On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger

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 traveled 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. On the Clock takes us behind the scenes of the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce to understand the future of work in America--and its present. 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 to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Economics, Sociology, Politics, Business, Audiobook

335 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2019

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

To see the review with all the pics go to by blog: https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....


For Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the author took a series of low-paying positions so she could research the difficulty of 'making it' on a minimum wage salary. The verdict: it's almost impossible if you have a family.


Emily Guendelsberger

This follow-up book by journalist Emily Guendelsberger explores a similar theme. When Guendelsberger's Philadelphia newspaper closed in 2015, the writer took a succession of service jobs so she could examine the day-to-day experience of low-wage work in America. Emily's ultimate goal was to raise the awareness of influential people, most of whom are "incredibly insulated from how miserable and dehumanizing the daily experience of work has gotten."

Emily's three service jobs were: a picker at an Amazon fulfillment center (warehouse) near Louisville, Kentucky during peak season; a customer service representative at a Convergys call-center in Hickory, North Carolina; and an employee at a busy McDonald's in San Francisco, California.


Convergys call center

***

The Amazon fulfillment center near Louisville, Kentucky is huge. It covers twenty-five acres, contains more than 2.5 million square feet of storage space, and can hold thirty million items. A picker like Emily collects items from shelves in the warehouse, loads them into a cart, and brings them to a conveyor belt. The goods are then carried to packers who ready them for shipping.

The job requirements for a picker include:
- walking 5 to 15 miles or more per 8-12 hour day
- frequently lifting and moving items weighing 25-30 pounds
- climbing and descending stairs
- regular bending, crouching, kneeling, and reaching above the head

Employees must work schedules that include nights, weekends and holidays; work overtime if required; and work shifts that change without notice. There's no time off during peak periods (so don't plan to attend your niece's wedding), and there are no benefits of any kind (so you'd better not get seriously injured).




Fulfillment Center

A moment of rest is considered 'time theft', and employees accumulate 'points' for being late, leaving early, taking an extra minute at break time, spending too much time in the bathroom; and so on. If you violate the rules a manager will come talk to you. If you accumulate six points you're terminated.

Amazon knows exactly how your day is spent because the scanner gun that tells you what to pick also uploads your location and how long it's been since your last bar-code scan in real time. So Big Brother IS watching you.

This scheme of scientific worker micro-management began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1856. Emily describes Taylor's ideas in some detail, but essentially Taylor determined "how much a first-rate [factory worker] should be able to do in a day, then used that to calculate a rate for all workers." Anyone who didn't meet this top goal was considered lazy, stupid and untrustworthy (that is, purposely shirking). Employees working under this regimen constantly complained of "overwork, exhaustion, and the mind-numbing monotony of the work", and Taylorism fell out of fashion in the 1930s.

Nevertheless, the premise that "workers are lazy, stupid, and never to be trusted became the undercurrent of American management, from Ford's assembly lines to Taco Bell's decree that every car at the drive-through must be greeted within four seconds of pulling up."

Thus the grueling pace at Amazon, whose computer algorithms keep pickers scurrying all day AND arrange routes so employees don't get close enough to say hello or (heaven forbid) chat for a few seconds. Thus the job is physically arduous as well as lonely and boring.


Pickers in an Amazon fulfillment center have routes that keep them apart

Emily thoroughly immerses the reader in the painful, soul-sucking days she spent at Amazon, but to sum it up in her own words: "At [the warehouse], I pop Advil like candy all day, not even bothering to track when my last dose was. I don't 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. The next morning, I wake up feeling even worse. The day again goes by in a blur of pain and exhaustion, then I fall asleep in my clothes again." And so on.

According to the Harvard Business Review, people with these kinds of jobs inevitably feel "depleted, diminished, disenfranchised, demoralized, and disengaged at work." Thus depression sets in, and workers - desperate to feel better - engage in self-help like eating comfort food, smoking, abusing drugs, etc. (For Emily, self-help was McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, and cigarettes.)

To be fair, Emily did meet a person or two who thrived at Amazon. Her co-worker Blair, for instance, noted: "I love that I go to work, I clock in, I do my job, I clock out. Every other job I've had I always ended up being the unpaid janitor. I tend to take work home with me, especially in the restaurant industry (her previous job). But I know Amazon would exist fine without me, and I kind of like that. I LIKE being a number."

Blair laments, however, that she spends very little time with her son, who generally stays with her mother. And Blair worries that robots will replace her one day soon, since the industry is clearly heading in that direction.

After Emily's last shift at the Amazon warehouse, on Christmas Eve, she goes to karaoke night with some of her co-workers. "The next morning," she writes, "I wake up with a tremendous hangover, pack up, and start the twelve hour drive back home. "I GET TO LEAVE", I think as I pull onto the highway.

***

Call centers like Convergys are often outsourced to India or the Philippines, but the industry also employs about five million workers in the United States. According to Emily, "the sector is profitable and growing, and its labor practices are likely to spread."

Call center representatives follow rigid protocols. A worker observes: Reps are bounded by scripts and rules. We cannot say anything outside or we get the boot. We're so heavily scripted we might as well be robots. And the system reports what reps are doing every second of every shift they work. (Sound familiar?)

Convergys handles calls for many different businesses, such as Comcast, Dish Network, Verizon, and Walmart. Emily is assigned to AT&T mobility sales and service, and starts her employment with 20 other reps in a weeks-long training session.

The trainer, called Kimberly, tells the new hires that the job is going to be stressful because it's fast-paced and they'll be pushed to make sales, even to customers who call in to complain/report problems. Kimberly goes on to say, "You will deal with the worst of the worst. You will have people who call in who are just downright rude, and they are nasty, and they do not care.

Employees are allowed 12 'points' - for being late; leaving early; taking a day off; etc. - and bad attendance gets you fired.

By the end of the training period, almost half of Emily's class has quit. The remaining reps have more or less mastered the various computer programs needed to assist customers, which are "so poorly integrated that not only do you have to copy and paste addresses by hand, you can also only do it one line at a time."

Program juggling takes time, especially for newbies, and a caller may bark a curt "Hey, are you paying attention?" before they escalate to cursing and shouting. Reps are NEVER permitted to talk back or hang up on a customer, and during one aggressive call Emily describes herself as "a stammering, shaking, frog-voiced, teary mess."

When an even more hostile customer unleashes a torrent of furious shouting and cursing because Emily can't open his account without a password (which he forgot), her body goes rigid, blood roars in her ears as rage and adrenaline shoot through her body, and she (mentally) directs a LOT of foul language toward the man. (The language is in the book, but I'm being considerate of sensitive eyes.)

These kinds of experiences lead to anxiety about EVERY call, because it just might be a screamer. And logging off your phone between calls to calm yourself - even for a few moments - is considered time theft.


Call center phone banks

The turnover rate at Convergys is very high, "like replacing every single AT&T rep in the building every five months." The costs associated with this are enormous, so you'd think the company would change it's employment practices, but no. It's apparently more profitable to constantly train new people than to have satisfied employees.

Emily notes, "The customer is always right policies are common in customer service, and they breed a particularly nasty type of despair. At Convergys, even when a customer was worth almost nothing to the company- the habitual liars trying to get fees waived; the clearly insane; the people months behind on their bills - the worst customer still had more value to the company than the best rep. So you'd better apologize, grovel, and swallow your pride, because your dignity is valued at zero."

The problem with this particular kind of work isn't physical exertion but mental stress. Emily observes that the stress response, also called fight-or-flight, helped our ancestors survive. If a predator was stalking a cave man, for instance, "his heart rate would increase; his blood pressure would rise; his pupils would dilate; his ears would become more sensitive to sound; and his perception of the world would be dialed up to eleven. He would need to do something right f***ing now", like run for his life!

In modern times, our body's stress response - when people repeatedly screech at us, for example - is the same, but we have nowhere to run. Thus we may eventually become anxious and depressed. Emily recalls being depressed at a previous time in her life, and says she "had trouble sleeping; was angry, irritable, and negative; lost the desire to see friends; felt strange and empty; and thought everything was stupid and pointless." Working at a call center for any length of time may cause similar feelings.

After Emily's last shift at Convergys she has a cigarette at the outside picnic table, gets in her car, and as she's driving away thinks, "I GET TO LEAVE, I GET TO LEAVE, I GET TO LEAVE....."

***

The McDonald's Emily works at in San Francisco is especially busy. It's blocks from the headquarters of many gigantic tech companies - Uber, Twitter, Reddit, Craigslist, Airbnb, Pinterest, Yelp, and more. It also attracts a large number of homeless people. One Yelp review comments:
"This location ALWAYS has homeless people hanging around inside the restaurant or lurking/passed out directly outside. It is impossible to enter or leave without stepping over someone or encountering a panhandler begging for change."


Employees at McDonald's have to hustle

At first, Emily doesn't mind the fast food job. She's constantly on the go but says, "I do get genuine satisfaction from making customers happy, and that's a lot easier here than it was at Convergys."

Working the service counter (after rudimentary training), a McDonald's worker is instructed to smile and say: "Hello. How may I help you?" When the customer places an order the employee works the cash register, then has to assemble the meal in a bag or on a tray, with the accompanying napkins, straws, condiments, etc. The worker also makes many items herself - sodas, oatmeal, coffee, ice cream cones, shakes, McFlurries, smoothies....and fits all that in between taking and assembling other orders.

Other duties include helping people who can't figure out the credit card machine, or who use coupons, or who pay with apps. The employee also deals with the new hassle of delivery services, like Uber Eats, for example. Moreover, she restocks condiments and napkins and cups and straws a couple of times each shift, between taking and assembling orders. And she makes sure she never ever runs out of coffee.

Emily writes, "[The employee] is on various steps of a dance across two or three orders simultaneously whenever she has a line. And I've had a line for all but about five minutes of the thirty-odd hours I've been flying solo at McDonald's." In fact, the line NEVER ends.

The eternal line is purposely built into the system. Computers predict the exact number of customers who will show up at every hour of every day, and this allows supervisors to schedule the smallest number of employees who can just barely handle the load by going full tilt for their entire shift.

A side effect of the unending line is angry entitled customers who act out - sometimes by yelling, sometimes by cursing, sometimes by throwing things at the server (or all three). Emily describes an interaction with a difficult woman who - when her 'special order' (which takes longer) isn't delivered quickly enough - slaps the counter and yells, "Come on come on come on come on come on, I've got to go!" The customer then threatens to leave before jabbing a finger at Emily and saying, "I'm not waiting any longer! YOU get me my food, RIGHT NOW!" Once the customer gets her bag of food, she barks, "Honey mustard! Get me honey mustard!"

By now, Emily's hands are shaking with fury, and as she leans over to drop the packets of honey mustard into the bag, one pops out and bounces across the counter. The screamer scoops it up and hurls it at Emily's chest, where it explodes.

This is the last straw and Emily curses and rushes off to hide in the freezer before returning to the counter. The author writes, "The rest of the shift sucks. I feel hollow and exhausted, and it's hard to smile. The line stays angry the whole time....and I feel desperate to leave by the end of my shift."

This type of incident isn't a one off, and is repeated again and again.

At the end of Emily's last shift at McDonald's, the ice cream machine goes crazy and spews out a river of soft serve. While trying to contain the mess, the author and her co-worker ignore the line and take a minute "to giggle and shriek and be human."

Then Emily "GETS TO LEAVE" for the last time.



***

Emily concludes that "America is so crazy because of 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." And on top of that, "mainstream politicians seem totally blind to how dire life has gotten for a whole lot of people."

The author believes big changes are inevitable, and it will be interesting to see what form they take.

Emily sprinkles a good deal of humor into the book, and includes some compelling anecdotes about her co-workers; living arrangements; husband; background, etc.

This book is a must read for every lawmaker in the country, and most other people would find it interesting as well.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company for a copy of the book.

[Katy O. · Rating 3 out of 5]

(free review copy) You'll want to sit down for this. No really. Go get a cup of coffee and settle in, because I have a LOT of thoughts. To start with, here's my rating math for this one:

Subject matter: 5
My actual fondness for the writer: 2
Ability to hold my interest: 5
Academic content to back up assertions: 4
Word choice: 1

Math says my overall rating is 3.4 and I DO recommend this book.

Subject matter: Since I first read Nickel and Dimed WAY back when it first came out, and then later in a grad program, I have listed it as one of my favorite books. I haven't read it since 2004, though, so I can't give actual evidence for why I respect Ehrenreich so much more than Guendelsberger, but I suspect it has to do with the professionalism with which ND is written. Back on topic, though, the topic of low-wage work and how workers are treated is a topic of fascination for me, because I have done low-wage work. I worked retail, factory and janitorial jobs, albeit back before they were changed by technology to become so ruthlessly monitored and understaffed. I am currently a public school teacher, which isn't technically low-wage, but I'm not upper class by any means. My husband works a decently-paid Teamster job that while protected, does not offer paid sick leave and treats employees like robots. I GET everything the author describes. I have the upmost respect for workers in the jobs that are described, and I desperately wanted the nitty gritty dirty details of inside Amazon, a call center and McDonald's - this book more than delivered those. In addition, I am equally frustrated with the corporate and political entities and beings who perpetuate the untenable working conditions described here and I will surely be recommending this book to others for an updated look at low-wage jobs.

My actual fondness for the writer: Oh boy. The good thing is that technically she recognizes how privileged she is. AND I understand that this book isn't necessarily written for me - the people who need to read are those looking down, who have never been paid low wage, or like Paul Ryan as she references in the book, did so so long ago that their experiences aren't comparable to today's in the same job. Overall, I honestly was just so frustrated with the author during the majority of this book because of her privilege and her moral outrage on behalf of the workers. Saying, "you should NOT put up with that" is so degrading to someone who needs the income to literally stay alive. The author's moral outrage is appreciated of course, in the sense that it's great that she understands how hard people are working for not enough pay, but her tone comes off to me, a late-30s middle class Midwesterner, as immature and privileged 90% of the time. Her outrage at people being penalized for being late grated on me to no end - I can't imagine a single job I have ever had at which I wouldn't have to explain myself if I am late on a regular basis. And shouldn't people be on time?? Or am I just too brainwashed?? As a teacher, coming back from lunch or a break late means my class isn't supervised - not acceptable. So, while I get that the measures in place by these companies are draconian, her reaction to some of them was beyond privileged. AND. AND. The ending. Let's just say that it didn't offer a solution, which maybe it doesn't need to. BUT, it kind of implied that was offering something of a fix, but that fix was laughable to anyone actually working a job she describes. My husband and I, in our current situation, with our current financial obligations including massive student loans, will not see a true fix in our working lifetime, even if "by working toward a better world, you'll eventually stop hating yourself for your failures as a shark. And, slowly but surely, you'll start feeling like a human being again." I'm a pragmatist and while the author basically says that you shouldn't listen to me because I'm not going to tell you that everyone should immediately RISE UP against pay injustice, I believe in true solutions that require real work from high up to enact. Those don't happen overnight. Teachers are undervalued, but the only way to get higher pay is through major political movement at the highest level. Yes we should band together. Yes we should keep fighting. But we need to stay employed while we fight these fights. And yes, I'm annoyed that my inner rage at injustice has been "sandpapered" (as she calls it) down to allow me to keep working in a system that sometimes treats me unfairly, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND DOGS I NEED TO FEED MY KIDS. And dogs.

Ability to hold my interest: I inhaled this book in 3 hours and couldn't put it down. Her stories are riveting and there's great academic history included.

Academic content to back up assertions: I loved the historical and academic interludes throughout the book that give backstory on why so many of our current work practices are in place. I was quoting them to my husband and will reference them often in the future.

Word choice: The word "f*ck" was used 134 times in this book. Yes, I used search on my Kindle to get a count. And no, it wasn't just in dialogue. The word "sh*t" was used way less, mostly in dialogue. She used the phrase "sucks donkey balls" twice. The word c*nt was used at least twice. Why does that matter? Well, I have had it drilled into me that profanity = laziness when it comes language. This isn't fiction and she wasn't directly quoting profane people. For what was supposed to be journalism, this was extremely jarring. To me, it signaled unprofessionalism and crassness that make this book one I could never recommend to my teachers to use in high school classes, unlike Nickel and Dimed. Overall, the tone was casual and crass and something that turned me off. Yes, that's personal preference and maybe I'm just old, but I just can't imagine why editors wouldn't have seen this as a negative too. In my experience, if I want to be taken seriously, eliminating profanity is required - for the politicians and media professionals she wants to reach, perhaps this should have been a consideration.

OVERALL: Yes, I'll recommend this book - WITH the caveats of language and privilege.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 5 out of 5]

[4.5] I did not expect a book about oppressive workplaces to be so entertaining! Even though I was often horrified and angered, I loved listening to Guendelsberger's stories about her time as a worker at an Amazon warehouse, a call center and a McDonald's. In order to increase profits, each of these companies squeeze every drop of productivity and control out of their workers, leaving them stressed out and unhappy. Excellent narration by Christine Lakin.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tl;dr: This is *the* Nickle and Dimed of the 21st century. Yes, seriously.

Look, I know other books have been given that accolade and I've been disappointed by them too but On the Clock is the one book that deserves it and, sadly, seems to be unrecognized.

That sucks. (But you can change that!)

If you care at all about the future of work in America (and you should), you need to read this. It's deeply heartfelt and profoundly unsettling.

The message of On the Clock is clear: hourly wage work asks workers to sacrifice their physical and mental health for not enough money and no benefits. Healthcare, sick leave--nothing. But crippling, thankless work? Yes, there is that. And it needs to change. We need to make that change happen.

On the Clock came out in 2019 but it is one of my best reads for that year *and* for 2020 *and* for 2021, two years that have proven over and over that change needs to happen now. Please, please read this illuminating, brave book.

[Samantha Melamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential update to Nickel and Dimed, On The Clock turns the drudgery of work in 21st century America into a compelling and elucidating narrative that should be required reading for policy makers, business leaders and anyone else who hasn’t held a low-wage job in the past decade. This book documents the daily realities of those jobs, examines the economic climate that fosters them, chronicles the creepy history of workplace productivity schemes and delves into the science of what these jobs do to bodies and minds. Yet, it is also occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. I was dismayed to learn how much more grueling algorithmic efficiencies had made the food service jobs I once worked as a teen, and to understand the true cost of Prime delivery. For anyone wondering why so many Americans feel forgotten, On The Clock is a crucial wake-up call.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years I spent in fast food: 5
call centers: 4
retail: 2

So nothing about this book really surprises me, but it was vindicating to read, and I would point anyone who hasn't worked in similar low-wage, high-stress jobs toward it.

There have been times, after escaping call center hell, when people around me have complained that their work environment is too stressful, or that managers are too demanding, and I’ve wanted to laugh hysterically into my hands and ask: When was the last time they got written up for being literally one minute late from a break? The last time they were chewed out for having to use the bathroom? Had all ability to take time off blacked out for months at a time, regardless of reason? Been scheduled for mandatory overtime every day for six weeks straight? How often are they faced with profanity, racial slurs, screaming? Do they work every major and minor holiday, because family is obviously way less important than some guy needing to yell at someone about his bill 365 days a year? My worst day at the library is so much better than my average day in a call center that I honestly tear up a little if I think about it too hard.

One of the things she touches on several times is the problem of empathy. When you are a nice person who wants to do a good job and make people happy, you are incredibly vulnerable to the horrible things the public will say and do just because they can. It can wreck you, depress you, give you uncontrollable anxiety. So you react by growing a shell and becoming numb to their complaints or accusations. There are drawbacks to that, however, as she notes: “Empathy is a two-sided coin. The shield protects me from screamers, but it also appears to filter out any satisfaction I used to get from making people happy.” I distinctly remember times someone was crying on the phone with me about something actually serious—something any normal human person would have reacted to with reassurances or attempts to help—but I did not care or react at all. I’d learned that caring could damage me. We were constantly harped on to show empathy, but we were certainly never shown any as employees. You missed one day of work during training because you were food poisoned? That’s sad; you’re still fired. You’re spending every day in agonizing pain because your manager can’t be bothered to override your leave request to let you go to your doctor? Frowny face in an email, but you’re still on corrective action for going to the appointment anyway.

I could go on about this topic, but let’s get back to the book. I enjoyed her candid, conversational tone, but anyone who is easily offended by language is probably going to be bothered by it. I’m not, so it’s fine. So why not five stars? There are times when she gets away from the topic at hand a little more than I’d like, and while I totally respect her for taking these jobs to learn what they’re like, her shock is a little funny to me precisely because I’m thinking, “well, yeah, of course it’s like that.” It’s very privileged and innocent, in a way, though she does admit this, and repeatedly says she’s aware that she gets to walk away from all of it, at the end of her project. I respect that, but like...having been one of the people who could not just walk away anytime, I’m not 100% on board being spoken for by someone who only spent a couple of months doing it. Years of being crushed down into a company’s sardine can and having any part of you that stuck out ground off because it’s that or become homeless is damaging on a level I don’t think someone can really understand from going through training and then spending a week or two taking calls.

Overall, though, a good read. It’s sitting over on my staff picks as I write this.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book. (Look at me being a professional reviewer, lol)
My actual review goes up on Shelf Awareness right around pub date, but here are my informal thoughts:

On the Clock both infuriated and entertained me. Guendelsberger is a journalist, which means she cites lots of sources and provides a long list of supplemental reading should you wish to do a deep dive. BUT she's also funny as hell, having written for places like The Onion.
The resulting book is that rare non-ficti0n tome that kept me up reading until I should have been in my second REM cycle.
She worked three jobs for this book: in an Amazon warehouse, a Convergys call center, and a McDonald's. Each is repetitive hell in its own way, with stress both physical and mental. All of them strain the boundaries of human tolerance, and it makes sense... because service jobs are meant to maximize productivity for the benefit of the company. (And sometimes for the customer, but let's be honest - make the customer happy and the company makes more money.)
Guendelsberger goes into the history of timed tasks, assembly lines, and now -thanks to technology- the ability to track and monitor everything. Yes, you might be followed into the bathroom to prove that you have stress-induced diarrhea from being screamed at over the phone all day. (WTF, seriously)

If you've never worked a service job, or if it's been a few years, this book is eye-opening. She draws connections between this type of work and the opioid epidemic, the rise of Trump, and the wage stagnation we've seen in the last 40ish years even in the face of massive gains in productivity.

Honestly, I didn't expect such a heavy, complicated subject to be so readable. Strongly recommended.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listen up. Next time you need to talk to a customer rep to dispute a billing charge, inquire about a change in service, or just complain about a lack of good service, chances are you are chatting with someone in a call center who is not at all associated with the company you are doing business with. One of the important lessons I learned from this book is to never ever get mad at a customer rep again unless they are rude.

OK, so now that's off my chest, here is what I thought about this book: I was captivated. Ever since Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed," I have been fascinated with the inner workings of just about any industry or job. I've read in-depth reports about hotels, restaurants, the sugar beet industry, Walmart associates, Applebee's expediters, and those who deliver all of those packages via UPS.

So I was excited to read about this journalist's report on working for Amazon (it's horrible on the body), a call center (she worked with AT&T customers and it is as bad as it sounds), and a busy McDonald's in the heart of San Francisco (there's a reason the restaurants always seemed short-staffed). Guendelsberger reports on the tasks, working conditions, co-workers, and management, and there is no detail too small for her to ignore. She also incorporates a bit of labor history and even some evolutionary science on stress and the body.

There were a few times I thought passages could have used a little more editing but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this anyone interested in today's working conditions for many of the hardworking people in the U.S.

For other similar books, try Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Alex Frankel's Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, and Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality.

[Personal note: In the first chapter, the author talks about the term "in the weeds," which means being so far behind nothing can be done to catch up. That really resonated as I still have the occasional nightmare about my experiences as a server.]

Thanks to the publisher for the advance digital reading copy.

[Molly Seavy-Nesper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this book. Guendelsberger takes you inside an Amazon warehouse, a call center, and a San Fransisco McDonald's and exposes the ways in which technology is making workers' lives miserable. The book is funny, heartbreaking and enlightening. You'll think twice about ordering random junk on Amazon -- and it will encourage you to practice radical empathy when talking to a customer service rep, or the fast food workers giving you your fries. It's a marvelous piece of writing and journalism.

[Wendy Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. An engaging, astute, and informative look at why low-wage work in America sucks so much. I appreciated the historical context of Taylorism & Fordism weaved in between the first-hand recounting of working at Amazon, a call center, and McDonald’s.

Recommended for anyone who still believes that tech will save us (in other words, anyone who doesn’t yet understand class struggle).

(Minor nitpick: there were some geographical errors in the section about the Bay Area, which were kindly underlined by some attentive library patron before me. Namely: the Bay Bridge is not the Golden Gate Bridge; the Bay is not a river; and San Jose is not 30 mins south of San Francisco unless you’re in a helicopter.)

[Rajiv · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Clock is must read, this book is equal parts funny and heartbreaking with an eye opening look at how efficiency in business impacts the mental health of regular people (and the psychological and evolutionary perspective of what that means) who are happy to just have their jobs.

If you don't work in the service industry (like McDonald's, a call center or an Amazon warehouse like Guendelsberger did) you know that their jobs are tough, but I didn't have a real appreciation for what it's like (a mile in their shoes and all that). I've worked difficult jobs, but it didn't follow me through the day and at home and cast a pall over my entire life. Guendelsberger's excellent writing and wry first person style makes you feel the nervous dread or anger that the everyday workers have and then explains why this is and what it does to your mind and body (I didn't know how chronic stress affects your decision making), with enough lighthearted anecdotes from her to show how resilient people are to find humor in even the most stressful jobs.

A+ would HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

[Kali Hostetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is going to be long as I organize my thoughts. Feel free to not read it— but I think you should read this book 👍❤️

This book tackles the invisible. The working poor in this country that are often called lazy, stupid and unambitious while they work their a**es of every day just to barely survive.

What politicians refer to as “flipping burgers” has turned into a well-oiled money making machine understaffing, timing their employees every action, and giving no real dignity to their workers.

You often hear that low-wage jobs are supposed to be temporary or for teenagers but that is not the reality. The reality is that many adults with children live off of these jobs as their livelihood in a captive market where they have no power and all jobs accessible to them have the same level of suck because employers know they have nowhere else to go. Training and high turnover is written into the budget and there’s no real motivation to keep workers happy.

A few experiences highlighted in the book:

- Technology and algorithms have made it possible for businesses to predict the exact amount of customers they will get at a certain hour of the day, allowing the least number of people to be scheduled that could *just barely* handle that load, maximizing profits for the employer but forcing workers to spend the whole day “in the weeds”
- Unpredictable work schedules are common leading to inconsistent hours total and shift days leading to difficulty for workers to plan their lives and finances (schedule often posted day before it starts)
- Down to the second clock systems that penalize you for being a minute late to clock in but make you wait around if you’re early (The author was lucky enough to work in places that still give you breaks. Did you know some states aren’t even required to give you unpaid meal breaks?)
- Most jobs had no PTO or paid sick days. They have point systems where you deduct points if you need to leave early/be late and when you reach a certain point value you are fired. This takes the human element out of it and deems the person that’s late every day as equal to someone who’s mother is in the hospital.
- One family that the author worked with had an infection and couldn’t afford (no insurance) the hospital visit and antibiotics so they ended up taking horse antibiotics from a pet store


Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy *time & sleep* two huge factors in health and happiness.

Examples:
- you only need one job to pay your bills so you don’t work over 40 hours a week
- you can afford luxuries like a house cleaner, grocery delivery, etc giving yourself down time
- You can afford to live closer to work and cut down your commute (many people the author worked with were commuting HOURS to and from their minimum wage job).
- You don’t have to drive your child an hour out of the way to a better school because the one in your area is not well funded, or drive them out of the way to a daycare that is covered by your child care credits

Low income workers in America are working often multiple jobs or long hours and often commuting hours to their jobs because they cannot afford to live where they work. This means not only do they make a measly amount of money, they also get very little free time, even when they’re not on the clock— and miss out on sleep which has huge health and happiness ramifications.

Other notes author touched on:

- Guendelsberger discusses how “assembly line” work has become the norm and takes all the satisfaction out of “low skill”/low wage work replacing it with monotony and lack of purpose. Instead of having one guy build the whole engine, he now secures one piece. Factory workers used to feel pride when they left a hard days work.

- People blame the decline of the “American nuclear family” on weird things like same-sex marriage and pop culture while many low to mid income families are dual-earners often choosing opposing schedules to spend more time with their children and offset child care costs. Or working more than 40 hrs a week to come home and only sleep next to each other and get up and do it all again. How can couples stay together if they don’t even see each other?

Wrap up:

These are the realities for many Americans. And even if those of us with blue collar/white collar jobs are struggling too we can’t deny our privilege. Most of us can use the bathroom if we need to go. We can have a discussion with our boss about being late because of an appointment and not miss out on pay. We have sick days. We can get to work in under an hour. We have medical benefits.

“When I imagine telling Kolbi or Jess that I made twice as much money working thirty-laid back hours a week at my first newspaper job as we make answering phones forty hours a week, I cringe. Because it’s so so so unfair. It’s embarrassingly unfair.”

People deserve better. Low wage earners are not humans of low value. You are not better than them because you had opportunities. You are not better than them because you had access to sex education and didn’t have a child at 16. You are not better than them because you were lucky enough to be born in America.

TLDR:

No one in this country should be working 40 hours a week and not be able to pay their bills. No one in this country should have to take horse antibiotics because they have no health insurance. No one in this country should be fired or docked hours or pay for being sick or taking care of a sick family member.

We need stop pointing our fingers at each other fighting over scraps while those at the top are having a whole damn feast.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sobering look at three industries that use low skill workers - Amazon warehouses, McDonalds, and a call center for several national accounts. All of these companies use contractors so that they don’t have to provide any benefits. All used sophisticated software models to control every minute that employees were in the building. Being one minute late, or taking an extra minute in the bathroom, or talking to other employees was stealing from the business. Turnover was extremely high but there always seemed to be plenty of new hires. Managing child care or illnesses was impossible for everyone. Many employees had children as teenagers and are trapped in this system. The author thinks that the despair of these workers was what got trump elected. Huge respect for my son-in-law who survived almost a year working at a call center.

[Alex Givant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview of current low-paid labor economy in USA (pretty sure it's the same in Canada, England - check out Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain and everywhere else). She is talking not just about her experience of working for Amazon, calling center and McDonald, but about what's wrong with such low paying jobs (insecurity, level of stress, etc). She did excellent job on connecting dots from low-paid job to elevated level of stress, inability to plan your future (and how could you if you shift can be revealed less than 24 hours before it starts), level of medicine these workers can afford (never would imagine going 4 hours to pick some left-overs of antibiotic, try to fix swallowed tooth by myself, or using horse/dog/fish antibiotics because that all you can afford without medical insurance).

Another sections I liked a lot are related to how stress works on your body (fight-or-flight preparation from the body) and history of Wanda (how technology/society became to be).

I wish they make this book mandatory for kids to read in school so they would pay more attention to home works and getting into universities/colleges (I think kids just don't know what alternatives are - like flipping burgers at McDonald - may be cool when you are 16 years old, but not so cool when you are 30+ and have wife and kids to support - so swallow you pride, smile and get back to work).

Great book, highly recommended to everybody - just to get a perspective what some people going through in their life to put bread on the table. After reading that book you will look different at somebody who takes your order in McDonald, speak to you over the phone about issues or find stuff that you ordered from Amazon. These are people with their problems and troubles which we don't see, so read the book to at least get glimpse of what they are dealing with, such as customers throwing things at you or screaming over the phone.

[juliemcl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been rating books lately but, fuckit if this doesn't deserve five perfect stars. An update to my beloved Nickel and Dimed, this book crystallizes better than any other I have read about what the f is wrong with us and how we got here. So much better, so much truer than George Saunders going flyover to empathetically talk to Trump-rally attendees (and all the others pieces of that ilk - you've read 'em). Guendelsberger, a former Onion editor, is hilarious and authentic in recounting her travails at three shitty jobs (an Amazon warehouse, AT&T call center, McDonald's) and makes the eat-your-vegetables parts about the history of work and employment in America, and how it's affecting us as a body politic, go down like a McFlurry.

I have no doubt Elizabeth Warren has already read this (Booker maybe, too), but copies need to be sent to the other twenty candidates toot sweet. (Bernie would say, "This is exactly what I've been talking about for the last 40 years!" Someone needs to read this an hour a night to Biden as his bedtime story, until it's done.)

It's obvious she did her research and her reading and the synthesis of it all is just perfect. Her anguish, astonishment, outrage, humanity - perfect!

[Emily St. James]

Won't rate because Emily is a friend, but I really loved this book and found it a persuasive argument about just what has happened to this country.

Come see my Q&A with Emily at Small World Books on Wednesday!

[Trin · Rating 4 out of 5]

We live in a late capitalist dystopian nightmare hellscape, and it has to change.

[Katrina Feraco · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who spent a lot of time in food service (two years in a chronically understaffed Dunkin Donuts in New England and four years in a hellscape Italian restaurant full of mismanagement and out-of-touch ownership, both for less than $9/hr and demanding more of my time than I could give), I have to give ENORMOUS props to Emily Guendelsberger for actually doing the work and writing honestly about her experiences. I appreciated the perspective from multiple low-wage jobs; warehouses and call centers don't employ many people out where I live, and it was enlightening to look into these industries a little bit. I appreciated the perspective from other employees on each job, especially those that differed vehemently on the work from Guendelsberger's, the human approach to research and history, and the author's own voice. Honestly, if I had to describe this book in its entirety, it would be "human". I love ripping apart corporate greed as much as the next young person, but there's a lot to be said for the analytical approach taken throughout (but especially in the third part of the book) to the very nature of corporate business which certainly helped reign in some of the rage I was feeling as someone who has worked in fast food. Statistics, history, anecdotes, facts, and a wealth of suggested reading in the back for anyone interested is fascinating.

Overall, though, this book isn't meant for me or people like me who have done this work; in fact, I was super pissed off for about 50% of the time I was reading this. I have a lot of opinions about the ethics of late-stage capitalism, and reading about the way workers across the country are suffering with me just fuels that rage. This book is really meant for the people who make decisions--business owners, management professionals, "white-collar" professionals, and anyone out of touch with how hard "unskilled" labor is on the average person. Thoroughly enjoyed and recommend.

[Stephanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ruined by a so called reporter who isn't: Page 254, where the author describes her commute on BART from SF to Oakland: "Today I get a window seat. The view of the Golden Gate Bridge as we cross the river to Oakland hasn't lost its novelty yet..".
Well, while I've seen a lot of weird things while commuting on BART, I've never seen a view of the GG Bridge while traveling on BART to Oakland, for the simple reason that it is not possible, since the train travels under the San Francisco Bay, which is not -newsflash- a "river".
So, what she claims to have experienced is total bullshit. If this was fiction, I probably would have rolled my eyes and kept on reading, but the author is a reporter, which is the whole premise of her book - that she is reporting on her actual experiences and observations, as facts. A mistake this glaring means she is either incompetent, incredibly careless, or just plain makes shit up - what kind of "reporter" can't even be accurate about one of the largest, and most well known, geographical features of an extremely well known and constantly photographed city? This just blew it for me. I disbelieve, and/or want to fact check every single one of the many factoids she peppers this book with, not to mention everything else she claims to have experienced.
And for even more laughs, she also describes the place she's staying as "so far out in Oakland that it's almost in Berkeley" ?!?, which makes no geographic sense. The least she could have done is looked at a damned map.
Or, maybe she could have simply respected the lives of the people she met enough to check her facts in the rush to sell her own book on Amazon.

[Michaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

---Full disclosure: I received this book for free from Goodreads. --- So, I'll have to come back & finish the review. In reading the reviews of others, however, I noted 2 things, First, people complaining about curse words in a book about stress & desperation. Are you fucking kidding me? Secondly, people are complaining about a lack of references, when the book is only JUST out, & even I read an ARC. Where are these people supposedly getting completed books from that they can gripe about references so early out of the gate? To that matter, I found the information presented to be thorough & quite solid. So these folks bitching & then touting their degrees as if that makes your opinion the be all end all, I have fancy-ass degrees too, so suck it. This info. is solid. Your top result on google not agreeing w/ the author's info. means diddly. (Also, if you're so damned smart, how are you not aware of google's altering of search results?)

My point in this bitch session about questionable reviews, is that books like this are going to get push-back. It's inevitable. So please keep that in mind before putting too much stake in contrariness. Best to just read the thing yourself, I think.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emily Guendelsberger was a moderately successful journalist when her alt-weekly newspaper shuttered in 2015, and she launched a project taking and writing some of the most common and most stressful jobs in America: Amazon warehouse picker, call center representative, and McDonald's cashier. Guendelsberger describes these as "cyborg jobs", a human being filling in for the messy interstices of an imperfect automated system, and blends her personal experiences of how utter exhausting and alienating these jobs are with a history of how it got this way. If you're in the 50% of Americans who don't work one of these jobs, who's time isn't tracked minute by minute, you have to read this book.

The primary enemy in Guendelsberger's story is leanness in staffing. Payroll is an expense, and businesses like to cut that to the absolute bone. So to make sure that work gets done, they institute a system of arbitrary controls and punishments, second by second analysis of action, backed up metrics, points systems, and rapid firings.

Each of the workplaces is horrific in its own way. Amazon is notorious for its physically strenuous warehouse work, with pickers walking 15 miles a day, bending over and grabbing items thousands of times, warehouses that are boiling or freezing depending on the season, and vending machines filled with free painkillers. But the real horror of Amazon is isolation. The Algorithm (and as a data scientist, I feel comfortable using caps here) which guides pickers to their targets seems to route them around each other. You're effectively alone in a cyclopean logistics space, occasionally glimpsing other people a few hundred feet away. Conversation is impossible, thanks to the constant thrum of machinery, and workers are also forbidden from listening to their own music or podcasts, for reasonable safety concerns. Amazon work is carefully designed to be just at the limits of human physical endurance. Sanity is a different matter.

Next up is a Convergys call center, doing customer service for AT&T. While most of the time is spent explaining to people data overages on their bill, the actual job is sales, trying to convince people to switch to DirecTV. Call center work is a matter of juggling balls, as doing anything requires navigating through eight different shoddy backend apps, holding personal information in short term memory, selling more AT&T products, and of course trying to actually solve issue whatever brought the person there in the first place. But any call could flip from 'okay' to a terrible Screamer, a torrent of unending abuse that sent Guendelsberger into a panic. After a Screamer, there was no way to pause, just a few seconds until the next call, and it seems like the people on the other end of the phone could sense the weakness like a shark and continue the abuse. Guendelsberger was homeless for this stretch (she stayed with relatives for the Amazon gig), and living out of her car in a North Carolina summer took it own toll. She began spending 105% of her daily paycheck on hotel rooms to maintain a semblance of sanity until a coworker took pity and offered her a cheap spare room. And while this is pre-COVID, another coworker caught MRSA at the same call center and almost died. Good times!

The last job was at a downtown San Francisco McDonalds. Guendelsberger worked the cash register, where her white skin and impeccable English skills served as an asset. McDonalds allowed better human interaction, but was physically dangerous in a way that other jobs weren't. A customer threw mustard at her, she was injured by a broken coffee machine, and she had to kick the homeless out of the store at times. There's open respect for her shift managers at McDonalds, preternaturally fast and efficient women, while immediate superiors at the other jobs are merely fortunate or tyrannical, but in many ways McDonalds was the worst job of them all.

Guendelsberger breaks up her workplace ethnography with delves into the history of Taylorism and scientific management, Henry Ford and mass production, and finally the physiology of stress and how these environments drive you insane and slowly kill you. And as a former The Onion writer, it's pretty funny too. Except for the part where it is utterly horrifying. The history of Capital and Labor has been defined by Capital's belief that Labor is stealing from it by not working as hard as possible at all times, and now with panopticonic workplace surveillance systems, they can finally prove it. Amazon has the glossiest version, with a slick backend and a palpable lust to replace its humans with robots as soon as the tech gets worked out. Convergys is just throwing humans into the a gap of terrible backend systems that won't get reengineered because there's no clear profit in it. McDonalds probably needs humans the most, though they are focusing on eliminating human cashiers in favor of automated kiosks, but they want as few as possible.

All companies have common practices. Time management is draconian, with breaks starting as soon as you clock out even if the bathrooms and smoking areas are ten minutes away, and harsh penalties for being a minute late showing up to work. This was particularly bad with the McDonalds job, with Guendelsberger arriving 20 to 30 minutes early to deal with the unreliability of BART. Convergys wound up editing worker timesheets after the fact, which is illegal, not that wage theft is ever prosecuted. Guendelsberger describes being utterly exhausted day after day, and while she could bail; she needed the paychecks, but not like her coworkers with local ties, kids, health conditions, and no other skills. It's easy to see how these jobs are traps. Almost everything that's gone wrong in America in the past fifty years can be laid at the feet of jobs like these: the decline of families and communities, mental illness, obesity, opiate abuse, politics which are simultaneously disengaged and insane.

Individually, if you ever abuse or shout at a customer service worker you are human trash and should be abandoned in the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, but systematically what is to be done? It's real bad, Labor is groaning and dying while Capital records the highest profits yet. Off-shoring, union-breaking, and the general abandonment of the working class by the Democrats are all to blame, but financialization and the pursuit of ever high share prices is at the root of this mistreatment of employees, the idea that a corporation is a device for maximizing quarterly returns and not fulfilling a common need. It's self-defeating for these workplaces. Training is a major source of inefficiency, and yet they won't do anything to drop turnover below 100% because the environment is bad everywhere. Guendelsberger ends on an optimistic note, that something will break and an alternative will arise, but I'm less sure about the political weaknesses of Transhumanist Cyborg Capital Hyper-Fascism.

[Meagan Houle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many articles about how Amazon exploits its warehouse staff, and I know enough people who've done call centre and food service work to understand it's a jungle, and not in a remotely fun way. Even with that prior experience, nothing prepared me for Emily's vivid account of her time at Amazon, Convergys, and McDonald's. I felt embarrassingly naive as she described the intrusive ways companies have found to survey and punish their lowest-level workers, pitting them against each other and ridding their jobs of what little joy they once offered.
Working these sorts of jobs in warehouses, call centres, and restaurants has never been especially coveted, but a combination of overbearing technology and impossible performance targets has made these positions harrowingly difficult, on top of the low pay and precarious scheduling.
As Emily reminds us time and again, the root issue isn't demanding work, safety risks, or lousy benefits. It's the systematic dehumanization of employees, to the point where Emily, who only had to work these jobs for a short period, had to turn off parts of herself in order to function. It's the blaring alarms when you take five seconds too long to assemble a burger. It's the algorithms that are intentionally programmed to ensure staff are underscheduled, so that they can never "get out of the weeds." It's the ruthless monitoring of bathroom breaks, and the sickening propaganda during training sessions. It's the inescapable reality that, for these enormous companies, human beings are just bodies, means to an end that can be replaced too easily to bother with trifles like dignity and respect.
A lot of books and investigative pieces have scratched the surface of why these jobs are so unsustainable and soul-crushing, but Emily comes the closest I've seen to getting to the heart of the matter. Since she lived these experiences directly, she was able to communicate the relentless, exhausting monotony of them--the longing for sleep, the dependence on medication, the craving for unhealthy foods, the loss of connection with loved ones. She intersperses her own trials with the stories of her coworkers. Reading about a colleague who resorted to fish antibiotics because she could not afford proper medical attention for a serious infection nearly made me stop reading altogether. It was too depressing, too outside my ability to remedy. How could I keep inflicting this conveyor belt of misery on myself?
But then we come to Emily's most impressive strength: her writing is so urgent, so spellbindingly compelling that I couldn't put the book down. That meant I was able to take in her suggestions for a better future, something that somehow seemed achievable, despite the seeming infallibility of the corporate world. It made me doubly thankful for my own job, where I am deeply respected; but more than that, "On the Clock" was a galvanizing force, spurring me to consider what I can do in my corner of the world to counter the dehumanizing effects of service work. A writer who can make you feel overwhelming despair and plucky optimism in the space of a few hundred pages is one who can change the world.

[Hannah G · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Clock is both devastating and funny. While the book is well grounded in historical context and relevant data - setting out a thorough case for how, and why, the service industry in this country tends to deny the basic humanity of its workers - it is also a fascinating, poignant, and compelling read throughout.

The openness and candid humor of the author's own first person perspective "on the ground" is key, but so are the vivid personalities and stories she encounters in each of the three parts of her journey. She conveys not only her own experiences, but these vignettes and portraits as well, with no small measure of mastery; these are at are at once heartbreaking, incisive, hilarious, and ... folksy, I'd say - even Twainsian, in the very best sense.

Guendelsberger examines not only the origin of oppressive service industry policies, and the day to day reality of those who are hit hardest by them, but also explores the tragic effect these policies have on the body, making use of the scientific literature - notably referencing some of the work of Robert Sapolsky, a researcher of stress (and one of my personal faves among high profile scientists) - to great effect.

Finally, there is the depth and breadth of the book's sweeping insights about American work and society. The book ultimately deploys not only anecdote and data in its case against the planned indignity of low wage work in America, but a philosophical definition of the human as well - one which is infinitely more rich and insightful than that offered by Taylorism or "scientific management" (a hidden underpinning of how low wage service industry workers are treated, and the book's primary target.)

It is a sheer delight for me that the author does not shy away from a bigger-picture exploration of what it is to be human, both within the historical flux of work and society, and in an even larger sense. Metaphor and thought experiment are deployed in a particularly imaginative and effective way - in one section, the author takes us through all of history in a proverbial nutshell, and somehow conveys a fresh, visceral, personal engagement with the entire human story.

With this level of achievement in a first print offering, I suspect that Guendelsberger is just getting started. From where I sit (I am indeed sneak-writing this review between calls at a customer service center), I certainly hope so!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Clock is a compelling, eye-opening, and necessary read for all Americans. Emily Guendelsberger gives us an up-close look at what it means to work the daily grind of low-wage work. Businesses boast that productivity is at an all-time high, ...but at what cost? Apparently, the heart and soul of the country.

Guendelsberger does such a great job taking us through the three jobs that she took (as a journalist undercover), each for about a month or two: an Amazon warehouse, a customer call center, and McDonald's. At each job, she was micromanaged to the second, with each job warning her about "time theft" which is when workers might--gasp!--take a few seconds to catch their breath. The jobs were all high-paced and stress-inducing on purpose to make sure that the workers didn't have time to think, talk, or otherwise act like humans. After all, if robots are so efficient, it pays for workers to try to emulate them, right? This is the new work in America, where everything is timed and where managers assume the worst of their workers.

I couldn't put the book down; it was so fascinating and horrifying.. I could practically feel the exhaustion at the Amazon warehouse and the stress of the call center right along with Emily. That would have been enough, but she also intersperses her personal narrative with lots of evolutionary biology and history to help readers understand how, exactly, we got to this point. All in all, it's a wonderful book that caused me to think a lot about issues that I had taken for granted.

Furthermore, the hopeful and optimistic tone at the end of the book is just readers need after such a dark look at what's become of the world of work. Guendelsberger assures us that even though we're at the cliff's edge, staring into the abyss, there's still time to turn around. We still have the power to stop this. She even offers some tangible solutions that I hope leaders take to heart. I would recommend this book to anyone wondering why we seem so stressed out these days when we are supposedly living in the best of times.

[Emmaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and engaging book.
I agree that one problem is that "we've stopped even imagining other, better ways we could live" (p.311).
Its just taken as a giving that the best thing a person can do is make as much money as humanly possible, and screw everyone else.
But it looks crazier when you put a face to everyone else.

About Amazon:
"Q: Your warehouse workers work 11.5-hour shifts. In order to make rate, a significant number of them need to take over-the-counter painkillers multiple times per shift, which means regular backups at the medical office. Do you:
A) Scale back the rate - clearly the workers are at their physical limits
B) Make shifts shorter
C) Increase the number or duration of breaks
D) Increase staffing at the nurse's office
E) Install vending machines to dispense painkillers more efficiently
Seriously - what kind of f*ing sociopath goes with E?"

About Gonvergys (a call center):
"Q: Your customer-service representatives handle roughly sixty calls in an eight-hour shift, with a half-hour lunch and two fifteen-minute breaks. By the end of the day, a problematic number of them are so exhausted by these interactions that their ability to focus, read basic conversational cues, and maintain a peppy demeanor is negatively affected. Do you:
A) Increase staffing so you can scale back the number of calls each rep takes per shift - Clearly, workers are at their cognitive limits.
B) Allow workers a few minutes to decompress after difficult calls.
C) Increase the number or duration of breaks
D) Decrease the number of objectives workers have for each call so they aren't as mentally and emotionally taxing.
E) Install a program that badgers workers with corrective pop-ups telling them they sound tires.
Seriously - what kind of f*ing sociopath goes with E?"

[Jami Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would recommend to people who like books like Nickel and Dimed, Educated, Maid, etc. The author is a journalist who, after being laid off from her newspaper, went to work at Amazon, Convergys (a call center that did tech support for AT&T, among other huge companies), and McDonalds. My mouth was a big O while reading--even though I knew before that these companies treat their workers terribly, seeing these details really made it salient. (Amazon has painkiller vending machines in their fulfillment centers??) It also made me want to change my behavior in concrete ways (for example: always completing the survey when I get help from tech support, because it can help them make a 50 cent/hour bonus).

I thought she did a decent job of being aware of her privilege (that she's a journalist who's here covering a story, not someone who needs to be here to survive, and what a difference that makes in attitude), centering others' stories, and by showing how the workers reacted differently to other Amazon news stories. (Several of the Amazon warehouse workers she spoke to said that the articles focused on the wrong things--the lack of air conditioning, for one. In response to that criticism, Amazon installed AC (to the tune of tens of millions of dollars), but AC doesn't help in such a huge, open space, and didn't actually really decrease the temperature. It was just a PR tactic.)

[alli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that should make you angry that the unrelenting desire for higher profits leads to treating labor as disposable. Guendelsberger's firsthand accounts of just a few mechanized jobs shines a light on to something everyone who works for a living will experience soon (if not already): a world where our individual autonomy at work is completely lost, and in return we'll get lower wages, fewer benefits, and no job protection.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. Both fascinating and horrifying, this is an interesting inside look at the world of unskilled/low-wage labor. Certainly makes me appreciate my own job! I've also discovered that I order from the 'rich person's menu' at fast food joints... Occasionally strays off topic, but once I started this I just couldn't put it down.

[Lauren D'Souza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emily Guendelsberger opens her book with the question: What do you think of when you hear the phrase “in the weeds”? For most Americans who have never worked a low-wage job, “in the weeds” means getting lost in the little details, as in, “Don’t get stuck in the weeds on that essay, just focus on the high-level points.” But for those who have worked a low-wage job, “in the weeds” means something like “swamped,” as in, “I don’t have time to mop right now, I’m in the weeds with all these food orders.” I had never heard this latter definition, revealing my privilege, but Guendelsberger became familiar with it when she was in high school, working a variety of fast-food and service positions that many high schoolers do. After taking on the quest of re-entering modern-day low-wage work, Guendelsberger was reintroduced to this concept with a bang: she realized that many low-wage jobs nowadays force employees, among other less-than-ideal things, to be “in the weeds” for every second of their shift. No breaks, other than their legally-mandated ones, which even then, are minimized to as small as they can get. Productivity monitored down to the second. Constant competition and expectations of robotic efficiency. Accusations of wage theft for taking a moment’s rest. So it begins.

The author is a college-educated journalist who worked for a small paper in Philadelphia. The paper was forced to close in 2016, laying off all its workers. Guendelsberger needed a job and was interested in learning more about low-wage work for a potential book - so she decided to dive headfirst into three of the most common (and most commonly complained-about) low-wage jobs in the U.S. at the moment. She got a job working as a temporary contractor at SDF8, an Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, during the “peak” season of the 6 weeks before Christmas; she worked at an AT&T call center operated by Convergys in North Carolina; and she took a job at a McDonald’s in San Francisco. She stayed at each of these jobs for long enough to get a real feel of what it’s like to work there. She wasn’t doing it just for fun - she didn’t have a job and actually needed the money to pay for her mortgage and other living expenses. She does recognize, however, that she is much more privileged than many of the workers there - she knows that she can leave at any time and get a better-paying, less stressful job. This comes into play many, many times when she wonders how people do this, how workers live their lives in a constant state of being “in the weeds” or getting yelled at by customers or being so exhausted you pass out immediately after returning home. How do people raise families like this? How do people not explode with anger or frustration or high blood pressure? Among these questions, Guendelsberger learns a good few things about these three jobs, common across all of these different positions despite manifesting in various ways: \

1. Productivity and metrics. Each job implemented some form of technology to hyper-precisely track what the employee is doing during every second of the day (including your bathroom breaks), measure how long it’s taking compared to the (randomly chosen) desired target time, and punish employees who don’t meet these goals. At Amazon, each worker has a personal scanner with a bar counting down the number of seconds remaining to scan the next item. At Convergys, the target call time was 600 seconds, and workers would get angry warnings as that number approached. At McDonalds, machines beep angrily like the inside of a submarine when the customer’s wait time for an order exceeds the comically low target time. Your employment and possibility of incentives or promotion depend on these metrics, but they’re often not humanly possible. It’s essentially the employers working hard to make sure that you can be as close to a robot as possible, until they eventually replace you with a robot.

2. The Panopticon. As above, workers are diligent mainly because of the fear instilled during training. There’s always someone watching, whether it’s your GPS tracker in the scanner letting a “coach” know that you’ve been in the bathroom or sitting for too long, or your calls that are being recorded at the call center for “quality assurance purposes.” You can disobey the rules, but you live in constant fear of who’s watching.

3. Screamers. This wasn’t a problem at Amazon, but it certainly was a Convergys and McDonald’s. If you, like me, treat service workers with the most basic modicum of respect and dignity, you will be truly shocked and outraged at how truly awful some people are to call center or fast food employees. She recounts having things thrown at her and her fellow employees at McDonald’s, including burgers, mustard, and hot coffee. She recounts stories from ex-Convergys employees saying that the stress of being yelled at all day made them consider self-harm.

4. Being “in the weeds” constantly. See #1 to meet productivity goals. Companies also hire fewer staff than they need with the idea that if workers can cover for a fellow employee who is out sick with the flu, that means they’re not working as hard as they can the rest of the time. So, employers will staff only a skeleton crew, requiring them to be “in the weeds” all the time to meet customer demand. At McDonald’s, there was never not a line. Workers did not have a minute to rest, let alone breathe in between orders. Not only that, but a random assortment of tasks required a manager to take time out of being “in the weeds” to enter their PIN code for approval, and cashiers were responsible for fulfilling 60% of an order as well. I was extremely stressed listening to Guendelsberger’s description of the lunchtime rush, with the long line buzzing in anger and frustration, culminating in a very angry woman yelling and throwing food at her.

5. Physical and mental exhaustion. Guendelsberger said she would walk between 13 and 16 miles every day working at the massive mini-city of SDF8. Obviously, no breaks and no rest because of the scanner’s time clock and GPS, which can tell when you’re sitting in one place for too long. Instead of fixing these productivity expectations, Amazon just installed painkiller vending machines around the warehouse. On the other hand, working at Convergys tested the limited of Guendelsberger’s mental and emotional strength. Not only did she have to juggle about 12 different tasks while talking to a customer, including handling their problem, opening a smorgasbord of different applications and portals to do a variety of useless things, making a sales pitch, and praying that her caller didn’t become a “screamer,” but she had to do this all while on a clock, with a boss potentially listening in. Again, I was extremely stressed just listening to her metaphor of a “clown car” with 12 different clowns vying to be driver.

There are so many more terrible, soul-sucking lessons that Guendelsberger learned from her three low-wage positions, and she does a fantastic job at relaying these lessons in the book. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars rather than 5 is that, paradoxically, I could have done without the pretty detailed anthropologic and labor history/sociology/theory she peppers in throughout. I was far, far more interested in her everyday experiences of living these jobs, reflecting on the other people in the same job who can’t escape, and her privilege of being able to leave. As low-wage, poor treatment jobs like these increase in the U.S., it’s so important to read about the experience of what it’s like on a daily basis to fully understand what the problem with these jobs are. Of course, there are areas to reform aplenty, but understanding the true pain points of employees in this situation is valuable to prioritize what hurts workers the most in the short and long term. Even with the better working conditions mandated in the Bay Area McDonald’s, Guendelsberger still had a rough go - because of the other “business improvements” McDonald’s implements that make it a tough job. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and highly recommend it to anyone interested in fair work and fair labor.

Update December 2020: I'm changing this review to five stars - because what makes a five-star book is one that I keep telling friends about, one that changes the way I think about something, or one that fills my tank with anecdotes and knowledge about a new topic. This book does exactly that.

[Rian Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about how technology is making low-wages jobs too stressful and has a really great story to tell that is marred by its imperfections. The book is at its best when it's a story of the workers who currently get by on minimum wage or slightly better. She writes that those who know what the phrase "in the weeds" really means are the ones whose lives are hardest. She divides the book into three parts: Amazon work at a warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, a call center in Hickory, North Carolina and a McDonald's in San Francisco.

First the good:
+ Description of the workers: Ms. Guendelsberger does a great job of interacting with people whom she works with and describes them fairly well. She has a keen eye for detail in people and she put a lot of hard work into her research. When she describes the people and what they have to put up with, that is the heart of the book, the "meat" shall we say. I really wish she could provide more of this though. It seems many of the people who worked with her have a similar story: has a family, too poor to advance in his/her career due to lack of funds/time or both.

+ A dramatic way to describe these events: She writes (mostly) in a way that is interesting, and I can tell she put a lot of effort into polishing her book. I note that the events she writes about were in 2016, and she is now publishing it in 2019.

The so/so:
- She uses the f-bomb a lot and in my opinion unnecessarily. It's fine if it's quoted speech and relevant, but in many cases she uses it for dramatic effect and/or embellishment. However, she really didn't need to use it in any of the cases. It's enough to put a lot of readers off.
- Annoying word usage: she uses "literally/literal" a lot in ways that aren't necessary. This is my personal peeve.

The bad:
- Her research is wrong most of the time and /or misleading or incomplete without giving the source of the information. First, the incorrect. She mentions for instance that in 2016 1 out of 25 workers are employed in the call center industry. A Google search that takes a minute shows that there are around 3 million out of 161 million workers in 2016, which means that the ratio is really 1/50. Why does she do this? It's flat out wrong unless she's using a different definition that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is using, but we can't figure this out because there are no footnotes with calculations nor sources cited. (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-ad...) .
- She writes about a pioneer in operational management Frederick Taylor (whom she really wants you to know is not mentioned anymore but should be). I guess. I have an undergrad in Finance and minor in Computer Science and the more relevant research is the Hawthorne Effect, which was a very interesting with implications directly relevant to her subject matter.
- Her explanations of human evolution and stress are misleading at best. She writes about how humans evolved to handle stress and the fight or flight response. She cites a very good researcher in this field, Robert Sapolsky in the included resources, but makes the explanation needlessly complicated with her "clock analogy".
-She's very misleading at best when describing the history of the Industrial Revolution. It originated in England according to most historians and spread throughout Europe reaching the USA later mid to late 1800s. She said it was a precursor to feudalism, a system of governance unique mostly to Europe, not other continents like Asia and Africa (making her intended audience European or European descent while ignoring the rest. Sorry African/Hispanic and Asian Americans). I have advanced degrees in Psychology and Applied Linguistics and I wouldn't use the methods she uses to teach those principles.
-She's unnecessarily preachy. She beats you over the head with the idea that the reader is white collar, upper class and that we should have more appreciation for those working in low-wage jobs. I wanted to say to her using her own language example, "Look honey, I get it. I bought this book. I'm on your/their side, OK? No need to constantly bang me on the head about how we don't appreciate them enough. I'm literally buying an f-ing book on the subject, OK? "
Instead, she should just step back and let the subjects tell their own stories. Let the reader decide how to handle the information. Avoid trying to teach evolution of stress and history of management because you talk almost nothing about the English and their way of management, and they're the ones who really started it (Think Dickens and his novels).
Last thing: She literally (sorry, I couldn't help it) missed a chance during her Amazon section to talk to older workers who may know a thing or two about how things *used* to be when she visited a workers camp and just talked to mostly young people. The Amazon older workers she didn't mention or didn't speak with. That's huge chance missed because they're the ones who can best judge how things used to be vs. how they are now. I wish she would have talked to them and gotten their thoughts on (among other things) are things really more difficult today compared to before?

In sum, recommended but skip the preachy/teachy parts and focus on the stories of the workers themselves. That is where this book really shines.