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165 reviews for:
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
Emily Guendelsberger
4.28 AVERAGE
165 reviews for:
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
Emily Guendelsberger
4.28 AVERAGE
The good:
-The stories of the daily life working at these jobs are great, so are the stories of the other workers
-Nice, well detailed descriptions. Really helps you feel like you are there with her 'in the weeds'
-The author acts and writes like a regular person, and it made it easier to empathize with her situation. I appreciated that this wasn't written like a sterile 'analysis' of the daily working lives of low wage workers.
The bad:
-Too much swearing. Quite a lot of it comes from when she is quoting other people but even then it felt unnecessary
-The descriptions of Taylorism, stress in evolution etc. should have been in their own sections in the book, rather than being interspersed with the other chapters.
-A little too preachy at times; I agree with another reviewer that it would have been a better idea to take a step back at times and not beat readers heads with her ideas
Overall, its gets a recommendation. 3.75/5
-The stories of the daily life working at these jobs are great, so are the stories of the other workers
-Nice, well detailed descriptions. Really helps you feel like you are there with her 'in the weeds'
-The author acts and writes like a regular person, and it made it easier to empathize with her situation. I appreciated that this wasn't written like a sterile 'analysis' of the daily working lives of low wage workers.
The bad:
-Too much swearing. Quite a lot of it comes from when she is quoting other people but even then it felt unnecessary
-The descriptions of Taylorism, stress in evolution etc. should have been in their own sections in the book, rather than being interspersed with the other chapters.
-A little too preachy at times; I agree with another reviewer that it would have been a better idea to take a step back at times and not beat readers heads with her ideas
Overall, its gets a recommendation. 3.75/5
adventurous
informative
fast-paced
Guendelsberger's prose is magnetic, and the book neatly accomplishes what it sets out to do. Those are the parts as I see them, so it feels a bit unfair to caveat On the Clock as much as I will. The stories are by far the driving bits of the book, with the psychological conclusion sitting pretty alongside. The former is open; The latter incomplete. The captured moment of our technology society is certainly scary enough to refer to.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
How to review such a scathing honest book? What standards and evaluative points to use to include? What does the reader consider and how to communicate?
This is a brutal book and it is brutal because it is real written by Emily in real time maybe 1-2 years ago when she worked at Amazon fulfillment center/warehouse in Kentucky and Convergys third party for Call centers and this was AT&T call center in ? and last maybe the worst McDonalds in San Francisco where I the reader live
In all 3 corporations she worked never directly for that specific corporation and she always worked for a third party company tasked by the company to extract everything from the workers and provide the workers with as little as possible. In each company the position is the same that the worker must give it all to the corporation and anything other than that is considered "theft".
The damage that results from the work conditions is Never ever considered from the viewpoint of the worker and his/her rights as a human being. Instead in each case the corporation comes up with a solution that gets the worker either away from the site or medicated so as to continue his/her labor.
Emily is very generous to us the readers by revealing aspects of herself and her life. Also as I said I live in SF and she has done a perfect portrait of the issues we deal with here outside of McDonalds that also affect the scenes inside there. I know the location of the place where she worked.
For Emily there always comes a situation imposed by the Corporation and/or the Third Party Employer that is unacceptable and she leaves. At Convergys it is when the manager boldly blatantly changes the time that the employee reports to punish the employee for what is called Time Theft and yet it is Wage Theft. At McDonalds it is after she burned and cut herself from a broken coffee pot and had her work hours changed when she called in sick later. At Amazon I may forget the circumstance and it was the accumulated damage to her physical health and the company's solution of free pills like Advil and Tylenol in vending machines. Oh I think she left as her time ended as it was seasonal work.
Each work situation was unique and the point made by the author is the damage to the workers' lives and the imprisonment.
Judy
This is a brutal book and it is brutal because it is real written by Emily in real time maybe 1-2 years ago when she worked at Amazon fulfillment center/warehouse in Kentucky and Convergys third party for Call centers and this was AT&T call center in ? and last maybe the worst McDonalds in San Francisco where I the reader live
In all 3 corporations she worked never directly for that specific corporation and she always worked for a third party company tasked by the company to extract everything from the workers and provide the workers with as little as possible. In each company the position is the same that the worker must give it all to the corporation and anything other than that is considered "theft".
The damage that results from the work conditions is Never ever considered from the viewpoint of the worker and his/her rights as a human being. Instead in each case the corporation comes up with a solution that gets the worker either away from the site or medicated so as to continue his/her labor.
Emily is very generous to us the readers by revealing aspects of herself and her life. Also as I said I live in SF and she has done a perfect portrait of the issues we deal with here outside of McDonalds that also affect the scenes inside there. I know the location of the place where she worked.
For Emily there always comes a situation imposed by the Corporation and/or the Third Party Employer that is unacceptable and she leaves. At Convergys it is when the manager boldly blatantly changes the time that the employee reports to punish the employee for what is called Time Theft and yet it is Wage Theft. At McDonalds it is after she burned and cut herself from a broken coffee pot and had her work hours changed when she called in sick later. At Amazon I may forget the circumstance and it was the accumulated damage to her physical health and the company's solution of free pills like Advil and Tylenol in vending machines. Oh I think she left as her time ended as it was seasonal work.
Each work situation was unique and the point made by the author is the damage to the workers' lives and the imprisonment.
Judy
challenging
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
I cried when she said she could leave. Because I can’t.
As a service worker, this hit home for me. I worked at Sbux, I’m now a call center rep, and this book was right about everything. I was reading this while working one day, and when I read the line at the end of the call center chapter, “I get to leave” I started bawling. I want to leave. I’m chained to this job and I’m so exhausted. Emily is a gifted writer. As a Creative writing minor and English Major, I can tell you it’s a great read.
As a service worker, this hit home for me. I worked at Sbux, I’m now a call center rep, and this book was right about everything. I was reading this while working one day, and when I read the line at the end of the call center chapter, “I get to leave” I started bawling. I want to leave. I’m chained to this job and I’m so exhausted. Emily is a gifted writer. As a Creative writing minor and English Major, I can tell you it’s a great read.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Such a good read! Emily's perspective on the three jobs she started was eye-opening, as someone who's worked both minimum wage and professional jobs, I felt like this gave me a glimpse into the difference between choosing to work these jobs and not having any other choice. These corporations are trying to squeeze value out of people every second of everyday and that's so unrealistic! We need a culture shift to start valuing people as more than just means of production. I loved this book and felt I learned a lot.
I rotated between feeling frustrated, pissed off, and incredulous and chuckling (because I thought the author was funny). Good read with insight about the experiences of low-wage workers in today's profit-driven, high-tech, big brother workplace mixed in with some lessons in history, economics, and science.
oh man, after i burnt out on my teaching job I has exactly the same type of experiences working at a movie theater. didnt work nearly as hard or suffer as much though. but the details are extremely enjoyable, especially about the mentality working at a amazon warehouse.