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

by Emily Guendelsberger

how dehumanizing the job felt. We’re at a strange point in the history of work. Automation of most jobs is only a decade or two away, and human workers increasingly have to compete with computers, algorithms, and robots that never get tired, or sick, or depressed, or need a day off. Still, in industries that rely on skills that robots still aren’t great at—fine motor control, speech and pattern recognition, empathy—the cheapest option is still low-wage human workers. And so many employers demand a workforce that can think, talk, feel, and pick stuff up like humans—but with as few needs outside of work as robots. They insist their workers amputate the messy human bits of themselves—family, hunger, thirst, emotions, the need to make rent, sickness, fatigue, boredom, depression, traffic—or at least keep them completely at bay.

This resonates