Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register

by Ann Larson

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.

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Audiobook, Social Justice, Poverty, Sociology, History

Audible Audio

First published June 9, 2026

Reviews

[Jon Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked in a supermarket when I was in college. I made about $7 an hour in the late 90's and early 2000's. I worked for a good company, but certainly the pay was pretty minimal for the amount of work required. I started as a cashier, and eventually worked my way into the customer service department and "cash office" (i.e. "bankers" in the book's parlance). I mostly enjoyed the work and my colleagues.

I read the book with great interest because I had worked in a supermarket. I knew what the work was like. Yes, my feet hurt (a lot) at the end of the day, even though we had "fatigue pads" underneath us. I don't recall back or arm pain from scanning, but I was quite young at the time. My dad also worked in grocery stores for most of his life, supplementing his wage as a small-church pastor. At one time, nearly my entire family worked in grocery stores. My brother once chopped part of his finger off on a saw in the meat room.

Customers could be friendly or extremely rude. However, I think it was a lot less likely at the time to be rude since we still had a relatively civil society at the time.

All of that to say, this book reveals the inside scoop on what it's like to work in a supermarket. People (customers) don't always think about the toll on the body, the toll on the mind/emotions, and other issues (like the "sweep alert she describes in the book") supermarket employees deal with. Thankfully, I worked in an era before self-checkout. I have no idea how one clerk manages all the problems at multiple checkouts like that.

It's a great book if you're interested in learning more about how the low-income workforce survives (or doesn't) in this society. We take advantage of these people every day. The corporations get richer and richer while the average worker gets poorer and poorer. Minimum wage jobs were once intended for high schoolers and maybe college kids who needed some extra cash. Unfortunately, corporations are more interested in shareholders than they are in humanity. I'm grateful that I worked for a local supermarket who took care of its employees pretty well.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Larson's book "Cleanup on Aisle Five" is a quick read that packs a punch. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Larson wasn't able to find work in her field (academia and advocacy), so she took a job at an anonymous grocery story. (She refers to it as TGS - The Grocery Store.)

One thing that stands out to me in this book is the pain. The chronic pain that almost all grocery store workers suffer due to standing all day and repetitive, strenuous movements. The book ends a bit suddenly, but suggests change to public policy as well as steps that corporations could take to ensure better conditions for workers.

4 stars.

I received a copy of this book complimentary from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received an advanced digital reading copy from the publisher. To be published in June 2026.

This is an amazing and well-researched study of the working lives and inner workings of a large supermarket. I'll write more later, but for now, I will say I'll never, ever, ever get annoyed at a store cashier again, and I was able to practice that thought when I had a disastrous self-checkout experience yesterday.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting part-memoir, part-culture study of one of the most difficult and overlooked categories of retail work. I don’t think I realized how physically brutal a grocery store job is, not even factoring in the COVID-era setting of the book. The author comes to the (correct, IMO) conclusion that major collective action is needed to make these jobs safer and fairer (healthcare, paid leave, accommodations, unions) and that it has to happen on a national or statewide level.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Bill Beneath the Scanner
Ann Larson’s “Cleanup on Aisle Five” finds the hidden cost of abundance in the bodies, hours, and fraying mercy of supermarket workers
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | May 21st, 2026

A supermarket performs a fluorescent vanishing act.

Labor disappears into abundance. Pain disappears into customer service. Time disappears into the clock that will not move. The shopper sees ripe strawberries in February, shrimp trays before the game, twelve kinds of pasta, paper bags waiting under the counter, and a self-checkout station chirping instructions in a voice of synthetic patience. Ann Larson’s “Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register” puts the reader where the scanner, the clock, and the customer all face the body. From the other side of the checkstand, the trick stops looking like magic and starts looking like payroll: convenience has not removed friction. It has sent the drag into someone else’s feet, hands, back, paycheck, schedule, nerves, and judgment.

Larson, a writer and activist, took a cashiering job at a Utah supermarket during the pandemic and found a fluorescent civic understudy: a place to buy milk, use the bathroom, cool down, charge a phone, ask for cash, seek shelter, complain, confess, and occasionally frighten the person paid to say hello. TGS is the store’s disguised name, though the disguise is about as secure as a paper bag in rain. Anyone who has stood in line behind a shopper arguing with a machine will recognize the place. Anyone who has worked the line will recognize it faster.

Its nearest shelf-mates are Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed,” Benjamin Lorr’s “The Secret Life of Groceries,” and Emily Guendelsberger’s “On the Clock.” But Larson keeps opening colder doors than most of them do. Her sharpest subject is not hidden labor alone, though she is especially acute about labor buried in the shopper’s smooth exit. It is override-card ethics: whether to call security, fetch a chair, make someone sweep, void a theft, chase a customer, report a coworker, or let a rule break because the rule was cruel before anyone disobeyed it. Beneath the scenes is a question as practical as a receipt and as large as a politics: what happens to moral judgment when every act of care costs minutes, breaks, cartilage, and risk?

Larson begins where the job begins: in the body. She walks home from opening shifts with legs gone watery, collapses into sleep, dreams of drowning in groceries, eats whatever can be assembled by someone too tired to cook. The early irony is bitter and efficient. A worker surrounded by food is too depleted to feed herself well. The supermarket, that bright civic refrigerator, has plenty in every direction except the one in which the employee has to live.

The incident that first forces the store into focus is grotesque, absurd, and clarifying. A man, unable to access the locked public restroom because the code is given only to paying customers, defecates on the floor. Workers divide. Some see a person in emergency. Others see the janitor who must clean it up. Larson’s instinct is sympathy. A security guard reminds her that sympathy does not mop.

That episode becomes the book’s first training manual. Outside the automatic doors, kindness can remain a clean principle. Inside, kindness has sequence, weight, and cleanup. It delays breaks, lengthens lines, risks reprimand, and asks one tired body to absorb another person’s crisis. Larson’s most durable insight is that exploitation does not only make people poor or sore. It makes compassion expensive.

The structure peels bright retail promises away from the adhesive underneath. The chapters are named for the virtues the store sells back to shoppers as atmosphere: customer service, community, convenience, abundance, autonomy, choice, solidarity, dignity. Each begins as promise and ends as invoice. Customer service becomes smile-work under surveillance. Community becomes an unfunded public square. Convenience becomes a machine that outsources blame. Abundance becomes stocked plenty built from waste, injury, and distance. Autonomy becomes the question of who owns the minutes before closing. Choice becomes the shelf’s decoy freedom. Solidarity becomes powerful, necessary, and too often trapped in unofficial acts of mercy. Dignity becomes not sentiment, but equipment: chairs, wages, schedules, teeth, hearing aids, paid leave, retirement.

“Convenience” is where the comedy and fury lock most cleanly. Self-checkout arrives with the usual corporate bedtime story: faster, easier, modern, helpful. Larson treats that patter as a document with fingerprints all over it. The stations do not eliminate labor; they hand labor to customers in pieces and return blame to workers whole. They glitch, freeze, misprice, reject cards, confuse shoppers, invite theft, and flash for human intervention with the serene entitlement of little bureaucrats with receipt printers. One customer angry at a station calls Larson an idiot. Another accuses her of stealing his gift-card money. The technology is not wicked in itself. The wickedness lies in the arrangement: a machine makes the mistake and waits for a cashier to become the apology.

Larson’s best witnesses are often objects. The override card becomes a wand of borrowed power. The chair becomes contraband mercy. The fingerprint clock becomes the store’s claim on the worker’s body. The sweep buzzer becomes hourly humiliation. The gobacks cart – that holding pen for items shoppers have changed their minds about – becomes the afterlife of consumer choice. Frozen waffles abandoned at the register become an emergency. Melted Popsicles become evidence. Shopping carts cease to be conveniences and become rolling liabilities that must be gathered, roped together, hauled into elevators, and returned again, and again, and again, like Sisyphus with a loyalty card.

The book is most alive when it lets those objects testify. It understands that the supermarket’s moral life is not hidden in a boardroom alone. It is also in the gap between a shopper saying she no longer wants the fried chicken and the worker who must decide whether the chicken becomes dinner, waste, or one more thing to resent. It is in the small mercy of a forbidden chair dragged out after the managers leave. It is in the paper bag that slices fingers while advertising sustainability by implication. It is in a cash drawer that will not open for a return and a screen that says the transaction worked while refusing to release the money. A weaker book would have turned all this into symbolism too quickly. Larson lets the thing remain a thing long enough for the meaning to bruise.

Her prose is procedural prose with a pulse. She does not decorate the job. She clocks it. Scan, bag, void, override, sweep, restock, call for help, apologize, stand, ache, repeat. Her sentences often move by practical sequence: what happened, what it required, what it cost, what it exposed. When a sharp line lands, it lands because the shift has done the setup. The style is not especially lush, nor should it be. A fancier book might have turned the checkstand into metaphor at the first beep. Here, the metaphor waits its turn in line, which is where this book knows most things begin.

One of Larson’s gifts is her ear for register patois. The language of the store is half workplace slang, half survival spell: the late lunch that makes time seem shorter, the day off that becomes “my Friday,” the machine haunted by “ghost groceries,” the forbidden chair brought out after managers leave. The jokes are not decoration. They are what pain sounds like when it is trying to stay employed. Larson can be funny without asking the reader to relax. A supervisor during a Super Bowl rush becomes an accidental field commander. A self-checkout repair requires filming nothing happening. A banker’s almost-smile feels like admission into a secret society. The store is ridiculous because it is brutal, and brutal because everyone must keep treating the ridiculous as policy.

Larson sketches people by what they carry, sip, avoid, endure, and say when the clock refuses to move. Cindy, the elderly bagger with bright makeup, a bottle of lukewarm Diet Coke, and a past as a baton-twirling majorette, loves her customers and cannot afford to stop working. Bonnie, nicknamed Radio, chatters warmly at the register, breaks dumb rules to help shoppers, and seems to carry the store’s better self until her sudden death leaves her scheduled checkstand crossed off with a pen. George, the security guard, can be punitive, hilarious, tender, and frightened, sometimes before the doors are locked. Darth, Lucia, Willow, Stanley, Scarlet, Gordon, Kevin, Aurelie, Emery, Paula, Whitney – they arrive with props, injuries, habits, wages, grudges, and one-liners. Larson gives them not lacquered virtue, but the more respectful dignity of contradiction.

That refusal matters. “Cleanup on Aisle Five” is openly pro-worker, but it does not pretend that suffering purifies. Workers mock one another’s injuries, resent callouts, report petty infractions, haze new supervisors, compete over who has it worse, and take out their exhaustion on customers. Larson herself becomes the most persuasive evidence. She begins eager to serve, grateful to feel useful during the pandemic. She becomes skilled, then useful, then respected, then implicated. She lies to managers, voids thefts to protect cashiers, tricks people into tasks, resents late shoppers, grows impatient with trainees, and near the end cannot bring herself to chase an elderly customer who accidentally leaves without paying.

This is the book’s boldest move. Competence does not rescue Larson from the store; it deepens her implication in it. The better she understands the Front End, the more she can protect people, and the more she learns to ration protection. Her authority comes from the fact that she does not preserve herself as the clean observer among the damaged. The job gets into her judgment. It recalibrates sympathy until every body on the floor begins to look like staffing capacity: who can stand, who can fetch carts, who can lift, who can last, who is too old, too injured, too slow, too unstable, too inconveniently human.

The store does not need workers to be cruel. It only needs them tired enough to confuse cruelty with efficiency.

That is more unsettling than the familiar indictment of bad bosses and stingy corporations. Larson knows those are real. But she is after something more intimate and therefore more incriminating. A workplace designed to spend people down does not merely extract labor. It trains everyone to think like the workplace. A panic attack becomes a scheduling crisis. A bathroom break becomes a threat to the break cycle. A sore back becomes a line-management problem. A customer’s loneliness becomes stolen time. A shopper’s hunger becomes shrink. A coworker’s pain becomes one less person who can fetch carts.

The feeling gathers as Larson’s world narrows from the whole store to the few inches between the scanner, the clock, and her own sore heel. She does not simply discover that grocery work is difficult. She discovers that it is skilled, necessary, often meaningful, sometimes noble – and still something she wants to escape. Her pride in becoming a real grocery worker is genuine. So is her desire to get out before the job spends what remains of her patience, arches, and cartilage. The contradiction is not hypocrisy. It is the book’s most honest knowledge. Meaningful work can still be made hard to survive.

The automatic doors keep admitting the needs the country has refused to house elsewhere. A woman who has been beaten eats macaroni and cheese with her hands because she has nowhere else to go. A lonely shopper returns to the checkout line to praise the staff, then traps Larson in the story of a lost love. Workers need dental care, hearing aids, diabetes treatment, rent money, predictable schedules, chairs, and rest. Shoppers need food, bathrooms, warmth, Wi-Fi, help with scams, and someone to absorb the anger that belongs elsewhere. The people assigned to receive social breakdown are themselves living inside it.

Larson’s point is not that the grocery store should refuse care. It is that care has been mispriced. A store can be a community resource. It cannot become a hospital, shelter, pension system, therapist’s office, and union hall simply because it has automatic doors and a cashier trained to smile.

The book’s civic pressure is built into the job. Larson’s critique of self-checkout lands as cities and unions question cashierless systems. Her account of low pay punctures the coupon-book praise of “essential” labor. Her discussion of inflation and consolidation helps explain why shoppers and workers so often mistake one another for the source of their suffering. The cashier is the human face nearest the price tag, the line, the broken station, the missing cart, the rejected payment. Corporate power, like a very successful shoplifter, has already slipped out the door.

Because Larson wants the whole food system in view, “Cleanup on Aisle Five” sometimes burdens itself with more than any one aisle can carry. The supermarket opens onto wages, health insurance, dental care, public benefits, housing, antitrust, private equity, food deserts, workplace surveillance, gun violence, mental health, automation, environmental waste, aging, retirement, public grocery stores, co-ops, and unions. Most of these connections are real. Some are indispensable. Yet the pattern can begin to feel like a conveyor belt: scene, history, policy, indictment, return to the Front End. The reader does not doubt the relevance; the reader sometimes feels the filing system.

There is also a slight imbalance in private weather. Workers receive names, habits, contradictions, jokes, injuries, and histories. Shoppers often appear as interruptions, threats, or emergencies: the abuser, the lonely talker, the confused self-checkout user, the late-night tormentor, the thief, the chooser, the frightened person with nowhere else to go. This is partly the point. From behind the register, customers arrive in a rush of needs and irritations. Still, Larson is more exact about what shoppers do to workers than about who shoppers are once the receipt prints.

The final movement is earned, though its urgency occasionally starts drafting reforms before the scene has finished speaking. Cindy’s collapse behind checkstand number one, after Larson has left TGS and returned as a shopper, is the right final image: a beloved elderly bagger whose love of the job should not obscure the scandal of needing it into her ninth decade. From there, Larson argues for living wages, steadier schedules, redesigned checkstands, paid leave, health care, retirement security, limits on surveillance, self-checkout regulation, union power, antitrust enforcement, and alternative grocery models. The demands are persuasive. They are also more ledger than drama. The earlier chapters leave contradictions alive and stinging. The conclusion wants them repaired.

Still, Larson earns her insistence that dignity is material, not ceremonial. It is not a candy bar during Employee Appreciation Week. Not a raffle for a deli gift card. Not a shopper saying thank you. Not a memorial post praising a woman who never complained.

Dignity requires equipment.

It is a chair before the body breaks. A paycheck before the pantry empties. A schedule that allows life to happen somewhere besides the break room. Health care before the toothache becomes personality. Retirement before the ambulance pulls up outside the store.

That ambulance is where the book finds its lasting force. Cindy’s name is crossed off a schedule. Bonnie becomes a ghost story in the walk-in cooler. The clock keeps moving, or seems not to. New workers arrive in crisp uniforms, not yet faded by detergent and dread. Customers still want receipts, shrimp trays, hot chicken, coffee, refunds, quarters, free bread, bottled water, someone to listen, someone to blame. The store keeps opening.

Larson makes that daily fact newly difficult to bear. The book is not always selective, but it has uncommon moral grain and a cashier’s earned suspicion of clean answers. My final rating is 88/100, which corresponds to 4/5 stars: a strongly favorable score for a book whose best pages turn the checkout line into a map of American dependence, fatigue, and denial. The shopper thinks the register is where the errand ends. Larson shows it is where the cost has already been scanned but charged to the wrong account – under the scanner, beside the paper bags, next to the name crossed off for the morning shift.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

C.S. Lewis Warned Us About This. C.S. Lewis wrote in 1949 that "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." Here, we have an entire book of exactly that kind of elitist, disdainful tyranny.

Larson openly admits to being a thief in several instances within this text. Her own actions as documented within this text show her to be a hypocrite. She actively denies objective reality in claiming that FDR's support of unionism was a good thing, when it actually and objectively extended the Great Depression nearly twice as long as it would have gone without FDR's price-fixing policies, including his support of unions.

And yet she is *absolutely sure* she knows *exactly* what would help the very people she had to lower herself to be around because she had no other choice and had to find any possible work available to her. Truly, this is the worst part of this entire narrative, is Larson's elitist disdain for everything and everyone around her that is positively *dripping* from these pages. She alone knows what will save these people, and she alone will force them to accept her help whether they want her involvement or not.

I've worked in a supermarket myself - apparently longer than Larson did, as I worked there for 2? 3? yrs at the border of HS and college, though I do admit that this was 20 yrs before Larson did and in fact was at the time one of the supermarkets best known for its customer service - a culture of customer service that was deeply ingrained in my psyche and has served me well in all professional ventures both paid and not ever since. I was a bagger at Publix back when Publix was still expanding through North Ga - indeed, my own mom had worked at another Publix store closer to Atlanta before helping open the store in my hometown, which I then worked for (under her same store manager even) a couple of years later. Interestingly, while Larson covers a bit of rival Piggly Wiggly's history, she never once mentions Publix - despite Publix actually originating in part from Piggly Wiggly. (Publix's founder, George Jenkins, had rapidly risen through the ranks at Piggly Wiggly before starting out on his own as the Depression was still worsening, and in fact a few of his former colleagues at Piggly Wiggly were among his very first investors.) Now, don't get me wrong -Publix of the 2020s is doing several things "Mr. George" is very likely rolling in his grave enough to be a pretty decent fan in this Florida heat, and even then, shortly after his death, was already likely doing some things he didn't exactly like. But the culture of absolute commitment to the highest customer service was still a thing then, and in fact prevented at least some of the issues that Larson writes about in this book. (Cart collection in particular. Was never a problem back then, because baggers were required to walk every cart out with the customer and bring it back - and were prevented upon pain of summary termination from accepting any tip for doing so. Which actually led to a fun story of my own actions in this era, where I literally chased down a car. Granted, it was in the parking lot - but it *was* moving, and I *was* able to run it down before it got to the road. They/ I had forgotten one of their bags at the cash register, and I was able to get it to them. Nearly 30 years later, I couldn't move half as fast if I wanted to. ;) )

If your politics align more closely with Larson's - who claims to be one of the activists who was leading the charge for Federal student loan "forgiveness" in shifting the burden of repaying loans students voluntarily took out to every American taxpayer and thereby both raising prices for everyone and lowering their relative income via inflation - you will probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did. It still is far from a Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, which was a genuinely insightful look at grocery stores and how their modern incarnations came to be, but this text may in fact be something you enjoy, and it will absolutely confirm your own biases. For those more along my own lines - I literally have a tattoo of one of the subheadings within Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand tattooed on one of the wrists I'm using to type this review - I think I've made it clear here that this is a book you will more likely want to defenestrate... and really, there's nothing actually here worth reading beyond seeing some experiences as a grocery store worker during the insanity of the global societal collapse over COVID.

And that is actually the final star deduction here - the intense (and not mentioned in the description) look at COVID. Even now these 5+ yrs later, it is a subject I do not care to read about. Ever. I've had a standing one star deduction for books that mention it at all ever since, and while I've relaxed it for passing mentions, this book uses it quite heavily and therefore still gets the deduction.

So, just to be explicit within my own rating framework, let's make sure we detail each star deduction, shall we:

-1 star for elitism. I cannot stress enough how very *dripping* this text is with "I'm better than everyone around me, why don't they know this?"
-1 star for open hypocrisy - even while praising unions and actively proclaiming that this store needed one, Larson also actively shows where a union would have done (as they always do in this modern era) exactly jack and shit to actually help these workers in this store.
-1 star for openly admitting to actively stealing from her own employer. I mean, kudos for the balls to openly admit something that is at least possibly still within any relevant statute of limitations. I'm not a lawyer at all, but I sincerely hope you had one for your jurisdiction read every word presented here. Even if legally "cleared" though, this is still a moral failing that should be resoundingly condemned.
-1 star for heavy and undisclosed discussion of COVID. This one may be the most ticky-tacky star deduction of the lot, but hell, I'm fairly certain I'll have more people agreeing with me on this deduction than any other.

Not recommended.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

[ARC review]

Ann Larson does a great job covering the modern supermarket, depicting the semi-controlled chaos without totally befuddling the reader. And her note at the beginning that the difficulty of tracking all the names is part of the point was much appreciated. There were a few points on which I wish she'd gone into more detail. When she mentions big business arguing that keeping employees low-paid and -benefited is the only way to keep prices affordable, it would have been great to get into the numbers on why that isn't true. But this isn't a book on economy, it's a book about working in a supermarket and how everything in society is connected - from health care (or lack thereof) to gun laws (or lack thereof) to product monopolies to union organizing, and how difficult it is to fight for change when you're coming off an eight-days-on-your-feet week that still won't pay all your bills. And Larson acknowledges that her inherent privilege - she's not going to be a market lifer and has more options than many of her coworkers - creates a distance she wasn't able to fully overcome.

I also enjoyed this book on a personal note because of how well it matched my own experience working in a supermarket. I was a cashier/bagger at a big chain (rhymes with Hop&Drop) for a few years during and directly after college, years before the pandemic. I remember noting the divide: there were the College Kids like me, who worked a couple shifts a week for drinking money, weren't planning to make a career in the supermarket and probably weren't considered very highly by the other workers (fair enough in my case - when Larson mentions ringing up wrong things in a panic because no one including the customer knows what green vegetable this is and the line is eight carts deep, well, let's just say I was ringing up a lot of spinach that may or may not have been spinach). Then there were the people for whom supermarket work was their career - many were older, and as in Larson's account, many insisted they were bagging groceries in their 70s to give themselves something to do, while also struggling with the physical demands of the job and worrying about small pay checks.

The store I started in, though, was union. IIRC minimum wage in my state at the time was $7.25 - this store paid something like $9, and $11 on Sundays. Which felt like king's ransom to me at the time. I don't remember what the union dues were, can't have been much, but I would grumble about the missing $10 or whatever it was, which felt like a lot coming out of a $200 pay check. At first I didn't see why I had to pay in to something I wasn't planning to use.

Then a friend at the store was fired over nonsense. She went to the union and the union got her her job back. At the time, I was impressed that it would bother going to bat for a super-part-time employee everyone knew would be gone in a year or two. And then I graduated, and for a year or so after college kept my supermarket job, but transferred to a store closer to home (taking my rate of pay with me). The new store wasn't union.

I hadn't realized: every time I got that $11 Sunday rate I was using the union. Not long after transferring I was talking with other cashiers and realized they were getting minimum wage seven days a week. I was making manager money!

All this to say: what Larson learns in this book is true. The drudgery, the bonding with coworkers as fellow foot soldiers in a war, the customers apparently enraged by the act of grocery shopping, the out-to-lunch upper management, the way your feet ache after hours pacing your cash register zone, being yelled at for reading gossip magazines at the register (sorry not sorry), creative writing majors scribbling story notes on receipt paper (sorry not sorry), the moments of genuine interest and solidarity with customers, the way a slammed shift at least went faster than a dead one, the strange intimacy of seeing what another person plans to subsist on. The quirks of personality and high staff turnover. The employees' stealth chairs (if there's one thing that needs to be legally mandated this minute it's letting employees SIT and USE THE BATHROOM).The lousy wages made somewhat less lousy thanks to the existence of a union.

Larson is right that everyone should have to work a retail job such as supermarket-ing at least once in their lives. Even if they don't get a really solid book out of it.

[Book Club of One · Rating 3 out of 5]

During the 2020 COVID Pandemic, with her career and past work experiences stalled, Ann Larson got a job as a cashier and supervisor at a supermarket. Cleanup in Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register focuses on Larson’s experience in this role. Throughout the narrative Larson combines snippets from the lives of her colleagues, many suffering from various health problems, with some minor exploration of the history of grocery stores, their operations, position as ad-hoc community centers and inherently capitalist structures. It is a combination, that while focused, would have benefited with greater detail. Especially with the growing societal concerns with automation, frequently seen in grocery store self-checkouts.

Larson’s background has positioned her well to write this book, having worked in academics and journalism, as well as her work with nonprofits, she is a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a debtor’s union focused on making education publicly funded, universal healthcare and guaranteed housing. It is this activist or communal mindset that makes Larson very empathetic as she enters her new career in the grocery store. She seeks to both find her place, understand the processes and make what difference she can. And the learning curve is steep, there are set policies and procedures to do most things but learning how to enact those, using the computer and register system requires practice and experience. Grocery stores are set up with a privileged class of managers and administrators deciding much of the day to day priorities while an underclass of part time or near full time workers try to make ends meet by scrounging what hours they can at their much lower wages. Larson frequently reflects on the amount most of the workers are making at the hours are long. And staff is highly variable, with high turnover and little notice of calling off or quitting.

There are some comparisons to other companies and their tracking of employees, but cashiers and baggers are under a great deal of supervision from their colleagues, management and the customers.

I worked in grocery stores for over a decade, and I recall the feeling of being monitored at all times and the need to keep up an appearance of busy-ness lest I be chastised or sent over to do other work. There were also the lean times when the store was far from busy where hours were reduced, the space between Christmas and New Year’s being one of these quiet points.

An illuminating look at behind the scenes work at grocery stores, but for those who have been paying attention or care about the plight of others, not much new. But, that feels to be the point. Do you consider those that wait on or assist you in stores human?

This book will appeal to those looking for modern workplace memoirs, grocery stores methods or operations, and ethical considerations under capitalism.


I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Leslie Oberhaus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscent of the classic Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Cleanup on Aisle Five is an inside look at retail work centered on the supermarket.

Journalist Ann Larson worked as a supermarket cashier and front end supervisor for a year during the COVID-19 pandemic and initially thought the experience might make a good article about working in a public role during this time. She quickly realized there was much more to write about as she observed the physical, emotional, and financial struggles of her colleagues and learned first-hand how skilled the "unskilled" job of cashier can be. What she has put together is well done, a book that is an eye-opening memoir combined with journalism and research.

I learned some interesting history about supermarkets and empathized my way through Larson's memories of learning the registers and self-checkout error codes, her colleagues' heartbreaking struggles to make ends meet, and the disconcerting battle between wanting customers to go away and remembering that you yourself are a customer at times, too. (I have not been a supermarket cashier but I have years of retail experience in department stores and as a pharmacy technician in CVS stores and supermarket pharmacies. I am the product of a blue collar household also so this is all all too familiar.)

There is a lot of interesting information in the research about the way the supermarkets operate that can raise questions on community, policy, the environment, and more, but the most important message in Cleanup on Aisle Five is the human one. The thoughts on wages for "unskilled" workers, time off policies, and management tactics are important conversations and the reminders about dignity and compassion are even more so.

I've noticed other reviews commenting that actual interviews with the author's coworkers would have made the book stronger. I understand this point but also understand the author's statement in the book that while working at the store she couldn't imagine asking any of them to talk to her for an interview about the job that so exhausted them after any of the long days was finally over. It's true that the information and perspective we have on her colleagues is limited. Would the book be even stronger with more about them? Probably, but what it's fair to assume that we have is authentic and that works for me.

I received an early digital copy of this book via NetGalley and I'm leaving my review voluntarily.

[Nichole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great perspective on what is often an overlooked part of our daily lives. The author sets out here to take her journalist skills into a core of our society: the grocery store. She gets a job as a front end cashier and superviser at the peak of the pandemic. What she experiences there is how mass surveillance and chronic pain rules our lives.

I was reading this and thinking of the reddit forum IATA because everyone kind of sucks. But also, this is what happens when we are underpaid, exploited, surveilled, and forced to work while in disabling pain. Capitalism is the real asshole here and it is clear that under capitalism there is no dignity in any job.

I liked the details that the author gives us. What is expected of a front end cashier in a busy store is clear here and the impacts of that job are stark. Everyone has health problems. Nobody can afford to rest and all employees [except maybe the teenagers and execs] are living in poverty. This is infuriating and unacceptable, yet that is what we deem acceptable nevertheless when we take our walks through the grocery stores without a wider perspective.

Working under capitalism turns us all into cops and makes our room for empathy smaller every interaction we have with each other. This is a sad book. Sad because the ways we are forced to live with no worker protections or even respect.

This is great for musing on what a store could be. What should stores of the future look like? I don’t mean the horrendous people-free, hyper-surveilled stores of amazon’s dream; but stores that were centered around community and that protected workers.

Thank you to the publisher for a gifted copy of this book.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your local grocery store, you should read this book. And if you’ve never wondered about it, you should definitely read it! The grocery store is one of those places we take for granted, and other than a brief period at the start of Covid, too often we don’t think much about the stores or the employees who work there. What’s interesting here is that the writer had been overqualified educationally for a supermarket job, but she needed one in the pandemic, and so she was hired as a supervisor. She was not skilled and had to spend a long time learning from the Frontline staff whom she was supposed to be managing, and she faced many challenges. It was interesting to see how she grew as a manager, and as a person. While she was achieving success and recognition by upper management, she became more empathetic and compassionate towards the workers until she started to break the rules herself and it became untenable for her to continue working there. All in all are really interesting book that makes us think about the people whom we depend upon but whom often work under oppressive conditions for unlivable wages. As an aside , I will personally try to avoid changing my mind about buying an item while I’m already at the register, as I see what kind of chaos that causes! Thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

[Katee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ann Larson highlights her year working in a grocery store Front End (i.e. the checkout area) in a post-pandemic landscape in Cleanup on Aisle Five. When I was growing up one of my earlier jobs was working as a cashier in a local grocery store so I was well aware of a lot of the things Ann highlights in her book. It originally started as a long form article and honestly that is kinda where I think it should have stayed. While she does bring in historical aspects into her writing to show where certain common actions and devices in a grocery store came from, the writing itself was very repetitive. I liked that she did highlight the need for better working conditions for those working in these jobs, as it's not often thought about how labor intensive it can be. If I didn't have the background that I did, perhaps I would have enjoyed it more, but honestly it was my background experience that made me want to read it more.

If you enjoyed Nickle and Dimed, I think this has similar feel and you'll enjoy it.


Thank to you to Atria Books and Netgalley for a copy in exchange for review consideration.

[Jen Juenke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed learning how inconvenient working at a grocery store it. The sweeping every hour with the buzzer thing was mystifying!

I liked that the author took notes of her surroundings, tried to get back at TGS and tried to form some solidarity with the other front end staff.

What I found lacking was real interviews with the co workers. I liked the history of the grocery store business, what little there was of it, but I felt that there needed to be more history of retail work, grocery workers in particular.

This is a fascinating read from the point of view of the author, do NOT expect much in research.

Further in the book she kept talking about organizing her people, did she know that most meat cutters are union?

OVerall this is a good look at the front end of a grocery store and the problems associated with it, but do not expect a thoroughly researched topic on retail workers.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for this honest review.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was SO good. Perfectly written with a journalist's eye but mixed with the intimacy of personal memoir. Think Nickel and Dimed, except Larson actually worked in her job, which I admire more than Barbara Ehrenreich's "playing poor." I don't think many people truly understand what it's like to work in a grocery store--the whole "we love essential workers" during the pandemic lockdown felt so performative. Those folks were literally putting themselves out there so that other people could stay in their homes, and they were barely making enough money to live on themselves. And what they had to deal with when it comes to the public - that reminded me of the library so much. In addition to being interesting, this book is an important read, and I think people need to open their eyes to the experiences of the people who serve them in retail.

[Stephanie Peterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cleanup on Aisle Five was an eye-opening investigative piece that goes behind the curtain on the ins and outs of what it means to work at a grocery store. it covers a lot of ground - from the low wages and back-breaking labor to the history of the modern grocery store and how corporations are taking advantage of both staffers and customers with complicated schedules and choice paralysis. very well-written and researched, this book should be required reading for legislators and business owners. my only nit is that i didn’t feel like i got a full picture of the author’s background, which made her transition into this work seem more pre-meditated than out of sheer necessity as if to help her write about this topic from a more authentic/authoritative viewpoint.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Christine (Queen of Books)]

Interesting behind-the-scenes look at a grocery store. I liked Cleanup on Aisle Five most when Ann Larson was telling stories about her time in the store, and least when she was slipping into history and arguments for collective action. The latter just felt out of place where shoehorned in, and simultaneously too heavy on detail for a memoir and too light on detail for the information presented to be memorable.

It was also interesting to hear her, someone for whom other work would be available, claim that her coworkers work there "because they didn't have any other good options." Seemed like a little unintentional looking down on the very people she's telling her readers not to look down on... But that's just my take as someone with a grocery store worker in the family - who's not looking for "better" options.

[Michelle Tuite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading 2026
Book 148: Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register by Ann Larson

Saw this a couple of times in IG, and needed a couple of nonfiction books for June. Listened to this book.

Synopsis: 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.

Review: This book was very interesting. I worked in a grocery store deli during my summers home from college, so I remember many of the things discussed. What was great was the view of the pandemic through the lens of grocery store workers. Some interesting tidbits to add to my trivia bag of tricks as well. 4⭐️

[Corky · Rating 4 out of 5]

While specific, this was both interesting and educational. I appreciated that Larson had worked in TGS (the grocery store) for more than a few short months - she actually lived the life before writing about it.


I really enjoyed the criticism of self checkout and exposing how it's literally a nightmare for everyone besides the highest level of executives profiting. Similarly, Larson really exposed the power dynamic of scheduling and the way that impacts employees every minute of their day ( and night!). 


The cast of characters was just heartbreaking. Chronic pain seemed to be central to nearly everyone's life - and the unnecessary exacerbation that pain was constant.


Overall a great read, even if the latter half was feeling a bit self congratulatory Robin Hood.

[Venita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an eye-opening look at the realities of food retail work. Larson shines a light on the physical exhaustion, mental stress, and constant demands faced by the people who keep grocery stores running every day. After reading this book, it's impossible not to have a deeper appreciation and respect for the check out workers, the cart gatherers and others holding everything together behind the scenes for very low pay.. A thoughtful reminder that every trip to the grocery store is supported by hard work we too often overlook.

Friends.....reshelf that stuff you decide you don't want yourself, you have no idea how much work and stress a pile of "go-backs" can cause and for goodness sake don't show up five minutes before closing to start your shopping!

[norma baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Supermarket workers are essential, they continued to work during COVID! This book enlightens us about the plight of market workers who earn very low wages from jobs that bring them great pain from repetitive motions; pain in their feet from being on their feet all through their shifts and back pain from bagging and lifting heavy bags and boxes. It is a hard job with little appreciation. Because of their low wages, they cannot afford the essentials: health care, food, etc.. The book is very informative.

[Kresta Maynard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you @ net galley for an arc of my honest review.

There was a bunch of interesting points in this book about working in a grocery store. Lots of things you wouldn’t even think about.

So many behind the scene things I as a customer had no idea about. And I couldn’t imagine working at one during the pandemic. But Ann Larson tells her story as she navigates her way as a worker during that time and the ins and outs of a working grocery store.

[Meredith OBrien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book! Takes the readers inside the suffering and terrible injustice low wage workers are forced to endure. Heartbreaking and very well written with clarity only an insider could relay. An Eye opening reality check with a deep sense of saddening purpose.
Should be required reading for all humans

Kudos to the author for her hard work in living through it and sharing the experience with the world!

[Becca G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that Nickeled and Dime wanted to be. This allows the reader to see the reality of working a low paying job. How older people or younger people are the one who primarily work these jobs. The impact it has on the body and mental health. Touches on how bad it was working at a grocery store during covid which brought back memories as I worked at one during covid. 5 stars. Short and very much worth the read. Would buy for the book case.

[Mal · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that a book like this is eye-opening or unflinching feels very cliched, but it definitely gave me more insight into the lives of people who are very much not like me, but also the system that created both supermarkets and limitations on the ways people can survive in this society. Worth a read.

[Holly Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author did a fantastic job on showing the good, bad, and ugly side of working in a grocery store. One of my first jobs was at a Kroger, and her words resonated with me and my memories. I am giving this outstanding book 5 stars!

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read and very informative. I appreciated the author's insights from personal experiences. I am trying to be more clued in to the functions of class with my politics, and this book was helpful in that effort.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Marika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come

* I read an advance copy and was not compensated.

[Cheryl Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like slice-of-life, behind-the-scenes books (I love them) and dislikes the way capitalism chews up humans and spits them out, this book is for you.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This reminded me of Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America but this book focuses exclusively on a grocery store. This will give you a new appreciation for grocery workers

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is an important read to remind people how important patience is. Patience and you don't know what is going on with other people's lives.