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

by Emily Guendelsberger

You’re a little embarrassed about this, but you get caught up in a marathon of So You Think You Can Dance and forget all about Wanda for a while. You finally come out of your binge at 10:00 p.m.—that’s around 30,000 BCE, if you’re counting—because you hear a weird, off-key tootling and intermittent thunks coming from the backyard. Outside, Wanda appears to have carved herself a crappy flute, covered your house with cave paintings, and turned your back door into target practice for a crude bow and arrow. Irritated, you bang on the glass, but this time you jump a mile as an arrow thunks into the window frame. But you can’t tear yourself away now, because Wanda’s getting crazy busy. The Neolithic era begins around 11:00 p.m., when Wanda manages to make crappy flour out of some grasses. You leave for, like, a second to go to the bathroom, and by the time you get back, she’s somehow acquired a herd of sheep and is planting your yard with crops. She also starts weaving cloth, making pots and baskets for storing dry food, and building rudimentary houses—trading her nomadic lifestyle for something more permanent. Around 11:30, Wanda invents the wheel. There’s clusters of houses around the crops and sheep now, marking the first time Wanda’s lived in a group of more than 150 or 200 other people—the biggest that nomadic tribes tend to get, historically. By 11:45, Wanda’s invented writing and equipped her raft with a sail. She’s also somehow built a forge and is using it to make glass...