Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson

 Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson

As someone who has worked my whole life in customer service, spent a big chunk of it in retail, operates a food-service business, and nowadays spends part of just about every workday in various grocery stores, I will attest that every word of this book rings true — from the insane customers to the put-upon staff to the overmatched managers whose harebrained reactions to every contingency wreak of spendthrift inhumanity.

The book’s premise is this: author Ann Larson spends a year working in a grocery store in Utah, during which she advances from cashier to supervisor, getting to know both her crew and her customers, all while exploring the phenomena that is the American grocery store.

It opens with an incident so familiar and so gross that I had to laugh ruefully, having had to personally deal with public defecation so many times that it barely fazes me anymore.

But beyond the headshaking antics and messy anecdotes, there is real heartbreak here, in crewmates forced to work in excruciating circumstances and in customers forced to humiliate themselves, all because they aren’t rich — all because we have built a society that over-rewards capital while stripping dignity from labor.

Cleanup On Aisle Five is an important document, shedding light on what life is like in what, for many communities in the U.S., functions as a kind of public square, a meeting-place where people come together and interact under the guise of common need under corporate watch. This book is both a fascinating record and a sharp indictment of how we live now.

Get Cleanup On Aisle Five by Ann Larson here: https://a.co/d/08GyzSPq