is the apocalypse.
And on top of that, people with power seem totally blind to how dire life has gotten for much of the country. The state of the union is always strong. GDP is up. Unemployment is low. Everything’s fine. They’re so insulated from the real world that they don’t or can’t understand that, for most people, our current system is obviously broken. That’s why ‘Make America Great Again’ caught on while Clinton’s counter that ‘America Is Already Great’ didn’t – people aren’t stupid. They know something isn’t right.
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2019
Physical description
xi, 335 p.; 25 cm
ISBN
9780316509008