Cleanup on Aisle Five : essential work, poverty wages, and the view from behind the supermarket register / Ann Larson.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In the tradition of bestselling classics such as Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Benjamin Lorr's The Secret Life of Groceries comes a character-driven exploration of the modern supermarket, unpacking what works and what doesn't, and delivering a blueprint for a better way to shop.

Grocery stores may all seem the same. But the supermarket as an institution is anything but ordinary or one-dimensional. At the supermarket where I worked, I found a microcosm of society: a place of brutality and violence as well as solidarity and the promise of change.

Unemployed and looking for work during the pandemic, journalist and activist Ann Larson found a job as a cashier at a supermarket in Utah. Though she had written about low-wage work for years, nothing could have prepared her for what she experienced.

Informed by her time behind the register, Cleanup on Aisle Five is Larson's deep dive into supermarkets and how they operate from the inside out: from the low-wage workers stocking the shelves and the customers coming through at all hours, to the communities these stores serve and the larger capitalist forces and corporate interests at play that control how we shop for food. In the process, she chronicles the evolution of the grocery store, unpacks the political implications of the battles between shoppers and staff, and invites us to imagine grocery stores as places where one can foster community and even equity--if we can separate food distribution from profit motive.

Deeply reported and refreshingly insightful, Larson follows the interactions between the workers, including Stanley who can't afford a sandwich, Nick who doesn't have health insurance, and Scarlet who is all out of patience, and customers, including the old lady who finds comfort in tidying the shelves to the one homeless guy who only comes in to use the facilities. From the unforgettable characters to the common challenges we face when it comes to food, Cleanup in Aisle Five will forever change the way we look at grocery stores.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This illuminating debut chronicle turns Larson's pandemic-era stint as a grocery worker into a rallying cry against corporate greed. In the fall of 2020, with her career prospects in teaching and journalism stalled, Larson took a cashier/supervisor job at TGS, a nonunion store in Utah, hoping it might also remedy her feelings of isolation. The job proved (mostly) fulfilling, but Larson soon discovered that her colleagues made substandard wages and suffered from health problems they couldn't afford to address. Mid-pandemic corporate cutbacks increased pressure and stress to the point that some of Larson's coworkers wore diapers to eliminate the need for bathroom breaks. As a former organizer at a nonprofit, Larson asked herself, "What might responsibility and solidarity look like at TGS?" She details taking small but subversive steps--like allowing parking lot workers to wear headphones despite the store policy--to make her colleagues' lives easier, all the while "run into the barrier of my own exhaustion and pain." Dotting her empathetic account with historical tidbits about the evolution of customer service and American productivity, Larson offers a firm rebuke of late capitalism. It's essential reading. Agent: Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, Frances Goldin Literary. (June)

Booklist Review

Activist and journalist Larson was unemployed during the fall of 2020 and took a non-union job at a local supermarket "as a way to serve my community during the pandemic." She documented her time, and the result is an inside view of how supermarkets are microcosms of society, including social divisions and injustices. Larson notes how workers form relationships to help one another and grow close to customers while simultaneously being food insecure; she describes one coworker who couldn't afford lunch. Workers were also harassed, belittled, and misjudged for behaviors caused by disabilities they could not afford to tend to, like hearing loss or needing dentures. Larson delves into the "horse trading" of shifts to earn more money or to have a life and the precarious balancing needed to achieve both. From describing the physical toll on their bodies to the bonds of getting through the day, Larson draws readers into the stories of grocery workers and how food distribution and profit could change for the betterment of society.

Kirkus Book Review

Don't take supermarket employees for granted. This insider account persuasively argues that cashiers, stockers, baggers, and other grocery store workers deserve more money, rights, and respect for their "skilled and socially necessary" labors. At the Utah supermarket where she worked for a year, Larson's fellow staffers suffered repetitive-stress injuries and struggled to pay bills. An 80-year-old employee collapsed on the job and later died in the hospital. As documented in frightening passages, staffers regularly dealt with unreasonable customers. One shopper tried to headbutt Larson; another announced he'd been drinking and was carrying a gun. Larson, a supervisor, earned more than some others, but rent consumed half of her modest paycheck. A debt-forgiveness activist, she tried to foster team spirit, streamlining new employee training sessions and giving staffers opportunities to impress executives. But her attempt "to be a one-woman solidarity machine" faltered amid "exhaustion and pain" caused by the job. Her amiable, first-person voice seamlessly integrates capsule histories of labor unions in the retail industry, the rise of chain stores, and employee-displacing technology. This compassionate book will make some shoppers think twice about using self-checkout machines, which reduce "social connection" between shoppers and workers. A few of the quotes attributed to workers feel overly tidy, perhaps because "in certain instances," she uses composite characters. Few people, in any profession, are as reliably pithy and perceptive as some of her colleagues. In a forward-thinking conclusion, Larson offers ideas for addressing "economic precarity" among grocery workers. These fixes range from familiar--a higher minimum wage--to industry-specific. Improved medical insurance and retirement benefits would boost workers "health and dignity." Shoppers can help, too, by pushing lawmakers to ax anti-union laws and enforce those meant to reduce retail monopolies. In a thoughtful memoir, a former grocery store worker calls for industry reform. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.