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

by Emily Guendelsberger

When you clock in at Amazon, the first thing you do is grab a scan gun—a bit like a scanner you’d see at the grocery, but with an LCD screen that tells you what task to do next and starts counting down the seconds you have left to do it. It also tracks your location by GPS—and you take it everywhere with you, even the bathroom. Failure to stay ahead of the countdown—to make rate—was grounds for termination, regardless of why. “Anyone not getting the numbers they want to see, they get rid of them,” wrote one worker. “And by get rid of them, I mean deactivate their cards, so they turn up for work and can’t enter the building.” “You’re at a dead sprint your entire shift,” wrote another picker, one of many who said their rates were often set unrealistically high, which forced them to spend entire ten-and eleven-hour shifts in the weeds. “I was a young, average-shaped male, and while I could do it, it was not easy.” “Only one or two employees a day, out of forty, makes rate in the department I work in,” wrote another, saying managers sometimes would “revoke talking privileges until people start making rate.” “The job is hard on your body, the company pays as little as it can get away with, and the raise schedule for hourly workers is the worst of any company I have worked for, including big, bad Walmart,” wrote another. “Amazon doesn’t really treat its workers any better than Walmart, yet largely escapes the negative publicity.”