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

by Emily Guendelsberger

The next day, my alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m., and this time I do arrive early. I kill some time investigating the weird vending machine from the previous day. It’s full of single-serving packets of generic over-the-counter medicine—mainly mild painkillers like Tylenol and Advil, though there’s antacids, too. After standup meeting, my group reassembles around Michelle, minus tiny blond Teena. Maybe she decided this wasn’t for her; maybe she failed her drug test; maybe she overslept and got fired. People disappearing without explanation will be another constant theme of my time here. The second day of training is the same as the first. Honestly, one day would have been enough. The system just doesn’t leave many possibilities for screwing up. As Michelle says, if you don’t know what to do, just check your scanner—it’ll tell you. We work on trying to get fast enough to beat the clock, which manifests itself visually as a blue bar at the bottom of the LCD screen that gets shorter and shorter as your remaining seconds tick by. By the end of the day, I can beat the clock most of the time.