Amazon Outlaw

I’ve been working at Amazon for the past three months. It’s a job that I don’t mind, for the most part. It’s not what I’m qualified for, which is why I’ve been interviewing and looking for other opportunities every single day. But I need to work somewhere to pay bills and keep a cash flow coming in. The COVID thing disrupted the whole planet and has made it hard to bring on new employees at the level I’m looking for. I get it. And I’m patient.

Some people try to classify jobs as above or beneath them. There’s no shame in working. There’s shame in not wanting to work and not doing an excellent job of the job you have. And I’m consistently in the top 5% of the 2100 or so people that work there in terms of productivity and quality.  I hover around 96.7% and have floated around that for the time I’ve been there once I got the hang of the job, which was quick. They do an excellent job of onboarding new employees because they will hire pretty much anyone who can pass some criteria. You have to pass a drug test, which eliminates most of America. You have to have a brain. That removes a lot of the rest. And you have to want to work hard. That eliminates a lot of others. So they have a lot of turnover. Of the 30 or so that onboarded with me, only two others remain. That’s a pretty high dropout rate, which makes you wonder what a lot of Americans do to earn money.

It’s not mentally exhausting by any means, but it does require a bit of focus and the ability to work at a consistently fast pace, and it’s physical, which I enjoy. As I get older, I cherish opportunities to exercise and keep in shape. I’m in great shape. That means I can play with my daughter and keep up with her and haul her around in her wagon and carry her 45-pound monkey frame around with me wherever we go. I can scoop her up and take her with one arm for about 10 or 15 minutes before needing to switch arms. With her wiggling the whole time. That’s pretty good for a man my age and size, I think.  Far better than most Americans who can barely lift their butts off the couch.

Amazon keeps track of all sorts of data, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. They monitor everything. It’s a huge company. The most valuable company on Earth. And it didn’t become so by cutting corners. They have a unique culture there. It’s a Seattle based company, which means it was born out of left coast ideals. And not surprisingly, it’s a “liberal” company. Jeff Bezos, the founder, and President owns the Washington Post. A media outlet that consistently hands out liberal/leftist propaganda. That’s indisputable, although I’m sure some people would want to try. They would fail because of the mountain of evidence that exists.

And I don’t write much about politics on my website, but we’re in an election year, and there are political goings-on afoot.  And I follow politics intimately. I always have because I have a member of my family that worked in a short-lived administration back in the 1970s, and it sparked my interest as a child when I visited the White House. I have a photo floating around somewhere of me behind the vice president’s desk with my feet up on it as a kid. I’d love to find that. I’ve been on a personal tour of the White House.

But I suddenly found a strict parallel between how Amazon is run and how the left in this country wants things to be run. Amazon is enormous, and I believe it almost represents the USA in it’s demographic and societal makeup. Maybe more than I know. They hire some interesting people. They certainly don’t discriminate. I’ve seen deaf people being taught how to do their job via sign language. I see women amputees. There are a lot of Africans that work there. And Hispanics. And don’t forget gay people. They are everywhere there, which is fine. One of the first “Learning Ambassadors” that I came across had more makeup and hair product than a Vegas showgirl. And he was male.  They’re unusually flamboyant. Uncomfortably tight shorts,  Most people there seem to be tattooed. Girls with mohawks, buzzcuts, and every color hair imaginable. Lots of body modifications, like giant holes in the earlobes. I, and Amazon, applaud their “individuality” like everyone else there.  It’s ok to look different, as long as you look the same. Since I’ve been there, I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and the types that stick around and who’s management material.

I studied operations management while I was getting my MBA, so I’m not unfamiliar with the way Amazon works. I used to write algorithms to optimize throughput for companies like Amazon in Excel for practice. So I’m not their everyday shift monkey. I wonder what training my “managers” actually have. Amazon doesn’t use the terms “manager” or “supervisor” or “director” or such delineating and appropriately descriptive tags for employees. They are referred to as “Process Assistants” and “Learning Ambassadors.” They aren’t there to manage you. They’re there to assist you. And they do when you need it or “the system,” tells them that something needs to be corrected or worked on, like a quality issue. It’s all done via computer. Each one is attached to a laptop they carry around to show them what to do. Everything is monitored, and it’s as if an AI brain dictates what to do next.

And if there’s a problem, they usually are on it fast. It’s a great place to work when issues are identified and looked at so quickly. Everything happens there rapidly. It’s what makes Amazon Amazon. We get your orders to you fast. There isn’t much human interaction, which is by design. People cause errors, not computers or robots.

And that’s something that struck me when I was reprimanded the other night by a “Process Assistant.” A young guy I like a lot, of the three or so managers in my area. No one knows who does what. My “Supervisor” never introduced himself. He just goes around asking if there’s anything I need or if there’s anything to talk about, which is good, but it’s sprung upon me as he walks by my work station so that I have nothing prepared. One second he’s there, the next, he’s gone. If we were to have a sit-down meeting or review, as most companies do, I would have a long list of issues to discuss, of course. I’m asked when I check in to my work station via computer a series of questions like “Do I trust my supervisor?”

Well, if I answer “No,” then I’m deeming him untrustworthy, which I don’t even know him well enough to make that call. If I answer “Yes,” then I’m saying I know him well enough to trust him, which I don’t. I don’t know him at all. And those are the types of questions that greet you when you get ready to work your shift.

Keep in mind this description of my work-life is what I perceive the left in the USA wants to have as a governmental style. “Do you trust your senator?”   Answer yes or no.

So when I ended my shift, at 5:00 AM, I went to the breakroom to grab my Coke I left in the refrigerator. It was actually about 5:10-5:15, because I worked until 5, and then clocked out and cleaned up my area and did the things I needed to for the next person that would work where I was. I believe in working the time you’re supposed to, and not bailing at 4:45 or 4:50 like I see others do. So there’s no one left by that time. Just me and the managers, and even most of them are gone by that time. The million square foot area is a ghost town. Just a lot of conveyor belts and workstations and machinery to keep the place chugging along at a good clip.

And then I did the unthinkable. I went down the stairs that were meant for people to go up.

These are the stairs that, under normal circumstances, people would go up one side and down the other on the other side of the railing, which splits the stairs into two. Because of social distancing, these stairs were made into “UP-ONLY” stairs, and to get to down from the mezzanine, which is where I work,  I would have to travel about 100 yards across the floor, go down the stairs, then walk back to the exact location the UP-Only stairs led, which was the main entrance/exit of the building. I ran down the stairs and out the door. Total time: 3 seconds. No one else was around, except the security guard down below. No one. It was the end of the workweek as well, which means people fled the building even more hurriedly than usual.

And when I returned three, almost four days later to work, I had a reason to approach a process assistant(manager) about an issue/anomaly I discovered. This is a guy I like, although he wears his hair in a man-bun. And he’s probably at least 20 years my junior. But he’s approachable and pleasant. And sometimes he’ll play music over the PA system when it hits the 4:00 hour, and we’ve all been good little workers. A special treat, where people shout out and whoop across the giant building, and it reminds me of prison movies where you can hear inmates yelling and singing across the echoing halls.

And he said, “I need to talk to you about how you left your shift the other night.” I knew exactly what he was talking about, and it was hilarious. I replied and asked if he was talking about going down the up stairs. Of course, he was. And his response was, “It’s like these masks – I don’t like wearing them, but we have to.” But it isn’t like that. We do wear proper masks at work to prevent COVID-19 from spreading. It’s more like if I was in an empty building and took off my mask and a voice came over the PA system and said: “Mr. Musgrove, please put your mask back over your face, for the safety of yourself and others.”

It hit me that Amazon expects its employees to be mindless drones. Don’t think for yourself, just do what you’re told, and you’ll be happy because we said so.

Ours is not to question why?

Ours is but to do or die.

This type of totalitarianism is precisely what the left in the USA is demanding right now, with their “CHOP” zone in Seattle, where Amazon’s headquarters is located. Rationed music, pre-approved happiness, and “be like everyone else.”

One of the things my job provides is a glimpse into what’s trending across the US, what people are buying as a result of some cultural catalysts. I see a lot of White Fragility books going out these days with the #BLM craziness. And something I’ve sent out en masse is a Sesame Street book titled “We’re different, we’re the same, and We’re all Wonderful.”

I get the intention, but this is teaching a falsehood to children. We ARE all different, correct. And most of us have the potential to be wonderful. Not everyone turns out to be, which is evidenced by just looking on social media. But we’re not all the same. That’s collectivist, socialist propaganda. It’s ok to look different in other words, but it’s not ok to think differently. We must all think the same way. And who gets to decide what we believe? Lately, it’s the media and politicians, which is a joke. They don’t have your best interests at hand, I assure you. No one but yourself will ever take care of yourself as you will. That’s a fact. But some people are more than willing to turn over their minds to others. That’s a shame and frightening. The manager that scolded me for going down the upstairs when no one else was in the building has given his mind to Amazon to control. And a lot of Americans want to give their minds ()to “the government” to use.

I watched the President’s State of the Union Address the other night again from start to finish, which means from when all the representatives and senators and people in control of this country entered the hallowed chamber that President Trump gave his remarkable speech in. You should watch it and get a good look at the people filing into that room. They are influential people. And for the most part, they look like sacks of crap. Seriously.

I tried not to focus on Nancy Pelosi in the background licking her lizardy lips and shuffling through the papers in front of her as if she’d misplaced her grocery list. It’s all a charade, and a staged act by her. She’s all hat and no cows. She was building up the courage and steam for her “ta-da” moment when she ripped up the state of the union address behind the President’s back.  I find it disgraceful, but there are people among us that think that behavior is lovely. It doesn’t matter who the President is, tearing up the SOTU like that is childish and an indication you have nothing left. It was a historical state of the union address, and she treated it like she manages her district she hails from. Landfill garbage. Which is what San Franciso, once a beautiful bay city, has become under her bony claw.

So to summarize, I can see America becoming a lot like Amazon in the future years, whenever the Democrats regain control, which they will, one day, of course. It’s a political pendulum. I see a lot of similarities between how the operations of Amazon is run and how Democrats want to run things.  And while the productivity levels are going up, things are beautiful. But there’s a lot of compromises to be had. The happiness factor, for one. Amazon isn’t unlike North Korea now that I think about it. Let that sink in as we have forces pushing us to be a Blue Badge Amazon Nation.