On the clock : what low-wage work did to me and how it drives America insane

Emily Guendelsberger

2019      352 pp 

“Target order display reaction time: 5 seconds

Target toast time: 23 seconds

Target sandwich assembly line time: 22 seconds

Target sandwich wrapping time: 14 seconds

Target order assembly time: 16 seconds”

                                                          

  -From the book (McDonalds Instruction manual)

   Emily Guendelsberger, in a follow up to her book  Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), she explores what it’s like to be an unskilled laborer working for three companies: Amazon, Convergys ( a call center business), and a ‘McJob’ at McDonalds. What she discovers is that the work is often dehumanizing & degrading for the individuals working there. Low-wage employees are reduced to mechanized expectations persistently monitored by pit bosses and electronic supervisors. At Amazon they clock you with your hand-held scanner. ‘Pickers’ are often required to walk 15 -18 hours a day in stifling heat. Amazon has placed vending machines dispensing pain killers. At McDonalds there is the endless cacophony of bells and buzzers to clock your time. Convergys keeps track of how consistent you are at pushing a company’s product, even if the caller does not want it. Imagine being cut working hours or fired for being a minute late for work or having to use the bathroom too many times, or taking a day off because of a medical emergency (“You are stealing from us”*). It’s considered a benefit after working for a specified amount of time to receive a non-paid day off.

   Since the Industrial Revolution, the teachings of Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor (look this guy up) have been institutionalized and now programmed to run our workforce like robots. Much of this was extracted from the Toyota Production System (TPS)**. The executive class currently has little concern as to how this affects its labor pool: it’s only interest seems to be productivity and profit.  Guendelsberger also examines firsthand the destructive effects of stress this has on millions of people in the United States. I was shocked how corporations treat human beings with little respect about what they consider to be a replaceable commodity. And if one thinks this only applies to low wage workers, these methodologies are now migrating into the middle class work corporate and private institutions too. All Upper Management folks (and those of us who do not do this type of work) need to read this book to really see how modernization has imbruted our society.

*The Japanese have a word for this: “muda”, meaning "futility; uselessness; wastefulness", and is a key concept in lean process thinking.

** The Japanese also have a word for this: “kaizen”, meaning a philosophy for process improvement.

The Japanese language also has a word for dying on the job due to overwork: “Karoshi”

See Also;

Guendelsberger, Emily. “I Worked at an Amazon Fulfillment Center; They Treat Workers Like Robots”. TIME magazine, July 29, 2019.

Spitznagel, Eric. “Inside the hellish workday of an Amazon warehouse employee”. New York Post, July 13, 2019.