A Weirdly Helpful View From Behind the Supermarket Register
7/22/202615 min
Ann Larson is the author of Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register.
Her 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.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsZach· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hey, it's Zach. Today, some weirdly helpful dos and don'ts at your neighborhood grocery store.
Anne Larson· Guest0:13
My name is Anne Larson. I am a former supermarket employee and the author of the book Cleanup on Aisle 5. [gentle music] In 2020, at the outset of the COVID pandemic, I found myself unemployed, and I got a job in a supermarket. I had been working, uh, for the past 20 years or so on the margins of the professional class. I'd been a part-time teacher. I co-founded a non-profit called the Debt Collective, but the pandemic coincided with, uh, a period of unemployment for me. I had lost my ability to make a living. And, uh, but grocery stores were hiring. They were doing robust business. So I decided I could work in a store in my neighborhood, and I could serve my community during the pandemic. I could make a little bit of an income. I could get health insurance, which I also didn't have at the time, and I would bide my time, see how long, uh, the pandemic lasted until I could figure out my next move.
Zach· Host1:10
You started working at the grocery store in 2020. You don't work there anymore, but do you shop there?
Anne Larson· Guest1:18
Yeah, it's my local store, so when I go in, I'm, uh, [laughs] I see people I know. Absolutely, yeah.
Zach· Host1:23
Can you describe the, the eyes you have now going in and shopping at a place that