Synopses & Reviews
"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.
Review
"...a bracing, revealing tour through realms of the low-wage economy that remain invisible to too many Americans....On The Clock is the Nickel and Dimed for our even more harried and dehumanizing times." Alec MacGillis, author of The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell
Review
"Filled with compassion, fury, and an invigorating dose of hope, On The Clock is the laugh-till-you-cry exposé our laugh-till-you-cry nation deserves." Daniel Brook, author of The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, A History of Future Cities, and The Accident of Color: A Story of Race in Reconstruction
Review
"On The Clock reads like a dystopian travelogue, the deckhand's journal from a flaming garbage barge on the shoals of late-stage capitalism...mordantly funny, devastating and rigorous..." Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
Review
"Guendelsberger paints a down-to-earth, accessible primer on how dehumanizing and exploitative American wage labor can be — and what can be done to change it." Vanity Fair
About the Author
Emily Guendelsberger has worked at Philadelphia City Paper, the Onion's A.V. Club, Philadelphia Weekly, and the Philadelphia Daily News, and has contributed to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, Politico magazine, and Vice.