I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-journalism/

by juokaz • 7 years ago

372 224 7 years ago

frereubu2• 7 years ago

As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the Talking Politics podcast - https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-demo... - if you could only ask one question of someone you'd never met before, which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they'd voted for Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave). He argues that, in the UK at least, there's a bubble of professional politicians who all went to university and were completely blindsided by the result of the Brexit referendum because they knew almost no-one who'd consider (or admit to) voting Leave.

Also John Lanchester's compelling (to me) argument that the bailing out of the banks after the crash (which was, on balance, right) followed quickly by austerity (where everyone else unfairly picked up the cheque for the bailout) lead directly to Brexit and Trump, because people were (to paraphrase the film Network) "mad as hell, and not going to take this anymore!" https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n13/john-lanchester/after-the-fall

It really does feel that the university crowd (which I'm a part of) have completely detached from the lives of large chunks of the rest of the country. I get that this account of Amazon workplaces may be rose-tinted. Perhaps this facility is run by a good manager, and others aren't. But as it says, for this to be a specific kind of evil it needs to be compared to all other jobs in a similar environment. There are things that can be made better, sure, as there always are. But I find quite a bit of this middle-class hand-wringing tricky because it always seems to be well-paid journalists going "undercover". They'd probably find any manual labour degrading when compared to their comfortable Aeron chairs and plate-glass offices.

awkward2• 7 years ago

I think when it comes down to it labor conditions are in the details, and it depends on the work. External pressure can help workers get a better deal, but often, especially if there is a collective bargaining agreement in place, coverage that's more salacious than accurate can harm their ability to negotiate.

It's like the guy who had the made up story about Foxconn on NPR, with whole bits about how they were flagrantly violating child labor law. It doesn't mean conditions at Foxconn are good, but the lack of accuracy means the company can't and won't make concessions where there's a real problem.

brownbat2• 7 years ago

That University disconnect is powerful and cuts across issues.

I remember hearing a freshman lawmaker talk about transitioning from other fields into politics. The first thing campaign advisers did was cut all references to advanced degrees from her website, replacing them with stories about how her grandfather was a farmer.

30 Rock's Duffy--a caricature of someone unrelatable--described his politics as "Fiscal liberal, social conservative" in one throwaway joke.[0]

I thought it was pretty clever at the time, but the college-educated writers of 30 Rock and I probably underestimated the relatability of Duffy's position.

I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted beliefs of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican constituencies are far more sympathetic to large government programs and redistribution than their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more supportive of morality-based restrictions and social regulations than their reps would suggest.

Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates as a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from econ classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal arts classes, or some mix of both.

That is likely to cause some friction.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/30ROCK/comments/88ztl8/dennis_duffy... He naturally meant liberal in the American sense.

[1] I've done a quick review of political attitudes lit and sadly can't find the study at the moment, will update if I find it and would welcome anyone pointing me the right direction if this sounds familiar.

SmirkingRevenge• 7 years ago

I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted beliefs of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican constituencies are far more sympathetic to large government programs and redistribution than their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more supportive of morality-based restrictions and social regulations than their reps would suggest.
Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates as a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from econ classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal arts classes, or some mix of both.

That reminds me of the research this group is doing/has done, which is somewhat related to your points here. The basic upshot is that most people really are moderate, and share more views in common than we tend to appreciate.

https://perceptiongap.us/

Disclaimer: I've only skimmed that stuff, so I don't vouch for it, but its interesting

TheOtherHobbes• 7 years ago

Firstly, this is factually incorrect. The biggest predictor was age, not education. Up to age 24, there was a huge preference for Remain. Up to age 35 there was a slightly smaller but still significant preference. Over 65 the preference swung the other way.

Education was significant, but not decisive.

But in fact the dirty secret of all politics is that democracy is decided almost entirely by the C2 political class. Everyone else votes fairly predictably. But with the right rhetoric, C2s can be persuaded to vote against the status quo - whatever that is.

The university educated class is most accurately represented by the B class, who tend to lean progressive and are more likely support pro-worker politics than other classes.

The A class - the true elite who own things - leans reactionary, and uses media ownership to propagate grudge and paranoia rhetoric against convenient victims (unions, foreigners, immigrants, non-conformists of more minor kinds) to herd the C2s into voting against their immediate interests.

That's exactly what happened with both Trump and the Brexit vote - although the Trump vote was complicated by the fact that Clinton ran a spectacularly ineffectual and tone deaf campaign which alienated C2s who might otherwise have supported her, and who would almost certainly have supported Sanders.

But other than that - the same class that created austerity as an institutionally abusive political dogma used its media leverage to channel anger away from itself and towards perennially reliable by-the-numbers xenophobia.

It's not a stretch to suggest Amazon benefits from the same pattern, albeit in a less partisan way. Bezos has made it clear he's interested in efficiency, and not in the working conditions in Amazon's warehouses.

Amazon as a company could easily afford to run an operation that's famous for being a world leader in humane employment - but it doesn't, because it chooses not to.

frereubu2• 7 years ago

I'm willing to be corrected on best predictor of Brexit voting, but even if that's the case, as you say, education was a significant factor, and I think contributed hugely to the blindness of the political class.

Your analysis of the various classes (which has a whole other discussion attached to it) comes across as pretty patronising. The idea that the result was caused by "herding" C2s uses metaphors of cattle that are pretty demeaning, as if Bs aren't subject to similar forces with different aesthetics.

It also negates the idea that they have a real beef with the establishment, which I think they do. They may be voting against their own interests on the issue of Brexit, but in the service of a big, satisfying "f__k you" to the people who've shafted them in the name of "balancing the books" while bailing out their City mates. I'd feel pretty aggrieved if I saw City boys swanking around while my right to incapacity benefit was challenged again and again.

I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence. But I can't think of many organisations who would meet that standard, and I have direct experience of white-collar jobs that are more soul-destroying than the work described in the linked article. Even Amnesty International was hemorrhaging staff because of a toxic work environment while they were running that "protect the human" campaign.

What I found useful about this article was that it gave a sense of perspective from someone who does this kind of work for a living. Did those journalists interview anyone like this? (Not a rhetorical question - I haven't read the book by Bloodworth, but I'm skeptical given the tone of the excerpts I've read that it would fit his narrative.)

selimthegrim• 7 years ago

I thought bringing back the death penalty was a stronger correlate than university education? (Also I wonder if David is related to Steven Runciman)

iamtheworstdev• 7 years ago

John Oliver did not say that Amazon had an employee die. John Oliver started off talking about Amazon and then switched the discussion to the companies trying to keep up with Amazon (in the order fulfillment business) which is where said death occurred. These competitors apparently have far worse employee treatment than Amazon but claim they have to in order to keep prices down due to Amazon's efficiency.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

You'd think the role of regulation and oversight is to force the company into bankruptcy before allowing it to have far worse employee treatment including coworking spaces with corpses.

hogu• 7 years ago

I believe the specific incident is xpo logistics

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/21/business/preg...

For example, last October, a 58-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest on the warehouse floor after complaining to colleagues that she felt sick, according to a police report and current and former XPO employees. In Facebook posts at the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to keep working as the woman lay dead.

Spooky23• 7 years ago

A relative worked in a big bank in the 80s where a vendor CE died of a heart attack while doing maintenance on a mainframe at 6AM.

Directed by operations management, security did a “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” move, rebuffed first responders, who shrugged and left. Employees in the data center were directed to go about their business. They rolled the guy around for most of the day until someone told a bigshot of sufficient stature to override the lunacy of the production control people.

Given sufficient empowerment and toxic enough culture, people are capable of anything.

zdragnar4• 7 years ago

Well, it's not like they're going to be able to help her at that point. Might be that supervisors were just trying to get employees to clear out of the way of police ect. Without knowing the exact wording of what employees were told, it's kinda hard to judge the reaction.

brownbat2• 7 years ago

I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic.

Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

dmix• 7 years ago

This is great, we all do this too.

Even when you try not to you’re still bombarded with ‘news’ all the time and can only invest so much cognitive effort to each. So we end up deferring so much of common knowledge to news sites. Only a small percentage of those are trained journalists with time and budgets.

CM30• 7 years ago

Honestly, most trained journalists make similar mistakes, simply because they're not people with experience in a field or industry.

Even assuming they're 100% honest about their intentions and trying to minimise factual errors overall (which isn't always the case), it's still a person/people at an organisation doing research into something they're not experts in and trying to distill their findings down to a level understandable by their publication's audience. Usually with limited time and a limited budget.

By definition they will make mistakes, and probably quite a lot of them too. Just like a software engineer would if they were told to write an article on astrophysics or molecular biology without any real experience in either field.

ajross• 7 years ago

The Gell-Mann thing is dangerous pseudo science, stay away. It's not even invented by a scientist. It's the excuse people go to to disbelieve something they see in coverage, or to win arguments about "the media" or "fake news". If you want to dismiss something as a falsehood, you have to do it with evidence, not quips. This article is an excellent example.

dymk• 7 years ago

Most fallacies weren’t coined by scientists, they were coined by philosophers. This one was coined by a writer. That makes it intrinsically invalid?

Your criticisms of the effect are pretty vague, can you give an example here where it’s been misapplied?

jdietrich• 7 years ago

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect doesn't say "all news is bunkum", it says "the news media consistently make obvious errors when they report on physics, they probably make similar errors when they report on your field of expertise, so take what they say about other things with a pinch of salt". There's a world of difference between cynicism and scepticism.

ishjoh2• 7 years ago

I didn't realize this had a name, thank you for the link!

vore2• 7 years ago

The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the cause of him losing his job due to automation:

Just about every job in my sortation center could probably be done by a robot. In fact, it amazes me that Amazon hasn’t simply automated the entire facility. [...] If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-class people, the company creates more customers.
If Amazon is going to be castigated publicly every time one of its 650,000 employees has a bad day, it may well decide to automate as many positions as possible and do away with most of its human workforce.
But if John Oliver and his ilk keep harping away at how inhumanely Amazon treats its workers, Bezos might decide to completely automate his operation and people like me will be out of a job.

It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction.

AnthonyMouse3• 7 years ago

It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction.

Be that as it may, agitating for rules that make it more expensive to employ people can make the scale tip the other way sooner. It's not unreasonable to prefer a $15 job to a "$25 job" that promptly gets automated away because the automation threshold is currently e.g. $22 (and will be $19 in five years).

vore2• 7 years ago

That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation, then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.

goldcd4• 7 years ago

I think I disagree.

If job roles are arranged like a pyramid (wide base of lower paid jobs, with lower number of higher paid jobs above) - the largest benefit is always going to be automating away the high number of low paid jobs.

Amazon might roll out some pick-and-pack droids - but are unlikely to replace Jeff with an AI farm of CEO-leadership.

If you say look at say what Uber or AirBNB have done, it's replacing the very bottom interface layer connecting what you want with who provides it. People are still driving people and cleaning rooms for their arrival.

sct2023• 7 years ago

A large part of the reason a lot of companies keep jobs only partially automated, is so that they can flex capacity up and down with demand.

With automation you have to buy all that capacity upfront and pay for it if you're using it or not. With labor, you can send people home early or cut hours if you don't need them.

lonelappde2• 7 years ago

The author is a libertarian think-tank shill, not actually worried about his job.

nerdponx• 7 years ago

Yep. These lines made me squirm.

Amazon probably isn't a bad employer even by warehouse standards. But these kinds of statements are paternalistic propaganda on behalf of capital.

gdulli• 7 years ago

If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-class people, the company creates more customers

I've never accused a piece of content like this of being a shill, but it's taking some mental gymnastics to convince myself that a person could really believe this.

autokad• 7 years ago

why, its not far from the philosophy of Henry Ford, thus completely plausible.

awkward2• 7 years ago

I worked as a union picker for a warehouse in 2001 - I was just there until I went to college, but if I had stayed for a year the 12.50 an hour I was making would have been raised to 16.50, and subject to raises as I stayed longer.

Nearly 20 years later, and under a tighter labor market, amazon has raised the minimum for pickers to $15 an hour. It's great that this guy likes his job, but I have no doubt that amazon has been a suppressive force on waged labor.

throwawayjava2• 7 years ago

Anecdotal, but I have a pretty good before/after view on a community that got an Amazon fulfillment center.

As far as I can tell, there hasn't been much impact on wages in either direction in that particular local labor market. Without strong unions, the labor market keeps warehouse wages at "just high enough that you can have a slightly better life than what you could get working in the service industry". There's always excess supply because warehouse work -- although physically demanding -- is relatively accessible.

tw2019072089237• 7 years ago

Meanwhile, over 6 years ago, when the economy had barely even started bouncing back, Walmart was paying me—and other newish employees with short tenure—over $17/hr for this type of work. But look at mainstream attitudes towards the two companies and try measuring opinion about willingness to say something like "I bought it at Walmart" vs "I bought it from Amazon".

There's more, though. And I write all this as a pro-social, anti-libertarian leftist:

The obsession with trying to "help" the workers in these jobs—and in industries like Uber—mirrors a lot of the arguments you'll see in the pro-life vs pro-choice debate. People are fond of pointing out that conservatives care disproportionately about unborn fetuses when measured against how willing conservatives are to let infants be thrown to the wolves after birth. I see the public outcry that something has to be done about these companies (so as to help their workers, but comparatively little care for what's in store for those workers after the movement's immediate goals are met) as the left's own paradox (to call it by a charitable term; "hypocrisy" if you're less worried about hurting anyone's feelings).

Shouldn't be surprising. Most "opinion" is accounted for as a bunch of dumb trends and fashion and idpol talking points more than it is arrived at by thoughtful consideration.

dang5• 7 years ago

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

dang5• 7 years ago

A related recent thread is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20485859.

conorh• 7 years ago

I had read a few of these negative articles about Amazon fulfillment centers and then a guy we know working the counter at our local pizza place got a job at one of them. That made me change my mind and doubt the reporting after talking with him. The pay was much better better, the benefits if he transitioned to full time were much better, and he was really excited about a program Amazon has to cover tuition after (I think) a year for some educational programs.

seraphsf2• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops”. (http://archive.is/W6ABE) The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job.

If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer directly. We may still want systemic change to create more options and more equity for employees, but the “sweatshop” (that pays more than alternatives and which employees freely choose) is not the villain in this story.

hackermailman• 7 years ago

I saw a documentary once on a slum in Kampala, where they interviewed a guy living in the slum who's job it was to clean out the public toilets there. He claimed it was one of the 'best jobs', because he was paid on time, given a uniform/gloves to wear instead of having to buy one himself, set his own hours, and the labor was not back breaking agricultural labor in the open sun all day. He also remarked he was able to contribute to his community in a positive way by keeping it clean, something all the other residents rewarded him for with various tips as thanks for his service since they had to use those toilets everyday. Wasn't the response I expected.

goldcd4• 7 years ago

Indeed.

As I can't find a reference, you can treat this as anecdotal - but there was a radio story about 2 fifteen year old siblings who'd both 'taken up sweatshop work'. One was stitching trainers, one was doing embroidery - for very low wages.

Initial 'outrage at child-labour' was confused slightly when they both said they were very happy, as they'd previously been working on their parents farm - and their sweatshop labour had allowed them to contribute towards a tractor for their village (replacing the labour of a whole load of children) - and for the first time they had some personal savings.

anderspitman• 7 years ago

The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job.

If you want to go deeper on this subject I highly recommend reading Factfulness.

im3w1l• 7 years ago

Consider that cartels are known to work, they allow more profit for participants. The reason they work is because the price of maximum profit is typically higher than the equilibrium price.

Outlawing sweatshops effectively creates a wage / work conditions cartel.

jrochkind12• 7 years ago

Did he manage to transition to full-time/permanent?

Where I live, I know some people who work/have worked in the local fulfillment center, and say that few people manage to transition to full-time/permanent, they seem to find ways to fire/lay off people before they get there, the workforce is constantly turning over.

Different locations may be different though.

jrnichols• 7 years ago

It feels to me like some of these articles (at least past one) and the overwhelming majority of the anti-Prime Day posts on Facebook were written by people that had never worked even a single day at a warehouse job. The plight of the warehouse worker isn't unique to Amazon by any means. Not even close. From personal experience, I'd say the Amazon fulfillment gigs are way better than ones I did for other companies years ago.

dcre• 7 years ago

Lots of interesting and worthwhile detail, none of which undermines reporting about what goes on in warehouses in which the author does not work, nor does it undermine the argument that paying $30,000 a year for full time work in California is only possible because America maintains a permanent underclass willing to work for next to nothing.

rb808• 7 years ago

In which other country can unskilled workers earn $30k?

OK maybe a handful. (AUD has gone down since 2013) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#/media/File:Hourl...

fr000t• 7 years ago

I can kinda-sorta see what you mean by a "permanent underclass", but in what capacity does america "maintain" that class?

seraphsf2• 7 years ago

I love this article. It’s so hard to find moderate voices, especially when algorithmic curation tends to surface outrage first.

As the author puts it:

“I don’t object to journalists writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees. I only wish they would do so fairly.

Just because a journalist has found an Amazon employee somewhere who got sprayed with bear repellant, that doesn’t mean Amazon employees spend their days in mortal fear of a chemical attack.

...we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation. ”

burlesona• 7 years ago

Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks.

Reporting that working at a warehouse is “hard work but mostly okay,” is not going to advance that reporters career or help the publication make money. But finding a shocking and at least mostly true story, and ignoring whether or not it’s a 1% outlier, just might.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it.

I think the biggest problem is that most people want to be genuinely well-informed, won’t accept that this isn’t actually possible, and thus accept a lot of commercial infotainment because it provokes strong feelings, makes for good shared outrage dinner chats with “in the know” friends, and helps you imagine that you are well informed.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks.

Because if journalists stop writing fair articles in the longer term our societies will lose a lot more than just a bunch of $ in the coffers of the press owners.

wideasleep13• 7 years ago

"We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it." Impressive challenge. Rush Limbaugh was a voice for Gen-X neocons much in the same way John Oliver is today for Millenial neo-libs. In their time, they are hard to ignore..it's the diet being consumed.

locallost3• 7 years ago

or that workers somewhere in Iceland (360,000) have been required to work around a fallen co-worker. But neither of these things, if they happened, would be proof that working conditions in Luxembourg or Iceland are appalling.

They would however be proof that working conditions in a company in Iceland are appalling.

the84726• 7 years ago

Not really, since they are single events you don't know anything about the frequency and how it compares to the frequency in other locations.

The law of large number causes unusual events to happen every day, which means the more globally your news operates the more freak events you can accumulate. Your town newspaper regularly reporting that someone had to work next to a corpse would be concerning. BBC world news reporting that this happened somewhere in the world might be statistical blips.

Guest42• 7 years ago

"The weak law of large numbers states that the sample average converges in probability towards the expected value"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

locallost3• 7 years ago

I wish this was the only report about Amazon's poor working conditions. But it's not true, is it?

m0zg3• 7 years ago

I (and people I directly worked with) have been interviewed a couple of times by what one would call "mainstream press". Once by a NY Times columnist and another time by TechCrunch.

The resulting articles bore very little semblance to what we said, omitted crucial facts, and contained the kinds of exaggerations that neither I nor any of the people interviewed would ever make. I'm talking "breaking the laws of physics" kind of exaggerations, and making it look like we said things that not only aren't true now, but will never be true in the future, which is something that would be immediately obvious to a technically competent person in our field of work.

Nothing changes one's view of the press quite as readily as being a part of the news. I'd wager the majority of what you see and read is handpicked BS made to fit an agenda, and outright lies to drive traffic aren't as infrequent as you think. If you think the tech press is any different, you're naive. There's really no incentive structure currently in place for reporting to be factual and balanced. You always get the behavior you reward.

I now always try to "read between the lines", like I would back in the Soviet Union when reading Pravda.

nova22033• 7 years ago

Were you quoted by name?

m0zg3• 7 years ago

Don't think I was, but our CEO and CTO were.

reaperducer• 7 years ago

I was going to ask if you contacted The Times about this. It used to take such things very seriously.

Then after I did a search for the Times' ombudsman, I came across an article stating that it eliminated its Public Editor position in 2017.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/public-editor/liz-spayd-f...

While The Times is prolific in its corrections, all I can find now is this sentence: "Messages on news coverage can be e-mailed to nytnews@nytimes.com or left toll-free at 1-844-NYT-NEWS."

m0zg3• 7 years ago

What would be the point? We got our "free PR", and nobody reads retractions anyway.

bhl• 7 years ago

Note that the publishing title of the article is “Tourist Journalism Versus the Working Class”, which should be an indication of the author’s bias. The story initially begins with comparing the personal, working experience of the author with what he has seen depicted in the media. I thought it was compelling, even if the author worked in a “sortation warehouse” instead of the “fulfillment center” frequently covered, and only represents one datapoint.

But then he interjects his argument with how working for Amazon has allowed him to interact with diverse colleagues? The story felt like it went from an appreciation of the working class to a defense of corporations and capitalism, with a bit of nationalistic pride sprinkled in. I don’t know what to think.

floatboth• 7 years ago

a defense of corporations and capitalism, with a bit of nationalistic pride sprinkled in

About what you should expect from that awful publication.

sct2023• 7 years ago

It seems kind of like people who go to volunteer in Africa to "earn" themselves a story of adversity and dealing with rough situations.

wideasleep13• 7 years ago

"I don’t know what to think." I believe the author's point was that John Oliver's agenda doesn't match his own personal experience (his own 'agenda', which you now question), so dissonance comes down to who's agenda seems more genuine, who benefits most, who has more to lose, who has more to gain.

xyzzyz• 7 years ago

I think what you are confused about is that these days most talking about diversity is for the purpose of signaling the tribal identity of the speaker, as opposed to conveying some message. Thus, once someone signals their belonging to the other tribe (“I work for amazon and it’s quite okay, those damn journals don’t know a thing about life”), the other signal sounds strange and out of place.

seibelj• 7 years ago

There is similarly a great EconTalk episode from 2009 about what working at WalMart is like http://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/

One thing I took from that episode is how so many people yearn for the mom-and-pops to come back, even though their prices were awful, selection poor, service subpar, working for them had less protections, and on and on.

WalMart is actually a pretty good employer compared to many other low-wage industries and the benefits in terms of price and selection for rural areas should not be underestimated.

fzeroracer2• 7 years ago

The logic applied in the article cuts both ways, however. I've seen my fair share of companies find one happy employee, and use that to try and sweep all of the bad shit going on in the background under the rug. Look at John Manson and how happy he is. All of the other stories are just workers looking for revenge, lazy good-for-nothings, etc.

So while it's true that the writer of this story might not be abused or experiencing disparate work conditions, there are many others that are.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 7 years ago

Apart from employing a lot of staff, Amazon does a number of things progressives ought to like. For instance, it employs a very diverse group of people. On my shift, I work with African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, white people, gay people, deaf people, ex-convicts, and people whose ethnicities and even genders are a mystery to me.

This is a warehouse job with a medium low salary. If the author worked as a programmer and could still repeat the above, that would really be commendable.

DrScump3• 7 years ago

  If the author worked as a programmer and could still repeat the above

As a programmer for a "stodgy" defense contractor, the programmers in my group alone included our Chinese-born female project leader, a Hong Kong-born female, a deaf male (and new parent), an African-American female, a Cuban-born male, an Iranian-born male, a Kuwaiti-born female, an ethnic Chinese SF-born female, and me.

And we were awesome.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 7 years ago

And we were awesome.

That's excellent and I envy you, it must be a great team to work with and even hang out after work. But how is this related to Amazon?

ilaksh• 7 years ago

Glad to hear a different side to this. There absolutely are not any robots that can do all of the tasks the people in the sortation center do as quickly as they do them. Not even close. I actually think that deep learning systems can be trained for all or almost all the fixed tasks already, but there are no robots that have anywhere near the combination of mobility, power-to-weight, flexibility, speed and agility necessary to replace humans in those jobs.

I think that it's going to take a new type of more effective artificial muscle to get there.

But then absolutely all of those jobs will be eliminated.

I think Marshall Brain's books are pretty good on the subject.

vharuck• 7 years ago

I like the author's take on warehouse work, probably because it squares with mine. I went to high school with almost entirely white peers, was going to college without having to take on any loans, and I got the warehouse job because my dad worked in the offices. I met people who lived in completely different environments and believed completely different things, and it was awesome.

One thing I don't agree with:

If Bloodworth believes Amazon is inhumane for looking askance at a worker who asks for a sick day during his first three weeks on the job, then he and I live by different work ethics.

If a person's sick, they're sick. If they're faking, they're faking. Days with the company doesn't affect the ethics.

MuffinFlavored• 7 years ago

Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company. When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many people shot up and said "can we start taking them right now?"

Before they had even worked a day! PTO days are accurred by hours worked. For me, it's ~6 hours per 15 calendar days. You think you're entitled to PTO having worked 0 hours?...

jkaplowitz6• 7 years ago

For vacation days, your point makes sense to me. For sick days, people don't get to choose when they get sick. Someone can just as easily get sick on day 1 or 2 of a job as on day 401 or 402.

throwawayjava2• 7 years ago

Seriously?

That's the first/only question I ask about vacation policy because it's usually the only detail that isn't included in the first draft of the offer letter. Of course, I also ask before signing the contract.

PTO is a significant part of your total compensation. Not clarifying how accrual works is just irresponsible.

I honestly don't see how this is any different from asking about other time-based things, such as:

- whether your salary is paid every other week or at the end of the month.

- when your signing bonus is paid and how long you have to stay to keep it.

- when your stock units are granted and how long you have to stay to keep it.

- when the company's 401(k) contribution will hit your account.

All of which you should definitely be asking... and preferably before accepting the position.

fzeroracer2• 7 years ago

You're making a few massive assumptions here.

The first is that PTO is accrued by hours worked. This is not the case everywhere, some places refresh your PTO allowances at the start of the year and some will give you partial PTO when you start working.

The second is you assume that they, literally, want to take it right now. They might want to start making plans, or they might've been hired close to a holiday etc.

Also the way you phrase it as 'entitled' is worrying, because it's a two way street. I signed an offer letter because I felt working at X company would be beneficial for me. If a company is giving me PTO, then I'm going to use that PTO and I want to know when and what restrictions there may be.

I'm owed whatever the company decided to offer me during the process of interviewing and recruitment.

joe5150• 7 years ago

entitled? PTO is part of my compensation, of course I'm entitled to it.

goldcd4• 7 years ago

PTO is a very strange concept for much of the world.

I'm in the UK and get work full time and get 25 days holiday to take, plus the national/bank holidays.

If I'm sick I take a sick day. If I take a significant number of sick days, I'll be asked to produce a note from my doctor confirming that I'm sick.

If I get really sick, then myself and my employer both contribute to insurance that (I think, not checked for a while) gives me 75% of my salary until I'm well.

It's not quite a socialist paradise - but the general idea is that if you're an employee, there is a collective system that doesn't punish you for being ill.

Vacation days are for vacation.

I do work for an international company, so was interested to note on my portal (where I can check my benefits) - a new metric of "15 unused sick-days" had appeared... ..maybe my hay-fever is more debilitating that I thought...

YZF• 7 years ago

What if you need to take some time off? Your brother is getting married? Or you just haven't had a vacation in a while? You take your PTO now, and you don't take it later. If you leave the company before that PTO accrued it's taken off your salary.

Yes! you can take vacation before it's accrued in any normal workplace.

lsllc• 7 years ago

Did you know that 40% of sick days are on a Monday or Friday!

belorn• 7 years ago

I would not stay at a company that expect me to work next to people who are sick. The only exception is if I worked at a hospital and then I would enter the job knowing the risk and also expect the extra vaccination and procedures which is involved when you work with people that are sick.

If people feel they want points for work ethics, do bookkeeping or other stay-at-home activity. Answer emails. Spreading a virus and infecting people is unethical and a company policy that demand that of employees is indeed inhumane. It is also counter-productive which is why only companies that can easily and cheaply find replacement employees can do it.

ibudiallo• 7 years ago

Last year, I was interviewed for a public radio show in Europe. There was nothing more exciting for me to be in the spotlight. A week later they ran the interview and it was eerie to hear myself say things I didn't remember saying.

I mean, I said it, but I didn't say it like that. At first I thought I was crazy and didn't remember the interview correctly. Luckily, I had recorded the whole session on my computer. I was not crazy.

The interviewers questions were rephrased, and my answers where edited to make them more dramatic.

I had received many calls from journalists, and many didn't run the story at all after I said I will only answer some parts Off the record.

Most often then not, the journalists already has a story when they come to you. All they need is a quote of you saying what they already wrote.

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

That's so dishonest it isn't even funny. I was interviewed a few years back because I built an - unreleased - search engine and the interviewer wanted me to say some particular stuff about Google. I refused and the interview atmosphere was definitely very much different after that. There are plenty of good journalists but there are also a bunch of them that are complete jerks that fabricate stuff rather than report on reality.

rustguy• 7 years ago

My friend's friend interviewed me for the college paper re: online poker. Her final article had quotes taken out of context here and there. Painted me as a degenerate gambler drowning in luck. In reality, I had 2 years of positive cash flow and stable, increasing profits with records of every single hand played. Fortunately, the editor threw the article away (I'm not sure why, but I like to think it was seen as biased). How naive I was, though. That article could have been on the reasonably prominent paper website, available to anyone googling me even now. I lost a friend over it. Everyone's got their own agenda. Journalists are just closer to the public eye.

rainyMammoth3• 7 years ago

I remember the day I realized that most of "journalism" is basically a narrative confirmation machine.

each newspaper or media got a well defined narrative and they make the facts look like the narrative by using the "omission" technique: Basically removing the inconvenient facts and publishing the edited facts that fit their world view.

cljs-js-eval• 7 years ago

Every English class I've had growing up in America has a bunch of assignments like this:

1. Pick a topic.

2. Pick a position.

3. Find sources that support your position.

4. Write.

If English were held to the same high standard as the sciences, it would go:

1. Pick a topic.

2. Research sources.

3. Pick your position.

4. Write.

It's not surprising that the people who do the best in English have carried this mindset with them to their job.

metalgearsolid• 7 years ago

For a second I thought nobody was going to stick up for the bajillion dollar mega corporation.

Every employer I've worked for has had: * Billions of dollars less money than Amazon * Better working conditions

Amazon doesn't need your voice. The workers who fear an extended bathroom break might get them fired do.

astrange2• 7 years ago

How happy were your customers?

jccalhoun• 7 years ago

I saw that this was a link to the quillette and wondered how they would tackle the topic. I thought, "I bet they are somehow going to say working there is great."

I guess if nothing else you can say quillette is predictable.

ma2rten• 7 years ago

Oliver’s researchers even uncovered an incident in which a worker had died on the job and her co-workers were told to carry on working in the presence of her corpse.

No, they didn't. This was about a different company.

noir_lord3• 7 years ago

When I was young I did agency employment for a few years between leaving school and figuring out what I wanted to do.

A lot of that was in warehouses (I also worked in greenhouses harvesting cucumbers 45C and 100% humidity, a paint factory moving 15l paint tins all day - never eaten so much or been so fit, 15l tins of bitumen are heavy to handball all day, steel plant that powder coated so hot tanks of acid and full PPE and a cardboard box factory) and almost nothing I’ve read about amazon surprises me much.

Warehouse work is often physically demanding and rote, same thing over and over again, I never had a problem with that because I’d just go on autopilot and the day would pass in a blur - never had an issue with hard work and got multiple full time offers, I’ve always been a naturally hard worker, I always figured I’m here for 8-12 hours day goes faster when you are busy.

It was an interesting experience and after moving into enterprise software development served me really well when it came to producing things operatives actually got a benefit from.

It also makes me think that TUI’s with shortcut keys are often massively more efficient than a pretty GUI but I digress.

heymijo• 7 years ago

never had an issue with hard work

Very similar boat as you when I was younger. Lots of physical labor. No big deal when you're young. Extrapolate that out to a decade, two decades, or an entire career and I bet we would both be singing a different tune.

noir_lord3• 7 years ago

Oh I'm sure, some of those jobs would break you if you did them for a decade or two, it's why I got into programming after training as an industrial electrician, I looked at the guys I was working with who where 20-30 years older than me (40-50) and they where messed up so I took a different path.

Again though I don't regret it, the training was useful and it taught me life skills that are applicable to software engineering (though the stakes are a little lower when not working with 11kV systems).

jacquesm5• 7 years ago

Same here. Every day I am grateful that I can earn a large multiple of my former living by just sitting behind a desk.

oneepic• 7 years ago

...Wow. This article changed my opinions dramatically. Really thankful to see an article like this. It puts the emphasis on irresponsible (whether it's intended or not) journalism as a huge problem here in the US, as opposed to all the dystopian news stories that come out these days.

Of course there are real exceptions, like stories that turn out to be true about really bad working conditions in some places. But it particularly struck me to see this example, of John Oliver and his team grasping at straws to put together a damning narrative about Amazon, only for one guy with firsthand warehouse experience to come out and tell a much more positive and convincing story about his job.

We definitely live in a time where social media and the news tend to make us think the world is a hellscape of things like big tech and AI, corrupt politics, and corporate greed, all coming together to destroy our world as we know it. I don't think the world is perfect, there's still tons of problems that really suck (homelessness, poverty, actual corruption and greed, ...) but I feel like we're gonna be totally fine and this is pretty manageable overall. We'll figure it all out.

jrochkind12• 7 years ago

I wonder if different warehouses could have different working conditions.

SamReidHughes2• 7 years ago

Related: The Jungle purportedly was a similar piece of propaganda.

gruez• 7 years ago

Warehouses, such as the one I work in, have huge cargo bays that are almost always open to receive the back ends of incoming tractor trailer rigs. When these bays are open it is virtually impossible to control the temperature inside the warehouse artificially.

Why can't they section off the loading zones and put something like air doors or strip doors to keep the cold/warm air from escaping?

sct2023• 7 years ago

The company I work for encloses the entire dock area with a giant overhang and there's a giant door for the semis to drive thru into the warehouse. It's totally a thing, but it costs extra. We do it because some of the products are temperature sensitive.

JetezLeLogin3• 7 years ago

Everyone drinks some flavor of Kool-Aid. Confirmation bias: it's the human condition. Do and think whatever whimsical thing you want to, then do the cognitive contortions later to justify it.

throw2016• 7 years ago

This comes across as click bait. This is not the opinion of an actual warehouse worker but someone with an agenda who has taken the job specifically for that purpose which only becomes clear once you click through to read the article. What value can this have? How can this be taken seriously?

Let Amazon workers fight for their rights, why are outsiders who do not do that work skeptical of their concerns? What is the basis?

We are always talking about free speech, democracy and protest and yet it seems when people use these rights a whole group of prosperous and well off individuals who don't have anything to do the conditions of the protestors rush to trivialize and dismiss their concerns. There is something extremely mean and smallminded about this.

simonebrunozzi• 7 years ago

I generally like John Oliver, although I find most of his content geared toward a shallow journalism that I don't enjoy.

If he were an amazing man, he would read this piece, decide this critique made sense, and run a new episode in which he corrects and fixes everything that was not super accurate in his previous take on Amazon.

John Oliver, I know you lurk on Hacker News every day, for several hours, under a fake username. Please, do this!

nameismypw2• 7 years ago

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission.

A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

amazingman2• 7 years ago

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. At “worst” it is a center-right publication, and if you can’t see the value of such a publication existing then you should probably question your own epistemology.

Re: the “cement milkshake conspiracy”, the Portland police’s official twitter account posted a warning about cement milkshakes. For a (short) period after that, it was entirely reasonable to mention it as a real possibility.

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Quillette pieces (~50/50 for me), it should be obvious that it is a legitimate, even valuable publication. If you’re having trouble seeing this, perhaps you’ve been caught in a social media echo chamber.

nameismypw2• 7 years ago

Quillette is strongly associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is associated with the alt-right. Quillette publishes prominent alt-right individuals. Several articles on the front page, including the one you mention, favorably portray alt-right individuals.

You seem to be familiar with them, so I think that you're aware of this, to be honest.

Aloha2• 7 years ago

It seems more to have a libertarian bend rather than a populist alt-right one. So citation please.

dang5• 7 years ago

It's penalized on HN the same way we downweight all mostly-political or ideological publications. But such sites do come up with the occasional interesting article, and on HN we care about the article, not the site. Same with Jacobin or something like that.

pvg2• 7 years ago

Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.

depr• 7 years ago

"ideological" meaning not matching the HN ideology of course

rainyMammoth3• 7 years ago

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. It probably doesn't feed easily into your liberal world-view narrative, but they are the other side of the spectrum of publications like the NYT and it is more needed now than ever.

apexkid• 7 years ago

I for one cannot buy the fact that this article is authentically written by a worker in Amazon warehouse. Seems like a shadowed approach from a different segment of media to just do cleanup or take a shot on Oliver's program.

wideasleep13• 7 years ago

So, you think this article is some shill..to what end? Just a potshot at John Oliver? Who is this 'shadow' you perceive?

rainyMammoth3• 7 years ago

The issue is that John Oliver whole business is to try to make humorist exaggerated content look like real life facts.

Every other week there is a John Oliver monologue that gets hyped and it seems that no one looks at it with a critical eye.

John Oliver is to the left what Fox News is to the right.

kevintb• 7 years ago

I was agreeing somewhat until this part:

“Never take a sick day during your first year of employment with any company, no matter what.” My wife and I have literally gone years between sick days.

And it all went downhill from there. God forbid this guy be struck with cancer or a chronic disease.

Johnny555• 7 years ago

Warehouses, such as the one I work in, have huge cargo bays that are almost always open to receive the back ends of incoming tractor trailer rigs. When these bays are open it is virtually impossible to control the temperature inside the warehouse artificially

When I worked in a warehouse in a northern state, they kept the bay doors closed when there was no truck there, and even when the doors were open, they were covered by strip curtains to help keep the heat in.

Even when it was below freezing outside, it was warm enough inside the warehouse to walk around in an insulated shirt and no jacket (~50 degrees inside, ~20 (or less) outside).

Of course, they didn't do it for the employees, we dealt with a lot of food products that couldn't be allowed to freeze. So climate control even in a warehouse is possible, but maybe not cheap in 95+ degree Sacramento summer days.

I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

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