The pressures of everyday living are shown in almost clinical manner. In tight, highly condensed images, the film describes a day in the life of an American middle class family, surrounded by the machines, gadgets and impersonal offices that consume their time and leave them empty handed. Impressing the viewer with the inroads the machine has made on his daily activities and thus, his personal and emotional life, it scathingly suggests the loneliness, the banality, the mechanisation.