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Why Is Amazon's Generosity to a Seattle Homeless Shelter Such a Pain?

27 points by wallflower 8y ago

tzahola 8y ago
http://archive.li/oiALQ http://archive.li/oiALQ
kerng 8y ago
Seems like what you would expect from Amazon, that's how the handle their business partners. Their way, or the highway. This has little to do with philantropy, it's just a calculated attempt to look good.
andrepd 8y ago
Hah, "generous". A thoughtless approach, completely out of tune with the real needs of the institution, causing big disruption, but of course nevertheless closely filmed, beautifully produced in a feelgood video, and diligently advertised.
protomyth 8y ago
They described a dynamic in which a nonprofit that benefits tremendously from its connection with its wealthy neighbor tolerated major logistical nuisances to the detriment of its staff and clients. And they described a relationship that seemed to prioritize optics over a thoughtful approach to philanthropic giving—resulting, in other words, in the kind of pains that an entity as wealthy as Amazon could easily afford to fix. Suck it up. That is exactly the relationship most non profits have with government and NGO grants. You adapt and keep the mission in mind. Is it frustrating? Hell yes, but at the end of the day you have people to help. I admit to visiting a bar after every government site visit and some of directives failed the logic test so badly I screamed at the sky, but you persevere or get out.
avoutthere 8y ago
Clearly Amazon should stop giving to Mary’s Place.
- kerng 8y ago
  Maybe they should be genuinely concerned about the homeless situation in their neighborhood and help address it, rather then creating feel good videos to show how awesome they are. I doubt even their employees think the current status quo where they live is acceptable.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Corporations aren't going to solve the problem. It's the government's responsibility, but you'd probably need a federal program, not a local one, to ensure that generous cities aren't overwhelmed by homeless people moving there from less generous cities. Of course, short of the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, that seems rather unlikely to happen (and even then it's far from guaranteed). Certainly the GOP doesn't seem very concerned about this issue. Now, what could help is relaxing zoning enough to build more housing, thus making housing itself cheaper. With cheaper housing, something like Salt Lake City's Housing First program would become more feasible. But that would probably require ending Seattle's USA-standard segregationist zoning to allow more density in more of the city, and doing that is fraught with peril, politically. People are used to the government enforcing a certain lifestyle in their neighborhoods, and don't like the idea of the market letting in more people, especially people considered 'undesirables'.
    - JasonFruit 8y ago
      Why do you say it's the government's problem? I'd be interested to hear what underlies that assertion.
      - posixplz 8y ago
        It's a mental health and addiction crisis. What about either of those two problems suggests it's a corporate issue?
        alex_anglin 8y ago
holografix 8y ago
Wow getting a “Agree or piss off” GDPR message. Pretty sure that’s not ok.
- sbuk 8y ago
  That’s definitely not ok.
- cryptoz 8y ago
  It might not be okay to you, but isn't that exactly what GDPR is supposed to do?
  - notimetorelax 8y ago
    Almost, they must offer the same experience to those who opt out of the targeted ads and other non essential profiling. Since profiling is not required for their service to work, they have to give access to the content even if I opt out.
  - nightcracker 8y ago
    No. From: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ > Consent is presumed not to be freely given if ..., or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. It is not necessary to consent to data collection for a person to read Slate's article, therefore walling their article behind a consent button means the consent is not freely given. In other words - you can't lock a site behind a consent button. Either you provide the site regardless of data collection consent, or you don't provide it at all - period.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      > In other words - you can't lock a site behind a consent button. You can't lock a site under European jurisdiction behind a consent button. I don't see how any of this can apply to Slate, unless the EU wants to start reciprocally start enforcing, say, Saudi law on European websites.
always_good 8y ago
Wow, so the shelter is basically complaining that it's a PITA to unpack and transport free shit. When you read about companies that just chuck out food instead of donating it, you can kind of see why. > In addition to the downtown location, Mary’s Place operates six other shelters in Seattle, serving individuals and families with 680 beds each night. But Amazon didn’t deliver the food to the other Mary’s Place locations, nor did the shelter consistently set aside additional resources to distribute the donations each night, according to four sources. Amazon is the bad guy because they only donated to 1 of the 6 shelters. > But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of the richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the company could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t making life tougher for people on the front lines. Bizarre hit piece.
- cryptoz 8y ago
  > > But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of the richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the company could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t making life tougher for people on the front lines. > Bizarre hit piece. Do you really disagree with that paragraph though? It is not an opinion paragraph, it is just a series of statements of facts. Doesn't seem like a "hit piece" at all to me.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > it is just a series of statements of facts. It is a selection of facts intended to present an act of philanthropy as a PR liability. Systemically, it is why most restaurant groups throw food out instead of donating it. The latter should be the default move. But if donating invites more criticism than disposing, guess which one is incentivized.
    - cryptoz 8y ago
      I don't agree with your analysis or analogy at all. Donating can be dangerous and it is important to recognize that and address it. It is on both the citizens of a place to vote for politicians who will make laws that makes it easier for restaurants to donate. A corporate giant like Amazon should take donations serioualy and carefully. I don't understand at all how this is anything remotely like a hit piece. Have some compassion for the homeless who everyone here, Amazon and the newspaper, are trying to help. Could Amazon do more, as the quoted paragraph suggests? Yes.
jrnichols 8y ago
it almost comes across as if they want to be operating as a subsidiary of Amazon instead of receiving donations. I wonder how many donations/etc they get from other places and how it's handled. Logistics with donations and NGOs has long been a headache, though. This isn't a new thing.
strken 8y ago
I don't think it's a hit piece, so much as it's https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...
- amha 8y ago
  That blog post is really, really worth reading. "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. ... I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular."
  - tomtimtall 8y ago
    Interestingly there is part of this principle intergrained in the tupilak culture surrounding homeless in the city of Copenhagen. most people do not donate money to homeless beggars because they would like these people to have a better life. But shouldn’t they be giving them some money then you ask? Nope, because giving them money just makes it possible for them to stay homeless, if they run out of money and run out of food, they are forced to seek out the shelters which have social workers that can get hem into the system and help them get back on their feet. Most people on Tage street today fall into two categories: Drug users who avoid the system because they find it easier to keep using drugs outside of the support system, and (I kid you not) homeless people transported to Copenhagen from Eastern European countries by gangs who skim their beggings. Neither of those groups are helped by you taking on only an infiticimal part of he problem and giving the poor person a dollar. So if you want to actually help them you either give money to shelters, help support initiatives like the homeless paper, or volounteer.
djrogers 8y ago
I’ve worked at shelters and commissaries, and this is pretty much the norm. I’ve met some amazing people who would spend their time working through stuff like this joyfully, because they remembered their goals instead of turning into entitled complainers. Yeah, it sucks at times but the alternative is a lot worse. If you manage to wade through the article to the end, they even point this out, illustrating it with a different charity who appears to either do a better job or have a better mindset and experience about food collection. Sounds to me like Mary’s Place should spend some time learning from their peers rather than lashing out like this.
tomtimtall 8y ago
It’s Wierd that a lot of the complints are phrased “weren’t told”. It makes it sound suspeciusly like the shelter people didn’t even ask and are now complayning that Amazon did not work proactively to invalidate their wrongfull assumptions. Like “I can’t believe they didn’t tell us before we got there that there would be 40 crates today!? Yesterday was only 5!?” If we where talking regular retail the first thing I would ask the person would be “Well did you ask them or just assume, if the latter then it’s your fault not theirs”. The same goes for refrigerator space. If the shelter only has space for 30 crates, well then did they tell that to amazon? Or did they just tell them “we’ll take however much you’ve got!” Assuming that they would never get more than 30 crates? Then naturally amazon is expecting them to clear the 40 crates even if they means he shelter suddenly has to throw out 10, because that’s the deal they struck. I mean a lot of their complaints really come off as them being horrible at logistics and communication and whining that Amazon isn’t fixing this for them, but they honestly can’t do that. Just like they can’t fire the bad employees or volunteers or purchase more refrigerators that they can’t even know they need.
throwaway98109 8y ago
I'm an Amazon SDE, fairly new to the city. Hence I'm part of the problem, according to the narrative of those on the anti-Amazon side of all this. What is the single best thing I can do to help this problem? Volunteering my time to help a shelter? Paying money to the support it? Influencing my company to change? What are some ways that I can help solve these problems at scale?

27 points by wallflower 8y ago

http://archive.li/oiALQ http://archive.li/oiALQ

Seems like what you would expect from Amazon, that's how the handle their business partners. Their way, or the highway. This has little to do with philantropy, it's just a calculated attempt to look good.

andrepd 8y ago

Hah, "generous". A thoughtless approach, completely out of tune with the real needs of the institution, causing big disruption, but of course nevertheless closely filmed, beautifully produced in a feelgood video, and diligently advertised.

protomyth 8y ago

They described a dynamic in which a nonprofit that benefits tremendously from its connection with its wealthy neighbor tolerated major logistical nuisances to the detriment of its staff and clients. And they described a relationship that seemed to prioritize optics over a thoughtful approach to philanthropic giving—resulting, in other words, in the kind of pains that an entity as wealthy as Amazon could easily afford to fix. Suck it up. That is exactly the relationship most non profits have with government and NGO grants. You adapt and keep the mission in mind. Is it frustrating? Hell yes, but at the end of the day you have people to help. I admit to visiting a bar after every government site visit and some of directives failed the logic test so badly I screamed at the sky, but you persevere or get out.

avoutthere 8y ago

Clearly Amazon should stop giving to Mary’s Place.

kerng 8y ago
Maybe they should be genuinely concerned about the homeless situation in their neighborhood and help address it, rather then creating feel good videos to show how awesome they are. I doubt even their employees think the current status quo where they live is acceptable.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Corporations aren't going to solve the problem. It's the government's responsibility, but you'd probably need a federal program, not a local one, to ensure that generous cities aren't overwhelmed by homeless people moving there from less generous cities. Of course, short of the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency, that seems rather unlikely to happen (and even then it's far from guaranteed). Certainly the GOP doesn't seem very concerned about this issue. Now, what could help is relaxing zoning enough to build more housing, thus making housing itself cheaper. With cheaper housing, something like Salt Lake City's Housing First program would become more feasible. But that would probably require ending Seattle's USA-standard segregationist zoning to allow more density in more of the city, and doing that is fraught with peril, politically. People are used to the government enforcing a certain lifestyle in their neighborhoods, and don't like the idea of the market letting in more people, especially people considered 'undesirables'.
  - JasonFruit 8y ago
    Why do you say it's the government's problem? I'd be interested to hear what underlies that assertion.
    - posixplz 8y ago
      It's a mental health and addiction crisis. What about either of those two problems suggests it's a corporate issue?
      - alex_anglin 8y ago

holografix 8y ago

Wow getting a “Agree or piss off” GDPR message. Pretty sure that’s not ok.

sbuk 8y ago
That’s definitely not ok.
cryptoz 8y ago
It might not be okay to you, but isn't that exactly what GDPR is supposed to do?
- notimetorelax 8y ago
  Almost, they must offer the same experience to those who opt out of the targeted ads and other non essential profiling. Since profiling is not required for their service to work, they have to give access to the content even if I opt out.
- nightcracker 8y ago
  No. From: https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-43/ > Consent is presumed not to be freely given if ..., or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance. It is not necessary to consent to data collection for a person to read Slate's article, therefore walling their article behind a consent button means the consent is not freely given. In other words - you can't lock a site behind a consent button. Either you provide the site regardless of data collection consent, or you don't provide it at all - period.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > In other words - you can't lock a site behind a consent button. You can't lock a site under European jurisdiction behind a consent button. I don't see how any of this can apply to Slate, unless the EU wants to start reciprocally start enforcing, say, Saudi law on European websites.

always_good 8y ago

Wow, so the shelter is basically complaining that it's a PITA to unpack and transport free shit. When you read about companies that just chuck out food instead of donating it, you can kind of see why. > In addition to the downtown location, Mary’s Place operates six other shelters in Seattle, serving individuals and families with 680 beds each night. But Amazon didn’t deliver the food to the other Mary’s Place locations, nor did the shelter consistently set aside additional resources to distribute the donations each night, according to four sources. Amazon is the bad guy because they only donated to 1 of the 6 shelters. > But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of the richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the company could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t making life tougher for people on the front lines. Bizarre hit piece.

cryptoz 8y ago
> > But Amazon is the fifth-most-valuable company in the world, with one of the richest men on the planet at its helm, leaving little doubt that the company could be doing much more to ensure that its local philanthropy isn’t making life tougher for people on the front lines. > Bizarre hit piece. Do you really disagree with that paragraph though? It is not an opinion paragraph, it is just a series of statements of facts. Doesn't seem like a "hit piece" at all to me.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > it is just a series of statements of facts. It is a selection of facts intended to present an act of philanthropy as a PR liability. Systemically, it is why most restaurant groups throw food out instead of donating it. The latter should be the default move. But if donating invites more criticism than disposing, guess which one is incentivized.
  - cryptoz 8y ago
    I don't agree with your analysis or analogy at all. Donating can be dangerous and it is important to recognize that and address it. It is on both the citizens of a place to vote for politicians who will make laws that makes it easier for restaurants to donate. A corporate giant like Amazon should take donations serioualy and carefully. I don't understand at all how this is anything remotely like a hit piece. Have some compassion for the homeless who everyone here, Amazon and the newspaper, are trying to help. Could Amazon do more, as the quoted paragraph suggests? Yes.

jrnichols 8y ago

it almost comes across as if they want to be operating as a subsidiary of Amazon instead of receiving donations. I wonder how many donations/etc they get from other places and how it's handled. Logistics with donations and NGOs has long been a headache, though. This isn't a new thing.

strken 8y ago

I don't think it's a hit piece, so much as it's https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

amha 8y ago
That blog post is really, really worth reading. "The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. ... I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular."
- tomtimtall 8y ago
  Interestingly there is part of this principle intergrained in the tupilak culture surrounding homeless in the city of Copenhagen. most people do not donate money to homeless beggars because they would like these people to have a better life. But shouldn’t they be giving them some money then you ask? Nope, because giving them money just makes it possible for them to stay homeless, if they run out of money and run out of food, they are forced to seek out the shelters which have social workers that can get hem into the system and help them get back on their feet. Most people on Tage street today fall into two categories: Drug users who avoid the system because they find it easier to keep using drugs outside of the support system, and (I kid you not) homeless people transported to Copenhagen from Eastern European countries by gangs who skim their beggings. Neither of those groups are helped by you taking on only an infiticimal part of he problem and giving the poor person a dollar. So if you want to actually help them you either give money to shelters, help support initiatives like the homeless paper, or volounteer.

djrogers 8y ago

I’ve worked at shelters and commissaries, and this is pretty much the norm. I’ve met some amazing people who would spend their time working through stuff like this joyfully, because they remembered their goals instead of turning into entitled complainers. Yeah, it sucks at times but the alternative is a lot worse. If you manage to wade through the article to the end, they even point this out, illustrating it with a different charity who appears to either do a better job or have a better mindset and experience about food collection. Sounds to me like Mary’s Place should spend some time learning from their peers rather than lashing out like this.

tomtimtall 8y ago

It’s Wierd that a lot of the complints are phrased “weren’t told”. It makes it sound suspeciusly like the shelter people didn’t even ask and are now complayning that Amazon did not work proactively to invalidate their wrongfull assumptions. Like “I can’t believe they didn’t tell us before we got there that there would be 40 crates today!? Yesterday was only 5!?” If we where talking regular retail the first thing I would ask the person would be “Well did you ask them or just assume, if the latter then it’s your fault not theirs”. The same goes for refrigerator space. If the shelter only has space for 30 crates, well then did they tell that to amazon? Or did they just tell them “we’ll take however much you’ve got!” Assuming that they would never get more than 30 crates? Then naturally amazon is expecting them to clear the 40 crates even if they means he shelter suddenly has to throw out 10, because that’s the deal they struck. I mean a lot of their complaints really come off as them being horrible at logistics and communication and whining that Amazon isn’t fixing this for them, but they honestly can’t do that. Just like they can’t fire the bad employees or volunteers or purchase more refrigerators that they can’t even know they need.

throwaway98109 8y ago

I'm an Amazon SDE, fairly new to the city. Hence I'm part of the problem, according to the narrative of those on the anti-Amazon side of all this. What is the single best thing I can do to help this problem? Volunteering my time to help a shelter? Paying money to the support it? Influencing my company to change? What are some ways that I can help solve these problems at scale?