On the Clock - A Book Review

The Service Worker Story

‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean’ - for a lot of us who spend their childhood outside the United States, this statement reminds us of parents or relatives pestering households help to work faster and not waste time taking a Chai (tea) break. However, this book is an eye opener and a strong wake-up call for many inside and outside of America who wonder why people are not thankful for what they have.

In short, it brings to focus why most low wage workers feel forgotten. 

It turns the misery and drudgery of work life in 21st century America into a compelling and critical narrative that every decision maker whether be policy or business should read. It calls for action by illustrating what living in the weeds means for a strata of our population who has long been forgotten by overarching business measures that rank productivity, efficiency and profit goals above human emotions and motivations.

Author, Emily Guendelsberger, goes undercover to witness first hand work-life (or lack of) at three low paying jobs - an Amazon fulfillment center picker (arguably the worst physical job one could do in a fulfillment center) , a call-center rep at Convergys (serving AT&T clients, perhaps as bad and as complicated as your monthly cellphone bills are), and a multi-tasker at a McDonald’s in downtown San Francisco (I have been to this one and now know why they are always hustling).

I get to leave part one

She works as a picker collecting items from shelves, loading them into a cart, and bringing them to an assembly belt in the huge Amazon warehouse near Louisville, Kentucky. Apart from the physical requirements of the job (5-15 miles of walking, lifting heavy weights, bending, crouching and reaching above the head), employees have inflexible and unpredictable work schedules. Unpaid time-off is considered a luxury. And yes, you need to earn it based on your tenure and performance. 

Scanner guns like Big Brother are always tracking you and how much time you have left to complete a task. Time theft is a big deal. If you violate the rules, a manager will warn you. Six warnings, six points and you are terminated!

Author makes a striking similarity to the scientific management scheme by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1856. Calculate how much the fastest worker can do in a day and then calculate average productivity based on the highest productivity levels of the fastest worker. In addition to the physically challenging demands of the job, lack of basic empathy angers me. Workers in order to be productive are assigned routes where there is little to no chance of a human interaction. Algorithms are designed to maximize worker efficiency and minimize empathy.

"At ----, I pop Advil like candy all day, not even bothering to track when my last dose was. I don't talk to anyone at break or lunch. I'm too tired. My head pounds, and I feel generally dull. By the end of my shift, I'm almost staggering from the stabbing pain in my feet.” The next morning she wakes up feeling even worse. The day goes on and another day and another till she gets to leave.

Working poor are often termed as lazy, dumb and unambitious while they work hard every day to just to survive. In summary, it feels like workers in these shifts are merely a machine clocking in and clocking out every day; easily replaceable and often reduced to a mere number on a tracking board.

I get to leave part two

The next segment in the book is personally the most thought provoking for me. It reminds me of that episode from The Office (remember Michael Scott anyone?) - You are not just selling paper, you are selling service! 

Author goes to work at Convergys handling AT&T customer support calls. In a world driven by metrics on business productivity and cost, the golden training rule is to stick to the script. Day in and day out. She says “Reps are bound by rules. They are asked not to think. We are so heavily scripted we might as well be robots”. 

She battles emotional issues in a low-control and high stress working environment. Readers go through the mindset of a customer service rep in a particular incident where Emily could no longer control her emotions (after having wasted customer’s time going through a million system screens disintegrated with each other while trying to find the right answer to the question) and has to wait in line to break down because restroom queue is so long. 

She values the relationships with her co-workers. “Even when I were in as much physical pain as I was at ----, I’d still take this over Amazon every time. Because I want to make friends.” However, system algorithms are structured to minimize or at best ignore these human relationships. 

Author references Ford’s assembly line invention and how it was the best model for efficiency back in the days. “But an even bigger problem is that monotonous work kind of twists or deadens the mind (or the soul)”. As we look towards the era of AI, Automation and Robotics, there is an opportunity to make worker’s role more relevant and less repeatable.

I get to leave part three

Her last gig is at a busy McDonald’s in San Francisco. As she illustrates, with a higher minimum wage and paid sick leave, this is possibly the best job out of the three.

But the line at McD never ends..

Even if she had the opportunity to make friends with her coworkers it wouldn't have been possible. They are always in the weeds. Often Understaffed.

Schedules are posted a day or less in advance which makes it harder to have another job, let alone any time for hobbies or social activities. She talks about Crowley, the demon protagonist, in the comedy Good Omens as the designer of modern age scheduling software. Systems have been precisely programmed to predict how many customers will show up each hour which allows managers to staff least number of employees that can handle the workload thus maximizing human misery at both sides of the counter. If an employee calls in sick, skeleton crew pitches in to do the best they can. Workers push themselves harder because they are precisely understaffed to handle these situations creating a loop of negative feedback, slow customer service and low morale. 

“If everybody is in a constant state of trying to catch up, nobody is wasting time on the clock”.

In Conclusion

"Why is America so crazy? It’s the inescapable chronic stress built into the way we work and live. It's the insane idea that an honest day's work means suppressing your humanity, dignity, family, and other non-work priorities in exchange for low wages that make home life constantly stressful too. And on top of that, mainstream politicians seem totally blind to how dire life has gotten for a whole lot of people. Everything’s fine." 

Is it?

This book shows a mirror to not only policy and lawmakers but also business leaders. They have a huge opportunity to utilize their platforms to build processes, products and services which are human centric by keeping the worker at the center of decision making. 

Emily gets to leave and hence her short stint as a service worker is more bearable. However, not everyone gets to leave the weeds.

Highly recommend reading On the Clock. It might make you feel like a human again. 

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/emily-guendelsberger/on-the-clock/9780316508995/

https://www.amazon.com/Clock-Low-Wage-Drives-America-Insane/dp/0316509000