Cleanup on Aisle Five by Ann Larson

Would it surprise anyone to learn that Sarah and I met up at the pool to discuss Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register by Ann Larson last weekend?

Ann Larson needed a job during the pandemic and she was hired on at a grocery store in Utah during the pandemic as a front end manager. Then she wrote all about it. 

It was interesting and well done. But, let's be honest, Nickel and Dimed already did this (and did it better). The most revealing parts of Nickel and Dimed were the passages in which Ehrenreich talked about how the work she did impacted her life - how she couldn't eat if she had to buy medicine, how her feet and legs hurt after working, how she was existing on non-perishable foods because the only place she could afford to stay didn't have a kitchen, etc. 

I think Larson tried to do that by telling the stories of her fellow workers, but since we never really saw anything outside of the store, it was hard to tell how their working conditions really influence decisions they made in their non-working hours. 

But! This is interesting because she worked through the pandemic, so there are some glimmers about that. Also, the rise in self-checkout and how disastrous that is for the workers. All of that was new to me since I worked in a grocery store in the late 1990s/early 2000s.  There's so much in here about poverty, the precariousness of working a job that relies on a body that isn't insured, and how the lack of training leads to poor outcomes for workers and customers. There's also a weird passage where Larson suggests being a vegetarian is worse for the environment than eating meat, which made me stare in the middle distance and wonder if I was living in an alternate universe. 

This is important and I think you should read it, but I also think you should read Nickel and Dimed. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

Many grocery workers are food insecure. A 2022 report by the Economic Roundtable showed that about three-quarters of workers at Kroger, the second-largest grocery company in the country, struggled to afford regular meals Kroger could not claim that it didn't know. Years earlier, an internal company report showed that hundred of thousands of its employees relied on food aid and other public benefits. It's not surprising perhaps that federal food aid programs are acting as a subsidy to low-wage employers. The nation's largest retailer, Walmart, for example, took in more than $26 billion in its customers' food aid in 2024 alone. (page 22)

It feels like a scam, doesn't it? Why aren't we paying people living wages? 

Another cashier suffered from a toothache so painful that she could barely eat. "I need a root canal," the twenty-five-year-old told me. Since she did not have dental insurance, she was waiting for a spot to open up a dental school...A week later, I asked her if she had seen a dentist. She was still waiting for an appointment. "The good new is, I eat ice cream for dinner. It's the only food that doesn't hurt." (page 26)

As someone with my own dental woes, I hate this. Why isn't dental insurance just health insurance? Hell, even if someone doesn't have health insurance, shouldn't they have a pain free mouth? (I just sat for a minute and wondered what a pain free mouth would be like.)

In Work, Retire, Repeat, the labor economist [Teresa Ghilarducci] described a "tale of two retirements." While the affluent are living longer, healthier lives, and retiring with a nest egg and their dignity, low-income workers are facing destitution. Since almost half of families have no retirement savings, millions must work until they die. Many would-be retirees are punching clocks in warehouses or toiling as home health aides. (page 61-62)

Is anyone else realllly sad when their cashier is past retirement age? On one hand, maybe they are doing it because they want to stay busy. On the other hand, how are we, as a society, not taking care of our most vulnerable?

Most shoppers took delays in stride and laughed when I joked that "this machine has been grumpy today!" But the few that did not could ruin a shift. (page 96)

I'm preaching to the choir because all my blog readers are awesome, but can we all agree to be nice to service workers?

...wage theft also implicates those of us who do not work in supermarkets. TGS shoppers benefited from Whitney's unpaid labor. Everyone who came into the store had a better experience when she worked off the clock to ensure that employees got their schedules on time or when she worked from home. Customer service was propped up by exploitation. (page 184-185)

I hate this. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

pull a rabbit out of a hat (page 92)

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Have you ever worked in a grocery store? Do you use the self-check machines? Have you read Nickel and Dimed?