Several years ago I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, an expose on just how badly low level employees of major companies are treated and an examination of just how challenging it is to actually survive on what these companies pay.   While it was mildly interesting to learn a few more details about just how bad it is down here in the trenches, being myself one of those over-worked and underpaid front line employees I was greatly offended by Ehrenreich’s rather condescending approach to the workers whose plight she examined and by the pains she took to establish that she was somehow different from and better than these people.

When I first picked up Alex Frankel’s Punching In and read the introductory blurbs I got the impression that this book would be more of the same.   Having read it, I am happy to say that it is not.  Like Ehrenreich, Frankel took a series of "front line" jobs with some of the United States’ largest employers but where Ehrenreich focused on the economic challenges of working for the abysmally low wages companies like Walmart pay their customer service staffs,  Frankel talks a great deal more about corporate cultures and the ways in which companies seek to indoctrinate staff into corporate philosophies as well as the sophisticated psychological testing these companies use in screening and hiring staff.

I found that I quite enjoyed reading of Frankel’s experiences working as a driver’s helper for UPS in the busy pre-Christmas period, of the mind-numbing monotony of constant clothes folding which is the bane of a Gap clerk’s existence, as well as of stints as a Starbucks barista and a sales clerk at The Apple Store.   Whether you work on the front lines of customer service (or are happy that you don’t) Frankel’s Punching In is a good read.   Recommended.

Finally, a personal note.  My partner Ron’s open heart surgery went well on Wednesday and he is recovering in the hospital.   I hope to be able to post regularly again once he is home, hopefully sometime next week.