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Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Ye

Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Yet I still think this piece is largely disingenuous claptrap. Kevin Mims is not a moderate voice. He's a unique voice. A white man "in my sixties" with bylines with NPR and the NY Times who works a second job at a small bookstore and still finds time to turn out well-written longish-form essays. This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda. As someone who is critical of Amazon and believes it does not pay its warehouse workers a living sustainable wage and works systematically in ways that make society a worse place on balance, I am not surprised by anything Mims writes. I expect most workers get through their shift without getting sprayed with bear repellant or getting physically injured. I expect a lot of Amazon's warehouse employees to be grateful for the work (largely because they're not empowered to expect or demand better). These should be table stakes for any employer, large or small. How long has Mims worked for Amazon? He tells us: > I’ve worked about 70 shifts since I started at Amazon, and I still wouldn’t presume to offer myself as an expert on the conditions of the entire workforce. Between 3 and 4 months? How much longer does he expect to work for Amazon? Why is he swallowing his "litany of gripes"? What happens to him when one of the injury he acknowledges as inevitable ("warehouses are hazardous environments and, somewhere today, an Amazon employee is likely to be injured") finally strikes him? Finally, this article misses a critical dimension of this issue. It certainly matters how Amazon treats its employees, especially those with the least negotiating power. But it also matters how Amazon presses the levers of power that help the market and government set constraints on companies' ability to tyrannize and exploit its workforce. Amazon management works aggressively to cripple unions. It is a topic covered by professional journalists fairly writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees.

seibelj 7y ago
The article was about how exposes describing Amazon warehouses as urine soaked hellscapes were gross, fantastical exaggerations and the vast majority of employees are in reality happy working there. In regards to all of the anti-union stuff, that is an entirely separate issue and unrelated to the article. You can hold two ideas in your head at once - that Amazon is a safe, decent place to work while understanding that Amazon, and nearly all major corporations, prefer their workers are not unionized. I think the article was a great explanation as to why Amazon warehouses are actually nice places to work, which is the opposite of nearly all other commentary. I like the counterpoint!
panpanna 7y ago
> This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda. I read the article twice. First time it felt balanced (or at least an alternative view). Then I asked myself what happened to all the crap we already knew Amazon was pulling and read it again. This time it felt more like a shill.
- wideasleep1 7y ago
  Might want to read another of his other articles then..like 'Goodbye Herman Wouk"...everyone with an opinion can be called a shill.
neonate 7y ago
I can't tell if you're suggesting that he's only there to write propaganda for Amazon? Someone doing that wouldn't need to work 70 shifts. Also he says in the article that he's been doing low-paying manual labor for most of his adult life. The most likely explanation is that he's a writer who has worked day jobs to pay the bills. Since he's in his early 60s, that's a lot of jobs. I don't see any reason to disbelieve him when he says that his Amazon job has been one of the better ones, even if he does have political opinions.

seibelj 7y ago

The article was about how exposes describing Amazon warehouses as urine soaked hellscapes were gross, fantastical exaggerations and the vast majority of employees are in reality happy working there. In regards to all of the anti-union stuff, that is an entirely separate issue and unrelated to the article. You can hold two ideas in your head at once - that Amazon is a safe, decent place to work while understanding that Amazon, and nearly all major corporations, prefer their workers are not unionized. I think the article was a great explanation as to why Amazon warehouses are actually nice places to work, which is the opposite of nearly all other commentary. I like the counterpoint!

panpanna 7y ago

> This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda. I read the article twice. First time it felt balanced (or at least an alternative view). Then I asked myself what happened to all the crap we already knew Amazon was pulling and read it again. This time it felt more like a shill.

wideasleep1 7y ago
Might want to read another of his other articles then..like 'Goodbye Herman Wouk"...everyone with an opinion can be called a shill.

neonate 7y ago

I can't tell if you're suggesting that he's only there to write propaganda for Amazon? Someone doing that wouldn't need to work 70 shifts. Also he says in the article that he's been doing low-paying manual labor for most of his adult life. The most likely explanation is that he's a writer who has worked day jobs to pay the bills. Since he's in his early 60s, that's a lot of jobs. I don't see any reason to disbelieve him when he says that his Amazon job has been one of the better ones, even if he does have political opinions.