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laurenkd89 's review for:
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane
by Emily Guendelsberger
Emily Guendelsberger opens her book with the question: What do you think of when you hear the phrase “in the weeds”? For most Americans who have never worked a low-wage job, “in the weeds” means getting lost in the little details, as in, “Don’t get stuck in the weeds on that essay, just focus on the high-level points.” But for those who have worked a low-wage job, “in the weeds” means something like “swamped,” as in, “I don’t have time to mop right now, I’m in the weeds with all these food orders.” I had never heard this latter definition, revealing my privilege, but Guendelsberger became familiar with it when she was in high school, working a variety of fast-food and service positions that many high schoolers do. After taking on the quest of re-entering modern-day low-wage work, Guendelsberger was reintroduced to this concept with a bang: she realized that many low-wage jobs nowadays force employees, among other less-than-ideal things, to be “in the weeds” for every second of their shift. No breaks, other than their legally-mandated ones, which even then, are minimized to as small as they can get. Productivity monitored down to the second. Constant competition and expectations of robotic efficiency. Accusations of wage theft for taking a moment’s rest. So it begins.
The author is a college-educated journalist who worked for a small paper in Philadelphia. The paper was forced to close in 2016, laying off all its workers. Guendelsberger needed a job and was interested in learning more about low-wage work for a potential book - so she decided to dive headfirst into three of the most common (and most commonly complained-about) low-wage jobs in the U.S. at the moment. She got a job working as a temporary contractor at SDF8, an Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, during the “peak” season of the 6 weeks before Christmas; she worked at an AT&T call center operated by Convergys in North Carolina; and she took a job at a McDonald’s in San Francisco. She stayed at each of these jobs for long enough to get a real feel of what it’s like to work there. She wasn’t doing it just for fun - she didn’t have a job and actually needed the money to pay for her mortgage and other living expenses. She does recognize, however, that she is much more privileged than many of the workers there - she knows that she can leave at any time and get a better-paying, less stressful job. This comes into play many, many times when she wonders how people do this, how workers live their lives in a constant state of being “in the weeds” or getting yelled at by customers or being so exhausted you pass out immediately after returning home. How do people raise families like this? How do people not explode with anger or frustration or high blood pressure? Among these questions, Guendelsberger learns a good few things about these three jobs, common across all of these different positions despite manifesting in various ways: \
1. Productivity and metrics. Each job implemented some form of technology to hyper-precisely track what the employee is doing during every second of the day (including your bathroom breaks), measure how long it’s taking compared to the (randomly chosen) desired target time, and punish employees who don’t meet these goals. At Amazon, each worker has a personal scanner with a bar counting down the number of seconds remaining to scan the next item. At Convergys, the target call time was 600 seconds, and workers would get angry warnings as that number approached. At McDonalds, machines beep angrily like the inside of a submarine when the customer’s wait time for an order exceeds the comically low target time. Your employment and possibility of incentives or promotion depend on these metrics, but they’re often not humanly possible. It’s essentially the employers working hard to make sure that you can be as close to a robot as possible, until they eventually replace you with a robot.
2. The Panopticon. As above, workers are diligent mainly because of the fear instilled during training. There’s always someone watching, whether it’s your GPS tracker in the scanner letting a “coach” know that you’ve been in the bathroom or sitting for too long, or your calls that are being recorded at the call center for “quality assurance purposes.” You can disobey the rules, but you live in constant fear of who’s watching.
3. Screamers. This wasn’t a problem at Amazon, but it certainly was a Convergys and McDonald’s. If you, like me, treat service workers with the most basic modicum of respect and dignity, you will be truly shocked and outraged at how truly awful some people are to call center or fast food employees. She recounts having things thrown at her and her fellow employees at McDonald’s, including burgers, mustard, and hot coffee. She recounts stories from ex-Convergys employees saying that the stress of being yelled at all day made them consider self-harm.
4. Being “in the weeds” constantly. See #1 to meet productivity goals. Companies also hire fewer staff than they need with the idea that if workers can cover for a fellow employee who is out sick with the flu, that means they’re not working as hard as they can the rest of the time. So, employers will staff only a skeleton crew, requiring them to be “in the weeds” all the time to meet customer demand. At McDonald’s, there was never not a line. Workers did not have a minute to rest, let alone breathe in between orders. Not only that, but a random assortment of tasks required a manager to take time out of being “in the weeds” to enter their PIN code for approval, and cashiers were responsible for fulfilling 60% of an order as well. I was extremely stressed listening to Guendelsberger’s description of the lunchtime rush, with the long line buzzing in anger and frustration, culminating in a very angry woman yelling and throwing food at her.
5. Physical and mental exhaustion. Guendelsberger said she would walk between 13 and 16 miles every day working at the massive mini-city of SDF8. Obviously, no breaks and no rest because of the scanner’s time clock and GPS, which can tell when you’re sitting in one place for too long. Instead of fixing these productivity expectations, Amazon just installed painkiller vending machines around the warehouse. On the other hand, working at Convergys tested the limited of Guendelsberger’s mental and emotional strength. Not only did she have to juggle about 12 different tasks while talking to a customer, including handling their problem, opening a smorgasbord of different applications and portals to do a variety of useless things, making a sales pitch, and praying that her caller didn’t become a “screamer,” but she had to do this all while on a clock, with a boss potentially listening in. Again, I was extremely stressed just listening to her metaphor of a “clown car” with 12 different clowns vying to be driver.
There are so many more terrible, soul-sucking lessons that Guendelsberger learned from her three low-wage positions, and she does a fantastic job at relaying these lessons in the book. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars rather than 5 is that, paradoxically, I could have done without the pretty detailed anthropologic and labor history/sociology/theory she peppers in throughout. I was far, far more interested in her everyday experiences of living these jobs, reflecting on the other people in the same job who can’t escape, and her privilege of being able to leave. As low-wage, poor treatment jobs like these increase in the U.S., it’s so important to read about the experience of what it’s like on a daily basis to fully understand what the problem with these jobs are. Of course, there are areas to reform aplenty, but understanding the true pain points of employees in this situation is valuable to prioritize what hurts workers the most in the short and long term. Even with the better working conditions mandated in the Bay Area McDonald’s, Guendelsberger still had a rough go - because of the other “business improvements” McDonald’s implements that make it a tough job. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and highly recommend it to anyone interested in fair work and fair labor.
Update December 2020: I'm changing this review to five stars - because what makes a five-star book is one that I keep telling friends about, one that changes the way I think about something, or one that fills my tank with anecdotes and knowledge about a new topic. This book does exactly that.
The author is a college-educated journalist who worked for a small paper in Philadelphia. The paper was forced to close in 2016, laying off all its workers. Guendelsberger needed a job and was interested in learning more about low-wage work for a potential book - so she decided to dive headfirst into three of the most common (and most commonly complained-about) low-wage jobs in the U.S. at the moment. She got a job working as a temporary contractor at SDF8, an Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, during the “peak” season of the 6 weeks before Christmas; she worked at an AT&T call center operated by Convergys in North Carolina; and she took a job at a McDonald’s in San Francisco. She stayed at each of these jobs for long enough to get a real feel of what it’s like to work there. She wasn’t doing it just for fun - she didn’t have a job and actually needed the money to pay for her mortgage and other living expenses. She does recognize, however, that she is much more privileged than many of the workers there - she knows that she can leave at any time and get a better-paying, less stressful job. This comes into play many, many times when she wonders how people do this, how workers live their lives in a constant state of being “in the weeds” or getting yelled at by customers or being so exhausted you pass out immediately after returning home. How do people raise families like this? How do people not explode with anger or frustration or high blood pressure? Among these questions, Guendelsberger learns a good few things about these three jobs, common across all of these different positions despite manifesting in various ways: \
1. Productivity and metrics. Each job implemented some form of technology to hyper-precisely track what the employee is doing during every second of the day (including your bathroom breaks), measure how long it’s taking compared to the (randomly chosen) desired target time, and punish employees who don’t meet these goals. At Amazon, each worker has a personal scanner with a bar counting down the number of seconds remaining to scan the next item. At Convergys, the target call time was 600 seconds, and workers would get angry warnings as that number approached. At McDonalds, machines beep angrily like the inside of a submarine when the customer’s wait time for an order exceeds the comically low target time. Your employment and possibility of incentives or promotion depend on these metrics, but they’re often not humanly possible. It’s essentially the employers working hard to make sure that you can be as close to a robot as possible, until they eventually replace you with a robot.
2. The Panopticon. As above, workers are diligent mainly because of the fear instilled during training. There’s always someone watching, whether it’s your GPS tracker in the scanner letting a “coach” know that you’ve been in the bathroom or sitting for too long, or your calls that are being recorded at the call center for “quality assurance purposes.” You can disobey the rules, but you live in constant fear of who’s watching.
3. Screamers. This wasn’t a problem at Amazon, but it certainly was a Convergys and McDonald’s. If you, like me, treat service workers with the most basic modicum of respect and dignity, you will be truly shocked and outraged at how truly awful some people are to call center or fast food employees. She recounts having things thrown at her and her fellow employees at McDonald’s, including burgers, mustard, and hot coffee. She recounts stories from ex-Convergys employees saying that the stress of being yelled at all day made them consider self-harm.
4. Being “in the weeds” constantly. See #1 to meet productivity goals. Companies also hire fewer staff than they need with the idea that if workers can cover for a fellow employee who is out sick with the flu, that means they’re not working as hard as they can the rest of the time. So, employers will staff only a skeleton crew, requiring them to be “in the weeds” all the time to meet customer demand. At McDonald’s, there was never not a line. Workers did not have a minute to rest, let alone breathe in between orders. Not only that, but a random assortment of tasks required a manager to take time out of being “in the weeds” to enter their PIN code for approval, and cashiers were responsible for fulfilling 60% of an order as well. I was extremely stressed listening to Guendelsberger’s description of the lunchtime rush, with the long line buzzing in anger and frustration, culminating in a very angry woman yelling and throwing food at her.
5. Physical and mental exhaustion. Guendelsberger said she would walk between 13 and 16 miles every day working at the massive mini-city of SDF8. Obviously, no breaks and no rest because of the scanner’s time clock and GPS, which can tell when you’re sitting in one place for too long. Instead of fixing these productivity expectations, Amazon just installed painkiller vending machines around the warehouse. On the other hand, working at Convergys tested the limited of Guendelsberger’s mental and emotional strength. Not only did she have to juggle about 12 different tasks while talking to a customer, including handling their problem, opening a smorgasbord of different applications and portals to do a variety of useless things, making a sales pitch, and praying that her caller didn’t become a “screamer,” but she had to do this all while on a clock, with a boss potentially listening in. Again, I was extremely stressed just listening to her metaphor of a “clown car” with 12 different clowns vying to be driver.
There are so many more terrible, soul-sucking lessons that Guendelsberger learned from her three low-wage positions, and she does a fantastic job at relaying these lessons in the book. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars rather than 5 is that, paradoxically, I could have done without the pretty detailed anthropologic and labor history/sociology/theory she peppers in throughout. I was far, far more interested in her everyday experiences of living these jobs, reflecting on the other people in the same job who can’t escape, and her privilege of being able to leave. As low-wage, poor treatment jobs like these increase in the U.S., it’s so important to read about the experience of what it’s like on a daily basis to fully understand what the problem with these jobs are. Of course, there are areas to reform aplenty, but understanding the true pain points of employees in this situation is valuable to prioritize what hurts workers the most in the short and long term. Even with the better working conditions mandated in the Bay Area McDonald’s, Guendelsberger still had a rough go - because of the other “business improvements” McDonald’s implements that make it a tough job. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and highly recommend it to anyone interested in fair work and fair labor.
Update December 2020: I'm changing this review to five stars - because what makes a five-star book is one that I keep telling friends about, one that changes the way I think about something, or one that fills my tank with anecdotes and knowledge about a new topic. This book does exactly that.