Emily Guendelsberger
Autor von On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
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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 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:
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 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.… (mehr)
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.
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. 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.… (mehr)
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 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! Fucking! 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 fuck out? Because the systems we use to compile and analyze data don’t consider America freaking the fuck 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"… (mehr)
"At SDF8, 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 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! Fucking! 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 fuck out? Because the systems we use to compile and analyze data don’t consider America freaking the fuck 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"… (mehr)
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As an employer myself, I can empathize to some degree where these larger companies want some predictability over how people are going to represent them to the public. I want my representatives to know clearly what we can do, what we can’t do, and to convey both to the customer in a reasonable way. Not to sound condescending, not to raise expectations, and certainly not to make the customer feel entirely powerless.
But there is a line employers and customers should not cross and the general wellbeing of the people you hire has to factor in.
Until I read this book it had never occurred to me that unsatisfied customers would throw food at the hapless MacDonalds servers. I’d never seen this at the myriad Canadian, US, and European MacDonalds outlets I’ve visited over the past forty years.
Apparently, it happens in San Francisco and a lot of other places.
My own staff and I myself have experienced some of the bad behaviour author Emily Guendelsburger documents in this book. It is what causes some people to leave the profession and contributes to the sentiment that retail is not a professional career or calling.
Lack of boundaries for customers is for sure a big problem. The need for growing quarterly earnings in public companies is another big problem. There are times when companies just shouldn’t be growing. Times when management lack a feel for what their policies are doing to their employees at the end of the line is one of those times.
The big employers complain that laziness on the job is time theft and I can’t count the number of times I’ve wished under my breath that I could simply get a full eight hours of labour out of my employees.
Do I really need all eight of those hours? Probably not, but what is enough? And can I design my business to survive based on a reasonable estimate of worker productivity.
It seems that the way amazon handles this problem is to provide vending machines offering pain killers for employees who suffer from the strain of walking all that distance everyday between amazon bins. Of lifting and pushing, sliding and reaching. Amazon’s hand scanners tell you where to go, when to start and when to stop, and when you’re just not going fast enough.
The next worst thing to having a computer replace you in the workplace is to have a computer telling you when enough is not good enough.
And then there is the thankless work of telephone support. Employers try to turn around profit eating services with profit making sales pitches, often further enraging customers who have essentially called to complain.
In this telling the employers abuse, the customers abuse, and who knows what else happens in the home.
Things are just moving way too fast.… (mehr)