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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
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
i really enjoyed this. the comparison between losing faith in religion and losing faith in the capitalist-presented idea of success stemming from hard work was rly cool
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This was an eye-opening book about the experiences the author had with three different hourly low-wage work. The section about Amazon was both surprising in that she found workers who had a different perspective of what you'd always hear about those jobs from the news, so that was interesting. The call center section was about as depressing as I had imagined. The McDonald's section strangely made me crave some McNuggets and fries even though I don't remember the last time I even had McDonald's.
While most of the book was readable, I skipped some of the sections about Wanda or Ayn where the author personified some ideas to make them more understandable. Once I got the gist of what she was getting at, I got tired of the conceit.
While most of the book was readable, I skipped some of the sections about Wanda or Ayn where the author personified some ideas to make them more understandable. Once I got the gist of what she was getting at, I got tired of the conceit.
This is an insightful first-hand account of low wage work in some of America's most common jobs. The author spends time training and working at an Amazon "fulfillment center," at a Convergys call center, and at a McDonald's restaurant. Her anecdotes are accompanied by interviews with her co-workers and well-documented research about low wage work and how it relates to health, depression, and society. Certainly an eye-opening read.
I loved the interviews with her coworkers. The additional details were nice, but dragged a little.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
What bugs low wage workers more than anything is the lack of control over their workday and predictability in their jobs. Strangely, it doesn’t seem to be the low wage levels themselves, which would be aggravating enough if it weren’t for efforts to standardize the services of giants like amazon.com, MacDonalds, and the myriad call centres created presumably to mop up the lousy services provided by the giant companies who subcontract “customer service” to them in the first place.
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.
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.
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
Not just a depressingly fascinating first-hand account of working low wage jobs in America. The author also does a great job of examining the broader picture, including the history of 'optimising' worker productivity, mental health and politics. A stark warning of the dangers of untrammelled capitalism and the American Dream.