Punching In

Curious to know just what happens behind the "employees only" doors of big companies, journalist Alex Frankel embarked on an undercover reporting project to find out how some of America's well-known companies win the hearts and minds of their retail and service employees. Frankel knew the only way to find answers was to go native.During a two-year urban adventure through the world of commerce, Frankel applied for and was hired by a half-dozen companies: he proudly wore the brown uniform of the UPS driver, folded endless stacks of T-shirts at Gap, brewed espressos for the hordes at Starbucks, interviewed (but failed to get hired) at Whole Foods, enrolled in management training at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and sold iPods at the Apple Store.At the heart of Punching In lies Frankel's quest to find out how some of the giants of commerce turn thousands of average job applicants into loyal—even fanatical—workers. How do they identify and recruit workers who will best fit their companies? How do they indoctrinate employees into their corporate cultures and make them perfect messengers of their brands? Along the way Frankel pauses long enough to wonder why he is so often immune to corporate attempts to win employees over.In this lively and entertaining narrative, Frankel takes readers on a personal journey into the land of front-line employees to discover why some workers are so eager to drink the corporate Kool-Aid and which companies know how to serve it up best.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Self-Help, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.