Seasonal Associate

Praise

…chillingly effective, not least for its accumulation of details, which seem both aggressively banal and freighted with an excess of symbolic meaning….The ubiquitous linguistic debasement and corporate doublespeak is made strange and new again, the small humiliations and injustices pile up along with their psychological and social consequences.—Harper’s Magazine—

Geissler’s account of her time at Amazon is more than a workplace exposé. Hovering somewhere between memoir, cultural criticism, and fiction, it’s a compelling meditation on the psychological and physical harm of working for a large corporation in a society driven by neoliberal economic goals.

…Geissler is exploring questions of labor and identity in the twenty-first century and the ways in which work does and does not define us. If this book was simply a chronicle of her time working at Amazon, it would be compelling enough—but the narrative risks she takes pay off, making it so much more.

…a bleak meditation on 21st-century drudgery.

In its broadest sense, it is a meditation on the psychological impact of precarious modern work, of how it can settle inside your bones and hollow out the things that make you human.

I haven’t ever read anything quite like it. The story follows a freelance writer low on cash who takes on a short-term contract at Amazon’s Leipzig warehouse through the winter season. If you’re interested in precarious work, the gig economy and how to find a language that accurately describes the emotional landscape of modern work, then this is for you!

—Review Architecture—