Description
Book SynopsisThe Overworked Consumer examines how the growing use of self-service technology in the U.S. economy has contributed to Americans' feelings of busyness and overwork by asking them to perform a variety of tasks in work-like settings for free. Focusing on the adoption of self-checkout lanes in the retail food industry, the book describes how self-service technology is changing the meaning of service in an economy where the boundaries between work and leisure are becoming increasingly blurred. Are big businesses simply being cheap and lazy, preferring to automate and outsource work to unpaid consumers instead of raising wages, or is self-service and its do-it-yourself ethos a response to consumers' demands for faster, easier ways of buying goods and services? And what exactly are shoppers getting when they go through the self-checkout lane? Is it really faster than the cashier lane or just another illusory speed-up meant to distract them from the realization that they are performing unpaid
Trade ReviewIn the Overworked Consumer Chris Andrews deploys a number of cutting-edge concepts and theories to frame and inform an interesting and well-written case study of the supermarket, its workers, and those who consume in it. He focuses on a new frontier of consumption in which consumers are overworked…and unpaid…and, as the producers of their own consumption, transformed into ‘prosumers.' Andrews ably explores many of the implications of this rapidly changing new world that encompasses and more seamlessly integrates work and consumption. -- George Ritzer, University of Maryland
Table of ContentsList of Tables and Figures Preface Chapter 1: Self-Service and the Do-It-Yourself Economy Chapter 2: Putting Customers to Work Chapter 3: Supermarkets, Self-Checkout Lanes, and Self-Service Chapter 4: Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? Chapter 5: Shopping With the Lonely Crowd Chapter 6: The Overworked Consumer References
