On the Clock

We've been dealing with various stomach bugs and general daycare crud on and off for weeks. Ethan has been home more days than he's actually been at daycare this month. It's driving me bananas, and means that when I inevitably got what he had (thanks, dude, for coughing directly into my face constantly!), I got to stay home to rest WHILE taking care of him while he was staying home to rest.

I have it hard in basically no ways, and this month has been so challenging for me.

I would have been fired from every single one of the jobs Guendelsberger mentions in about 30 seconds flat. And yet, because I am a salaried employee, I spend a lot of time worrying about how much work I'm missing, while still having ample vacation/sick and family leave days.

I don't have the book in front of me right this sec to quote exactly, but Guendelsberger describes this whole system as sickeningly, disastrously, painfully, outrageously unfair. It absolutely is.

On the Clock has been hailed as an updated Nickel and Dimed, focusing on the advancement of technology in the workplace to give employers more control and workers less. I never read N&D, so I can't speak to what came before, but I do know that this was NOTHING like my experience when I worked in retail (a grocery store chain and the better of the big box mart stores) even 15 years ago. Technology has come a long way, in what seems like mostly good only for the big companies, because it seems next to impossible to ever get along (let alone get ahead) in one of these jobs unless your life is just miraculously devoid of things like sick kids and illness.

Fascinating read, highly recommend.