2k14 what's the worst enormous tech company?

Amazon warehouse employees are treated terribly. Also they seem to get away with a casual disregard for all competition laws.

adam: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

Seems tough but not entirely unreasonable an experience. Had the author ever worked for a temp agency before this? Or in a warehouse? Or in retail at the start of the Christmas season? This article seems like it was written by someone who hasn't done any of these and went into this job looking for things to whine about.

Ok, they had worked in a warehouse before. It's just, the tone of this is so surprised at stuff that should be common sense (background checks? quotas? bosses aren't cool with crying?) it doesn't seem like it.

Apple products are made in factories where the workers commit suicide. The warehouse this writer writes about only provides 1 (rather than 2) Thanksgiving dinners to workers.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very-hot-warehouse/

In a lengthy and heavily reported article, The Call said a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points. [...] So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances stationed outside the warehouse during several days of excess heat over the summer.

xpost

And junior buys his grammie an ipad for Christmas, but grammie commits suicide because the snow made her late for her Thanksgiving Amazon warehouse shift and she won't be able to buy junior an ipad.

"Never say that you can't do it," the first workamper emphasizes. "When they ask you why you aren't reaching your goals—"

"Say, 'It's because they're totally unreasonable'?" I suggest.

"Say you'll do better, even if you know you can't," she continues, ignoring me.

You really feel for the workers who had to put up with the writer.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/

http://gawker.com/amazon-deserves-all-of-its-bad-pr-1582631709

Ok the 100+ degree warehouses, that is horrible stuff. But the "time theft" stuff is pretty par-for-the-course for blue collar work.

i think part of the point of pointing it out in the case of amazon was that they have built an enormous amount of customer goodwill by appearing to be utterly frictionless but that comes at the price of the customer's near-total ignorance of how e.g. the $5 iced tea pitcher i bought last week showed up on my doorstep two days later, because there is utterly zero opportunity for customers ever to have knowledge of that process at all

rme @ trying to characterize the author of that mother jones piece as a shiftless intellectual whiner who's never done a day's worth of honest work when she writes at the beginning of the article that she's reported on warehouse conditions before and spent a lot of time working in warehouses, also rme @ dismissing shitty labor practices as "par-for-the-course" as if that excuses them (actually, part of the problem with amazon is that since it's a powerful industry leader it's a major cause of bad labor practices becoming endemic to the US shipping industry as a whole)

if you're trying to argue that apple should've ended up higher in the poll the way to go about it is not to try to minimize amazon's problems

Could you point to any particularly egregious labor practices in that piece?

You say there are "shitty labor practices" detailed in that MJ piece, please elaborate on which ones they are.

I'm sorry, if you go into a new job worrying that they'll be mean to you, that you will lose your pride, won't be able to bring your personal life into work, won't be able to cry at work, etc. maybe you should not work in a labor-intensive environment. It's telling that rather than give a two-weeks notice she just walks off the site without telling anyone.

even putting the labor stuff aside, amazon's market power (see: hachette right now) and effect on local retail are scarier issues

I mean amazon is gonna replace the workers w/ robots anyway

being mean to workers and destroying their pride, just par for the course really. suck it up pussy, get another of the plentiful jobs available

if you think treating people like livestock is a practice to be encouraged, then carry on. asshole

*also treating entire industries as livestock

future dystopia overlords Beezid

Ah, yes. Free your mind, sheeple.

She even talks to multiple workers who take pride in their jobs there. Did they not get the memo that their work is demeaning? How come they didn't walk away without giving notice, leaving a bunch of extra work for their coworkers?

when you say 'free your mind sheeple' are you trying to suggest sufjan would say that, because it actually also fits pretty well w/ the rest of your comments

It was mocking "treating people like livestock", no idea what Sufjan is on about.

nobody uses sheeple to talk about people who are actually performing livestock-esque labor

How come they didn't walk away without giving notice, leaving a bunch of extra work for their coworkers?

Because starvation and eviction are not really optimal choices even given the world's shittiest job?

Are you really this dumb?

It was mocking "treating people like livestock", no idea what Sufjan is on about.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 16, 2014 8:47 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm talkin' bout Beezid, man

i mean, sure, we all love the innovative products that Beezid provides right now. but how long before Beezid goes too far?

http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2014/july/matt-rutledge-woot-has-a-new-deal-mediocre-corporation?single=1

At length, after a bit of business talk that maybe resembled a cousin of an actual breakfast meeting, Rutledge blurted out a question that had been troubling him: “Why did you buy Woot?”

[...]

So there sat Bezos at the breakfast table, faced with a question for which he was apparently unprepared. Many painful seconds passed without an answer. Rutledge let the pause lengthen as long as he could bear it and was just about to tell his host to forget it, when Bezos finally spoke.

He looked down at his plate. Bezos had ordered a dish called Tom’s Big Breakfast, a preparation of Mediterranean octopus that includes potatoes, bacon, green garlic yogurt, and a poached egg. “You’re the octopus that I’m having for breakfast,” Rutledge remembers Bezos saying. “When I look at the menu, you’re the thing I don’t understand, the thing I’ve never had. I must have the breakfast octopus.”

not rly an important or relevant article, i just havent been able to get that quote out of my head

http://media.bizj.us/view/img/813861/jeff-bezos-01*300.jpg

if you don't think hiring desperate people as contractors, increasing their quotas until they're impossible to meet, then firing them is a shitty labor practice i'm not sure what to say to you? and many people take pride in their work even when they work in demeaning conditions and it's not unusual or dumb b/c being able to take pride in what you do is a normal thing that most humans desire

Ok the 100+ degree warehouses, that is horrible stuff. But the "time theft" stuff is pretty par-for-the-course for blue collar work.

100+ degree warehouses is almost the least offensive stuff - there's relatively little you can do to cool a giant uninsulated building in a hot environment. You can, as a company, however, not engage in time theft and ritual abuse of employees.

Apple products are made in factories where the workers commit suicide. The warehouse this writer writes about only provides 1 (rather than 2) Thanksgiving dinners to workers.

not rly an important or relevant article, i just havent been able to get that quote out of my head

― r|t|c, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 12:38 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is an amazing quote. breakfast octopus is such a great metaphor.

when they make the citizen kane / social network based on amazon there's no way they'll forget to use that line

bezos single-minded ambition + i eat yr octopus maps better to 'there will be blood'

First off I have 15 years experience working temp/contract jobs, including warehouse work. I feel like I am being realistic about things. I am not saying exploiting workers is good, only that it is widespread. To lay the blame at Amazon's feet is to pretend none of these employment issues were serious problems before 1995.

Also please do not assume low wage/warehouse/temp workers are all desperate individuals oblivious to their demeaning existence. That is some classist concern trolling. At the temp jobs I had many of my co-workers (including me) were working as well as going to school, and the flexibility offered by temporary employment made that possible. I had spent the previous 6 months interviewing for real jobs and whenever I brought up that I would be going to school in the fall, it seemed to be a dealbreaker for the employers. Without temporary employment I would not have finished school.

Of course I was desperate for that job, I was out of work. When you are out of work you are desperate for a job!

Corporate jingoism is bullshit, quotas suck, middle managers suck, Big Business's centuries-long hold on a 3 branches of the US gov't sucks, and the way society is structured so that everyone is pressured to surrender YEARS OF THEIR LIVES doing machine-like work for unfeeling companies sucks. Me saying this stuff is "par for the course" is not me giving it a big thumbs up. If you want to have a conversation about the larger implications of capitalism vs. the human spirit, I'm ready to go, and we will probably find we agree with each other all over the place.

Also, since we are discussing exploitation, it is ironic that in every article on Mother Jones about this stuff there are banner ads to the Kindle edition on....you guessed it, Amazon.com. So the workers are being exploited twice over (at least)!

20 years ago people probably said things like "Walmart can't be any worse than Sears or K-Mart." They were, and so is Amazon. I have 25 years of shitty jobs, so I know.

god what the fuck is wrong with you xp

every one if your posts is worthless. i hope you keep working temp jobs for the rest of your life. you deserve it.

though honestly you sound like the kind of asshole who has family to fall back on in dire straits so whatever

ok i'm over the top. anyway, this kind of investigative journalism of shitty labor practices has real effects. it may seem like plugging holes in the dam. there are people out there who use it as an excuse to feel good/ok and do nothing. but if you want to get all challops about it and throw your hands up in the air about capitalism, you're being self-indulgent and a reactionary. but iirc you're christian so i shouldn't exactly be surprised. still, why do you post here? so much and so often? with so many contrary opinions? you aren't doing anybody any good. you aren't provoking thought. it has to take up a lot of your time. you sound too self-righteous to be simply bored. are you just a giant narcissist? i was sounding a little unhinged there with "i hope you keep working temp jobs for the rest of your life," as that's just plain illogical and malicious. and not what i really hope. i actually hope for your own good and the good of people around you you stop being such a self-serving jackass. please! at least on here. maybe you're different irl, i don't know.

That's the third personal attack thrown at me today. Some real valuable discussion going on here. I say something, back it up with facts, someone comes in and calls me an asshole, asks me if I'm dumb, then someone else calls me an asshole, says everything I say is worthless. Fuck you guys, I never said a single thing about you personally.

My opinions are valuable to me, and I would respect yours if you just presented them rather than saying "Oh this guy sucks, fuck you LOL". You realize there is more than one way to look at an issue?

you aren't doing anybody any good. you aren't provoking thought

You're right, I'm provoking bullying. Peace out :-/

good fucking riddance!

good fucking riddance!

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, July 16, 2014 4:30 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

go find another forum to pull this bs on

who even gets that mad about something online?

Amazon vs. Hachette: The Astroturfing

http://www.quartzcity.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/facebook_toughtimes-789x1024.png

worst enormous tech asshole retires on top http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-18/larry-ellison-steps-down-as-oracles-ceo

wow amazon is really downplaying the existence and availability of books on its new frontpage redesign

huh, you're right, but the truth is, i don't think i'd seen amazon's front page in like 5 years, who goes to amazon except via links to a product?

http://cdn.mhpbooks.com/uploads/2014/11/B1spUCKCQAEuVKV-572x649.jpg