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

by Emily Guendelsberger

We eventually bumble our way to the correct coordinates, count up from the bottom, scan the bar code on the proper drawer—BEEP—and pull it open. Inside is a bizarre selection of twelve or fifteen articles of clothing; no two are the same. Michelle explains that a while back Amazon figured out that “chaotic storage” made the most sense—if a picker needs to get a pair of medium black socks, it’s much faster to find black socks among a bunch of dissimilar items than to find a medium in a drawer full of black socks of all different sizes. “Now”—Michelle shows us her scanner again—“here’s the description, at the bottom, of what you’re picking.” The item we’re looking for is an Ugly Christmas Sweater, medium, green. It’s obvious where it is, but Michelle picks up and scans a hat instead—DEE-DOO-DEE-DOO. The tritone beeps clearly mean “Nope!” The scanner directs Michelle to scan the drawer again—BEEP. This time she picks up the bagged sweater, scans its bar code—BEEP—and tosses it into the yellow tote. I’m a little charmed to see that the LCD screen says THANK YOU! before instructing Michelle to scan her tote again—BEEP—and giving her the coordinates of the next item. That’s pretty much all there is to picking. We take turns finding items under Michelle’s supervision for the rest of the day. When the yellow tote gets filled to the two-thirds mark, we push the cart over to the nearest conveyor belt, close the tote out on the scanner—BEEP—send it gliding off to parts unknown, then ...