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

by Emily Guendelsberger

The train of newbies keeps walking, now passing an area where hundreds and hundreds of those yellow bins are stacked in shoulder-high towers. Each bin is roughly big enough to hold a small woman with her knees drawn up to her chest, and I immediately, desperately want to ride one around the conveyor belts like a roller coaster. Later, when I get out into the mod for real, I’ll note that every potential boarding point for a conveyor-belt joyride has several dire signs warning that it will result in the joyrider’s gruesome death, so I guess I’m not the only one.* And speaking of dumb ideas, I’m now walking while staring straight up at the conveyor belts, so I walk directly into the man in front of me as we bottleneck at a door. “SORRY! SO SORRY!” I yell-apologize, trying to speak loud enough to be heard over the din. SDF8 isn’t painfully loud, but it’s almost impossible to hear anything else, like a white-noise machine cranked up to 11. The guy, a tall black man in his early twenties, turns and flashes a grin with a gaping hole where his front teeth used to be. “IT’TH OKAY, I’M THTILL ATHLEEP, TOO,” he shouts back as we filter into a room already packed with more new temps.