Listen up. Next time you need to talk to a customer rep to dispute a billing charge, inquire about a change in service, or just complain about a lack of good service, chances are you are chatting with someone in a call center who is not at all associated with the company you are doing business with. One of the important lessons I learned from this book is to never ever get mad at a customer rep again unless they are rude.

OK, so now that's off my chest, here is what I thought about this book: I was captivated. Ever since Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed," I have been fascinated with the inner workings of just about any industry or job. I've read in-depth reports about hotels, restaurants, the sugar beet industry, Walmart associates, Applebee's expediters, and those who deliver all of those packages via UPS.

So I was excited to read about this journalist's report on working for Amazon (it's horrible on the body), a call center (she worked with AT&T customers and it is as bad as it sounds), and a busy McDonald's in the heart of San Francisco (there's a reason the restaurants always seemed short-staffed). Guendelsberger reports on the tasks, working conditions, co-workers, and management, and there is no detail too small for her to ignore. She also incorporates a bit of labor history and even some evolutionary science on stress and the body.

There were a few times I thought passages could have used a little more editing but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this anyone interested in today's working conditions for many of the hardworking people in the U.S.

For other similar books, try Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Alex Frankel's Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, and Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality.

Tl;dr: The best nonfiction book you haven't read. Rectify that!

This is *the* Nickle and Dimed of the 21st century. Yes, seriously. I know other books have been given that accolade and On the Clock is the one that desrves it.

If you care at all about the future of work in America (and you should), you need to read this. It's deeply heartfelt and profoundly unsettling.

The message of On the Clock is clear: hourly wage work asks workers to sacrifice their physical and mental health for not enough money and no benefits. Healthcare, sick leave--nothing. But crippling, thankless work? Yes, there is that. And it needs to change.

As other reviews have noted, there is cursing, though honestly how can the horrid state of hourly wage work not make you curse is beyond me.

On the Clock came out in 2019 but it is one of my best reads for that year *and* for 2020. Please, please read this illuminating, brave book.

I found this a really well researched and written book that should be required reading for anyone who has never had to survive on minimum wage

This book shows what it is like to be stuck in the cycle of low wage work, especially as someone whose skills make them worth far more than what companies are willing to pay. It drains the life out of you and I wish more of the “just get a better job, dummy” folks would read this account and get a clue that there’s more than just finding a better job. These companies own you; your body, your bladder, your minutes.

This book gave me a whole new perspective about the employees at Amazon, call centers, and fast food restaurants.

(free review copy) You'll want to sit down for this. No really. Go get a cup of coffee and settle in, because I have a LOT of thoughts. To start with, here's my rating math for this one:

Subject matter: 5
My actual fondness for the writer: 2
Ability to hold my interest: 5
Academic content to back up assertions: 4
Word choice: 1

Math says my overall rating is 3.4 and I DO recommend this book.

Subject matter: Since I first read Nickel and Dimed WAY back when it first came out, and then later in a grad program, I have listed it as one of my favorite books. I haven't read it since 2004, though, so I can't give actual evidence for why I respect Ehrenreich so much more than Guendelsberger, but I suspect it has to do with the professionalism with which ND is written. Back on topic, though, the topic of low-wage work and how workers are treated is a topic of fascination for me, because I have done low-wage work. I worked retail, factory and janitorial jobs, albeit back before they were changed by technology to become so ruthlessly monitored and understaffed. I am currently a public school teacher, which isn't technically low-wage, but I'm not upper class by any means. My husband works a decently-paid Teamster job that while protected, does not offer paid sick leave and treats employees like robots. I GET everything the author describes. I have the upmost respect for workers in the jobs that are described, and I desperately wanted the nitty gritty dirty details of inside Amazon, a call center and McDonald's - this book more than delivered those. I will surely be recommending this book to others for an updated look at low-wage jobs.

My actual fondness for the writer: Oh boy. The good thing is that technically she recognizes how privileged she is. AND I understand that this book isn't necessarily written for me - the people who need to read are those looking down, who have never been paid low wage, or like Paul Ryan as she references in the book, did so so long ago that their experiences aren't comparable to today's in the same job. Overall, I honestly was just so frustrated with the author during the majority of this book because of her privilege and her moral outrage on behalf of the workers. Saying, "you should NOT put up with that" is so degrading to someone who needs the income to literally stay alive. The author's moral outrage is appreciated of course, in the sense that it's great that she understands how hard people are working for not enough pay, but her tone comes off to me, a late-30s middle class Midwesterner, as immature and privileged 90% of the time. Her outrage at people being penalized for being late grated on me to no end - I can't imagine a single job I have ever had at which I wouldn't have to explain myself if I am late on a regular basis. And shouldn't people be on time?? Or am I just too brainwashed?? As a teacher, coming back from lunch or a break late means my class isn't supervised - not acceptable. So, while I get that the measures in place by these companies are draconian, her reaction to some of them was beyond privileged. AND. AND. The ending. Let's just say that it didn't offer a solution, which maybe it doesn't need to. BUT, it kind of implied that was offering something of a fix, but that fix was laughable to anyone actually working a job she describes. My husband and I, in our current situation, with our current financial obligations including massive student loans, will not see a true fix in our working lifetime, even if "by working toward a better world, you'll eventually stop hating yourself for your failures as a shark. And, slowly but surely, you'll start feeling like a human being again." I'm a pragmatist and while the author basically says that you shouldn't listen to me because I'm not going to tell you that everyone should just up and quit, I believe in true solutions that require real work from high up to enact. Those don't happen overnight. Yes we should band together. Yes we should keep fighting. But we need to stay employed while we fight these fights. And yes, I'm annoyed that my inner rage at injustice has been "sandpapered" (as she calls it) down to allow me to keep working in a system that sometimes treats me unfairly, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND DOGS I NEED TO FEED MY KIDS. And dogs.

Ability to hold my interest: I inhaled this book in 3 hours and couldn't put it down. Her stories are riveting and there's great academic history included.

Academic content to back up assertions: I loved the historical and academic interludes throughout the book that give backstory on why so many of our current work practices are in place. I was quoting them to my husband and will reference them often in the future.

Word choice: The word "f*ck" was used 134 times in this book. Yes, I used search on my Kindle to get a count. And no, it wasn't just in dialogue. The word "sh*t" was used way less, mostly in dialogue. She used the phrase "sucks donkey balls" twice. The word c*nt was used at least twice. Why does that matter? Well, I have had it drilled into me that profanity = laziness when it comes language. This isn't fiction and she wasn't directly quoting profane people. For what was supposed to be journalism, this was extremely jarring. To me, it signaled unprofessionalism and crassness that make this book one I could never recommend to my teachers to use in high school classes, unlike Nickel and Dimed. Overall, the tone was casual and crass and something that turned me off. Yes, that's personal preference and maybe I'm just old, but I just can't imagine why editors wouldn't have seen this as a negative too. In my experience, if I want to be taken seriously, eliminating profanity is required - for the politicians and media professionals she wants to reach, perhaps this should have been a consideration.

OVERALL: Yes, I'll recommend this book - WITH the caveats of language and privilege.

Wow! The author does a fabulous job telling you what it's really like working minimum wage jobs when you've got no other options. She did her research and knows how to present it in a fascinating way. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

On the Clock is a compelling, eye-opening, and necessary read for all Americans. Emily Guendelsberger gives us an up-close look at what it means to work the daily grind of low-wage work. Businesses boast that productivity is at an all-time high, ...but at what cost? Apparently, the heart and soul of the country.

Guendelsberger does such a great job taking us through the three jobs that she took (as a journalist undercover), each for about a month or two: an Amazon warehouse, a customer call center, and McDonald's. At each job, she was micromanaged to the second, with each job warning her about "time theft" which is when workers might--gasp!--take a few seconds to catch their breath. The jobs were all high-paced and stress-inducing on purpose to make sure that the workers didn't have time to think, talk, or otherwise act like humans. After all, if robots are so efficient, it pays for workers to try to emulate them, right? This is the new work in America, where everything is timed and where managers assume the worst of their workers.

I couldn't put the book down; it was so fascinating and horrifying.. I could practically feel the exhaustion at the Amazon warehouse and the stress of the call center right along with Emily. That would have been enough, but she also intersperses her personal narrative with lots of evolutionary biology and history to help readers understand how, exactly, we got to this point. All in all, it's a wonderful book that caused me to think a lot about issues that I had taken for granted.

Furthermore, the hopeful and optimistic tone at the end of the book is just readers need after such a dark look at what's become of the world of work. Guendelsberger assures us that even though we're at the cliff's edge, staring into the abyss, there's still time to turn around. We still have the power to stop this. She even offers some tangible solutions that I hope leaders take to heart. I would recommend this book to anyone wondering why we seem so stressed out these days when we are supposedly living in the best of times.

Intriguing Premise Hurt By Lack of Evidence. This is one of those books that has an intriguing premise and brings some often overlooked aspects to the table and is thus worthy of and even needed in the national conversation, but that is ultimately tainted by the author’s own biases and lack of empirical evidence and lack of extensive bibliography. The author does a phenomenal job of showing what it is like to work in the environments she chose to work in – an Amazon Fulfillment Center, a call center, and a franchise McDonald’s – and the people who work there. But as she admits repeatedly, she could always leave at any time she wanted – while she rarely if ever mentions what her husband does for work, she does mention during one ordeal at the call center that her father in law is a doctor – and the entire point of getting these jobs was to “test the waters” to see what people who worked them were really like and what their concerns really were. Very well written, just with significant flaws in reasoning due to her own biases, particularly in her ultimate conclusions. Could have been far stronger, but still a recommended read.