On episode 259, we welcome Ann Larson to discuss her experience working as a grocery cashier during the COVID-19 pandemic, the complex emotional and structural factors involved in professional success and failure, meritocracy as a simplification of economic outcomes, the multiple forms of labor involved in supermarket work, the difference between one's status and skillset, food waste at the expense of wages, and the importance of community in surviving low wage work.
Ann Larson's 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. Her new book, available June 9, 2026, is called Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register.
| Ann Larson |
► Website | https://annlarsonwrites.com, https://economichardship.org/author/annlarson
► Twitter | https://x.com/AnnLLarson
► Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/annlarsonslc
► Cleanup on Aisle Five Book | https://bit.ly/CleanuponAisleFive
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