Cleanup on Aisle Five - by Ann Larson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"An inside view of how supermarkets are microcosms of society, including social divisions and injustices.... Larson draws readers into the stories of grocery workers and how food distribution and profit could change for the betterment of society."
--Booklist

"Persuasive ... amiable. This compassionate book will make some shoppers think twice. In a forward-thinking conclusion, Larson offers ideas for addressing 'economic precarity' among grocery workers.... In this thoughtful memoir, a former grocery store worker calls for industry reform."
--Kirkus Reviews

"This illuminating debut chronicle turns Larson's pandemic-era stint as a grocery worker into a rallying cry against corporate greed... Dotting her empathetic account with historical tidbits about the evolution of customer service and American productivity, Larson offers a firm rebuke of late capitalism. Essential reading."
--Publishers Weekly [starred review]

"This illuminating debut chronicle turns Larson's pandemic-era stint as a grocery worker into a rallying cry against corporate greed."
--The Millions

"I have been waiting for years for this book, and it did not disappoint. Cleanup on Aisle Five is on fire with indignation and insight about the working lives of the people who help keep us fed, and the larger systems that make it so hard to make ends meet in America. Full of unforgettable characters, fascinating history, and visionary ideas about how things could be better and different. Not to be missed."
--Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist but We'll Miss It When It's Gone

"Cleanup On Aisle Five is a valuable front-line look at 'essential work' and the people who do it. As insightful as it is fun to read, you'll never look at the checkout line the same way again."
--Malcolm Harris, bestselling author of Palo Alto

"Ann Larson's Cleanup on Aisle Five is a striking, you-are-there account of the struggle to survive - and survive on--a low wage job in today's America. This cash-register-eye view account of the perils and the occasional pleasures of retail work shines, full of unexpected details about laboring in the places many manage not to see (how difficult it is to herd shopping carts, for example). This is a cruel moment in history: Larson's political and moral refinement and scholarly interpretations are restorative. Born blue collar and trained as an academic, Larson is part of a longer legacy of 'class defectors.' A notable entry in the canon of working-class literature."
--Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed and Bootstrapped, Executive Director, Economic Hardship Reporting Project

"Downward mobility is a feature, not a bug, of working life in the 21st century, and Ann Larson has come to illuminate the experience from within. Cleanup On Aisle Five is at once a thoughtful and self-critical meditation on class, the body and the limitations of good intentions, and a deep investigation into that most American institution: the grocery store. The workers who make our meals possible have long been treated at once as essential and expendable, never more so than during COVID-19, when Larson joined their ranks. In placing her own experience in a longer history of U.S. supermarkets, Larson reminds us that things have been done differently, and could be again. We simply don't have to live this way."
--Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won't Love You Back

"If you have ever been irritated by long lines at the grocery counter or an overly complicated self-checkout machine, Ann Larson's eye-opening account of her supermarket sojourn explains the reasons why. It's not some technical glitch, but a work regime that oppresses the soul and damages the bodies of a low-paid, rapid-turnover set of very human men and women. Larson's account of worklife immiseration near the bottom of the class hierarchy will take its place with the classic accounts once offered by Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Harrington, and George Orwell."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, author of The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business

"A riveting, anecdotal report from the front lines of retail. Larson gives us eye-opening insights into the factories of our consumer society that we call supermarkets, while reminding us that wherever there is harm and disrespect for workers, there is also solidarity."
--Andrew Ross, author of Bird on Fire and Fast Boat to China

About the Author

Ann Larson's writing on education, debt, and low-wage work has appeared in The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, and The Nation, among other publications. She is coauthor of Can't Pay Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition and is a fellow with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.