On The Clock

On The Clock

Adult nonfiction
If you've been reading my recent blog posts you know that I've
been coping with the aftermath of a bad fall. It hasn't made my
student job in dining services easy since most shifts involve four or
five hours standing. However, I am very lucky to be working at UMaine
instead of in the real world. I was able to call in sick the supper
shift when my knee hurt too badly and I couldn't have climbed into the
high cab of my husband's truck. When I asked to be put on cashier
instead of dishroom my manager arranged for me to be trained. Where I
work I'm seen and treated as a human being whose health and safety are
considered important...
...which is something that every worker deserves just by virtue
of being human. It's also something unavailable to an increasing
percentage of our workforce. If you don't believe that I strongly
suggest that you read Emily Guendelsberger's On The Clock: What Low-
Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. An undercover
expose written in the fine tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel
and Dimed, this book is a real eye opener.
Like Ehrenreich, Guendelsberger went undercover. It's a
necessity when researching big business. Those companies, bizarrely
designated as people by the Supreme Court, curate their images so
assiduously that more traditional methods of inquiry would uncover no
more that what they wish uncovered. She did not lie on her
applications or in interviews. She would have been honest in replying
to questions that were never asked. "...All three companies seemed
desperate to hire enough felony- and opiate-free bodies to keep up
with the massive turnover rate built into their business models.
Nobody called my references." Two of the workplaces she did time in
are familiar to probably all of us: Amazon and McDonald's. The
third, Convergys, is a call center that handles phone contact with
customers of large corporations.
Guendelsberger starts her narrative with a term with two
distinctly different meanings: in the weeds. In academia someone in
the weeds was entangled in unimportant details of an endeavor. For
blue collar workers being in the weeds means perpetually working at
maximum speed because you are always behind and there is no let up in
work demands. It's a state of being that is becoming the norm for
more and more of us thanks to algorithmic scheduling. In addition to
making workers' lives wildly unpredictable by greatly differing hours
week to week and last minute schedule posting...
"Businesses also save a ton of money by scheduling the absolute
minimum number of workers to handle the predicted business. And they
save even more by scheduling slightly fewer people than can handle the
predicted work at a reasonable pace. If workers can push themselves
to cover the duties of a sick coworker, doesn't that just mean they're
not giving it 100 percent the rest of the time? Why can't they work
that efficiently every shift?"
Most of us in college or graduate school can put our ultimate
effort into the stepped up demands of finals week when everything is
due. But keeping up that pace for the entirity of the semester
without the built in breaks that allow for catching up or getting
ahead would be unsustainable. It's even more unsustainable for
workers in the physically demanding service sector. It's not meant to
be sustainable. The fact that the businesses that hired Guendelsberg
did not even call her references shows a view of the worker as an
easily replaceable cog to be used and discarded rather than a human to
invest in and cultivate.
Reading On The Clock is like gaining access to a ring of Dante's
Inferno added in the 21st century. You will learn about how:
*serious and sustained pain is an expected part of working at an
Amazon warehouse, and management's response is painkiller vending
machines (never mind that OTC pain killer abuse is decisively linked
to liver and kidney damage) rather than scaling back worker
expectations to something more realistic or increasing breaks.
"...It feels like I've been hit by a garbage truck. Everything
hurts. My feet are the worst, but my back, shoulders, arms, and neck
feel terrible too...I even have a throbbing headache."
(In contrast, on my first work day after my fall my manager had
the napkin holders brought to me to fill instead of having me walk to
all the tables and one of my supervisors told me if I needed to leave
early I could just talk to her.)
*at Convergys ambulances are called so often for panic attacks that an
EMT would ask "Okay, who is it this time?" There are scripts to follow
and quotas to make. Some callers are irate. Workers are mandated to
respond with calmness to vitriole and abuse and to attempt to sell
additional products and services no matter the circumstances.
"Amazon workers complained about the physical stress of
technoTaylorism. But an alarming number of call-center reps mentioned
experiencing its mental stress, citing their jobs as the direct cause
of intense bouts of depression and anxiety as well as ulcers and other
physical results of stress. I could, unfortunately, fill yet another
twenty pages with stories from reps who said their jobs had driven
them to seriously consider self harm or suicide."
And then there's the intense scrutiny of worker time down to and
including bathroom breaks. A worker who had a doctor's note verifying
her digestive problems had a supervisor who would listen outside her
stall to see whether she really had diarrhea every time she used a
toilet. Can you imagine an adult human being having to undergo this
level of humiliation to earn a paycheck?
(Dining Services, in contrast, gets that if you gotta go, you
gotta go. You tell any coworker who might have to cover for you.
Like if you're serving you tell your runner.)
and *at McDonalds workers must perform a wide variety of tasks under
the constant pressure of impatient customer lines. Pushing people to
work faster than is safely possible leads to injuries. One day when
Guendelsberger checked the amount of coffee in the metal pots the
handle of one came loose, baptizing her in scalding hot liquid.
"That puts me in good company. According to a 2015 survey of US
fast-food workers by the National Council for Occupational Safety and
Health, 79 percent had been burned on the job in the previous year--
most more than once. And not everyone got off as easily as I did."
To top that off, many workers, including those with burns
serious enough to require medical attention are told by managers to
apply condiments to the afflicted area and keep on working.
(I can't even imagine that happening where I work. Burns are
rare and taken seriously.)
Even those of us who have so far had the great good fortune to
not have held down one of those jobs from Hell have to take On The
Clock very seriously. Guendelsburger, an educated journalist, ended
up in dire circumstances when the newspaper she had a decent job with
folded. She did all the right things educationally and vocationally
and got screwed. In a world where a lot of formerly secure good jobs
are being killed by automation and outsourcing very few of us are
really safe. So reading On The Clock and getting angry enough to
engage with others is not just the right thing to do and morally
decent. It's potentially self preservation.
Just do it, OK?
On a purrrsonal note, after cashiering instead of being in dishroom
Saturday and spending Sunday mostly reading and watching Home Alone 3
with Eugene my knee is well on the way to recovery. I am so looking
forward to Academic Showcase which will be held in the Dean's Suite
tomorrow. In fact I'm waiting about as patiently as a sugar hyped
first grader on Christmas Eve. I do hope lots of people ask me
questions about my poster!!!
A great big shout out goes out to UMaine managers and supervisors who
I appreciate even more than before since reading On The Clock.
jules hathaway




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