On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger

Finally I get to which job I’d prefer, though I’m almost certainly going to be put in picking or packing regardless of how I answer. Packing is standing in place for ten hours, grabbing orders off a conveyor belt, and sealing them into shipping boxes; picking is walking around finding the items people have ordered and sending them off on a conveyor belt to be packed. Picking is generally regarded as the least desirable job at Amazon, with packing a close second. My busted right knee can tolerate lots of walking much better than lots of standing. Plus, as I understand it, packing stations are offset so you can’t talk to each other, whereas I assume you sometimes run into other pickers out in the shelving system. I select picking as my first choice. This mildly surprises the woman I’m eventually called up to speak with half an hour later. She shrugs as if to say “Your funeral,” and asks whether I’m looking for day or night shift—day is 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; night is 6:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. “Night pays a dollar extra,” she adds, but I opt for day’s $10.50 an hour. She tells me, somewhat apologetically, that even a volunteer picker who can start tomorrow isn’t going to get a schedule with two consecutive days off right away. She hands me a list of potential schedules, out of which having Tuesdays and Thursdays off seems like the least bad option. And, to my surprise, that’s it. My interviewer types as I suck on an oral drug test, then puts it in a biohazard bag and congratula...