On the Clock

May 6, 2019
In this spiritual sequel to Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2011 Nickel and Dimed, journalist Guendelsberger takes jobs at an Amazon fulfillment warehouse, an AT&T call center, and a McDonald’s franchise to investigate the sheer implausibility of living on minimum wage and the Kafkaesque features of service industry work. These include the Tylenol- and Advil-dispensing vending machines at the Amazon warehouse, a symbol of the excruciating pain that is an expected part of the job; bosses changing time sheets to deduct minutes employees spent in the bathroom; and screaming customers flinging condiment packets. Guendelsberger’s coworkers are charismatic and charming, and completely unaware that they deserve a lot better from their employers: one of her fellow employees suffers a panic attack that requires emergency services and another attempts dental surgery on herself. Interspersed throughout are references to early 20th-century moguls like Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford (who pioneered the use of assembly lines to control workers’ pace, a predecessor to Amazon’s pace-tracking practices), giving historical background on how the plight of today’s overburdened working class came to be. Guendelsberger’s narration is vivid, humorous, and honest; she admits to the feelings of despair, panic, and shame that these jobs frequently inspire, allowing for a more complex and complete picture of the experience. This is a riveting window into minimum-wage work and the subsistence living it engenders. Agent: Lydia Wills, Lydia Wills LLC.

Narrator Christine Lakin gives her voice as much of a workout as jobless journalist Emily Guendelsberger got on the floor of an Amazon center. To research this book on low-wage corporate jobs, the author went undercover at Amazon, Convergys, and McDonald's. Lakin brings a sympathetic chuckle to Emily's self-mocking depiction of confused Amazon temps and reflects Emily's weariness after exhausting shifts. At a Convergys training session, Lakin deftly juggles the Southern voices and bits of corporate speak, with hilarious results. The way Lakin captures the abruptness, raised voices, and profanity of a call gone wrong at a Convergys call center is as dramatic as it is absurd. Laughter turns out to be the best path to an understanding of life on the low-wage job. J.A.S. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine