Supermarkets are a common backdrop to our lives, providing us with food and material necessities. But what about the people who work there? Like many retail workers, grocery store employees perform essential labor while earning wages that often don’t allow them to cover basics like rent and food. They can also be injured in jobs that don’t provide adequate healthcare or paid sick days.
Ann Larson, a journalist and fellow at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, argues that supermarkets represent a microcosm of American society, featuring “brutality and violence as well as solidarity and the promise of change.” Larson writes from her own time behind the register during the pandemic in a Utah supermarket. Detailing the history of the supermarket as an institution and its inner workings, she also brings to light the political implications of the relationship between staff and consumers, and the personal stories of the low-wage workers who provide these public services day in and day out. Watch our discussion with Ann on how we can reimagine the supermarket not merely as a profit-driven machine, but as an equitable community space.
This book club pick was created in collaboration with the media non-profit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which supported Ann Larson’s volume and where she is a fellow. EHRP backs journalism about affordability, inequality and the experience of working people in America.