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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
Written with great empathy (and also great jokes), “On the Clock”’s vignettes of panoptic low-wage jobs are grounded in accessible histories of labor, cognitive science, and technocapitalism. Yes, it made me angry, but it also made me hopeful.
informative
fast-paced
challenging
dark
funny
informative
sad
fast-paced
I won't go so far as to say that everyone should have to work a low-wage service job once in their life -- while my stints at an amusement park and a department store taught me a lot about how and how not to treat other people and how to deal with what Guendelsberger calls "screamers," they also granted me an undue amount of stress and a persistent joint problem. But, at the very least, the experience of those jobs needs to be more widely understood, especially considering that people with decision-making power are often ignorant of the kind of work done by millions of Americans. This book does a great job at both demonstrating the accelerating strategies that large corporations use to maximize profit and productivity with minimal resources and shedding light on the perspectives of the people who work these exhausting jobs.
investigative journalism meets method acting -- i enjoyed this a lot more than i was expecting to! an easy read, anecdotally motivated but with ample evidence to corroborate, fairly self-aware of her privilege. some deeper systemic change analysis or methodical call to action would have been nice
challenging
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
The core idea of the book and getting an inside look at these different companies is really intriguing and learning more about how they work was what kept me going. The author keeps those parts interesting, but when she tries to get into policy she fails miserably. There is no conclusive wrap up or ending to the story that makes any kind of sense. The incessant use of foot notes is also wildly unnecessary and takes you out of the text constantly. Overall, an interesting read, but if you want to draw helpful conclusions from it, go elsewhere.
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.
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.
adventurous
challenging
informative
fast-paced
Great insights.
there are parts of this book that i want to send to people who have never worked a low-wage job, and there are parts that made me grimace because despite so many of the people working these jobs being black, or gay, or immigrants the author still dropped in bits about how it made her understand how people voted for trump which felt? weird.