"Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age," (Salon) the bitingly funny,
eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved
world of hourly low-wage labor
After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily
Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center
outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked
with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year,
she travelled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where
even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally,
Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly
escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.
Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country,
Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S.
workplace. Offering an up-close portrait of America's actual "essential
workers," On the Clock examines the broken social safety net as well
as an economy that has purposely had all the slack drained out and
converted to profit. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues,
and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get
the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the
most expensive element of production to the cheapest - and how low wage
jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of
humanity.
On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in
order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the
modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane
for millions of Americans.
