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> Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d

> Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same. When I’m in a rhythm, and my system’s working, and I slide open the side door and the parcel I’m looking for practically jumps into my hand, and the delivery takes 35 seconds and I’m on to the next one, I enjoy this gig. I like that it’s challenging, mentally and physically. As with the athletic contests I covered for my old employer, there’s a resolution, every day. I get to the end of my route, or I don’t. I deliver all the packages, or I don’t. Delivering packages is a fine job doing honest labor. Amazon pays well. He has a good attitude. He is doing something the modern world needs. No shame in that. If I was down on my luck I would have no problem doing whatever job exists. I have washed dishes, and I enjoyed that job. I think a lot of people think some types of work are beneath them but I respect all people who are productive members of society - and the flip-side is that I despise people who say these jobs are so “terrible” they need to be outlawed or whatever.

fossuser 6y ago
Yeah - I liked that part of his essay too, I also just generally liked his writing. There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party. The irony to me is that this kind of work is probably more valuable to society than sports illustrated and day to day almost certainly so. If there was more cultural respect for these kinds of jobs, people would feel better about themselves while doing them. I think there should be. I was glad he felt good about it at the end.
- pydry 6y ago
  There would probably be more respect even if nothing else changed except they paid more.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I knew a UPS long-haul driver who was making over $100k in 2003.
    - sldksk 6y ago
      That was 2003 and a different career with different qualifications, not to mention work schedule.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        My point is the potential is there for driving and delivering to rise in status and pay again.
  - sldksk 6y ago
    This can’t be overstated. Dignity means having the financial stability required to comfortably live in a decent neighborhood, get married, and raise a family.
    - TchoBeer 6y ago
      What if I don't want to get married and/or raise a family?
      - detaro 6y ago
        Then don't? Having the stability that you could is good either way.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I doubt it. Both because Amazon pay is decent, but more so because it’s more about class expectations than it is about pay. Lots of jobs make a lot of money, but are still not considered high status.
    - pydry 6y ago
- conductr 6y ago
  > There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home, leaving early to meet the plumber/doctor, etc) and honestly how difficult living on a low wage actually was and that was before all the responsibilities I’ve accumulated (family, homes, etc). Also, I always found these jobs truly fun. The carefreeness of other employees and they types of characters you came across was eclectic and interesting. Corporate America does not allow of much of that and is fairly homogeneous even when diversified.
  - lazyeye 6y ago
    I laughed at your phrase "even when diversified". They promote all forms of diversity except diversity of thought. You'll get a far more interesting range of views from a small team of people delivering pizzas than you will from people working at Google.
sneak 6y ago
Every argument against Amazon-the-employer I have read recently seems to pretend that the people who work there have no choice but to work for Amazon, as if they didn't pick the job for themselves out of the array of possible options available to them. I have a lot of issues with the way Amazon operates, but precisely nobody is forced to work there. This article does a good job of pointing that out.
- ipaddr 6y ago
  People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time. The array of possible jobs could be one or none. If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.
  - sneak 6y ago
    The array of possible unskilled jobs in almost every populated place is almost always >1. It turns out that Amazon actually competes for labor in a vast market for same. So many people work there because they have to be a better option than most unskilled labor jobs because they have so many packages to deliver.
    - dv_dt 6y ago
      I’d you don’t have a lot of financial resources, and work a low paid job, you also tend not to have the time resources to explore the option. It comes at a high transaction cost.
      - splitstud 6y ago
        My experience with wage workers that are struggling to make ends meet is different. They spend a lot of time looking for better jobs and side gigs. Like, it is their primary focus.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        My unwanted opinion on that is their "lot of time" would be better invested in upgrading their skills so they can get a higher paying job.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I felt bad for him in the moment when he talked about being judged for being a senior and doing a "menial" job. Being a delivery driver is certainly not a high status job but I think it's a reminder not to allow ourselves to look down on any particular role in society. We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning.
- ergot_vacation 6y ago
  It's not an issue of "looking down" though. We absolutely need these jobs (some of them anyway, we don't really need restaurants for example). That's all the more reason to ensure that they are sustainable. We need rules so that people are paid well, working in safe conditions, not being overworked, etc. As a society we need to ensure that people doing vital stuff like delivery are protected and taken care of, for our sake as well as theirs. Post-Covid, Amazon has essentially become a core part of US infrastructure, as much or moreso than the USPS. And of course, all of this is even more important for the reason the article highlights: These are the jobs people end up in now. In a country with a vanishing middle class and terrible social safety nets for seniors, increasingly large numbers of people end up here. Not just criminals, those who aren't especially bright or those who are a bit unlucky, but good, capable ordinary people have nowhere else to go now. If we're all going to be living here now, we need to start cleaning the place up.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  When I worked at a grocery store I reflected on how the cleaner who came every night was one of the more important workers we had. After all, who'd want to shop groceries at a dirty place when there's a nice, clean place just a bit down the road?
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning." Ok, we can all agree that until a high level of automation is achieved, such jobs are necessary. But how many of the people defending the need for such jobs would actually want to do them? Usually they're happy to let other people do them, but would balk at doing them themselves. This is especially true for "dirty" or "unsavory" jobs such as garbageperson, exterminator, food processing / slaughterhouse worker, etc. People are usually happy to hire such people or consume their products, and talk about how essential they are, but would never want to be one themselves. On top of that, they'd usually look down on people with these jobs and never dream of associating with them or inviting them to their parties.
petey283 6y ago
This section resonated with me too. I can learn a lot about how to have an honest yet positive appraisal of my circumstances from Austin.
ergot_vacation 6y ago
Amazon treats their workers like shit. Nearly all low-wage (and yes, Amazon is still "low-wage" given the work involved) employers do. In Amazon's case they then hire armies of corporate apologists to swarm social media and astroturf any time anyone tries to talk about the shitty way workers are treated. All of this is well established fact at this point. I'm glad the author is doing well. But these are not good jobs. They are not stable, sustainable, safe or high paid enough. A person could have, presumably, led a pretty good life as a writer for a national magazine like SI. It would not destroy them physically. It would probably not destroy them mentally. They would not be forced to carefully regiment their bathroom breaks, or pee in bottles. They would not be forced to work in stifling hot warehouses. They would not be forced to compete with robots and automated processes and suffer when they inevitably failed to be as fast. Writing for SI is (was) a job. Working for Amazon is exploitation. If you can't see the difference, you either haven't taken the time to read about what Amazon jobs are like, or you're arguing in bad faith, possibly because Amazon is paying you to do so.
- jozzy-james 6y ago
  I worked at a UPS hub before Amazon was much of a thing, and I can say that what you're describing is nothing new or specific to Amazon. Logistics companies, especially in the warehouse/sorting areas, are abjectly horrid to work for. edit: and that was a union gig.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  There's a good book on such jobs called "Nickel and Dimed"[1] by Barbara Ehrenreich, who went "undercover" and worked a bunch of such low-paid jobs. A quote from the book: "When someone works for less pay than she can live on ... she has made a great sacrifice for you ... The "working poor" ... are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed
chris_wot 6y ago
I did customer service for an energy company. At the time they paid well! It wasn’t IT, but it taught me a few things. When I was able to do a stint in the hardship division for a few months, it showed me a side of society I hadn’t seen before.
edgarvaldes 6y ago
I feel some Snow Crash vibe in there.
varispeed 6y ago
> Amazon pays well. If company has huge billion dollar profits, then they don't pay well. This is pure greed and exploitation. They get great value out of their employees but they don't share it amongst them. They share just enough so they don't look too bad to an untrained eye.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  They share it with anyone willing to take a risk and buy a share. Working at a job doesn't automatically give one ownership rights, any more than the mechanic who fixes your car gets a share in the proceeds when you sell it. Many companies, however, do provide ownership rights to employees in the form of stock purchase plans and stock option plans. I don't know if Amazon provides such to warehouse workers, but I'd suspect it would be good business to do so.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Payment in salary and real shares (without dilution) is one of the ways that could work. For example if company made 1 billion profit, they could use 30% to buy stock or use their own and redistribute it to employees into their real broker accounts.

fossuser 6y ago

Yeah - I liked that part of his essay too, I also just generally liked his writing. There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party. The irony to me is that this kind of work is probably more valuable to society than sports illustrated and day to day almost certainly so. If there was more cultural respect for these kinds of jobs, people would feel better about themselves while doing them. I think there should be. I was glad he felt good about it at the end.

pydry 6y ago
There would probably be more respect even if nothing else changed except they paid more.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  I knew a UPS long-haul driver who was making over $100k in 2003.
  - sldksk 6y ago
    That was 2003 and a different career with different qualifications, not to mention work schedule.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      My point is the potential is there for driving and delivering to rise in status and pay again.
- sldksk 6y ago
  This can’t be overstated. Dignity means having the financial stability required to comfortably live in a decent neighborhood, get married, and raise a family.
  - TchoBeer 6y ago
    What if I don't want to get married and/or raise a family?
    - detaro 6y ago
      Then don't? Having the stability that you could is good either way.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I doubt it. Both because Amazon pay is decent, but more so because it’s more about class expectations than it is about pay. Lots of jobs make a lot of money, but are still not considered high status.
  - pydry 6y ago
conductr 6y ago
> There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home, leaving early to meet the plumber/doctor, etc) and honestly how difficult living on a low wage actually was and that was before all the responsibilities I’ve accumulated (family, homes, etc). Also, I always found these jobs truly fun. The carefreeness of other employees and they types of characters you came across was eclectic and interesting. Corporate America does not allow of much of that and is fairly homogeneous even when diversified.
- lazyeye 6y ago
  I laughed at your phrase "even when diversified". They promote all forms of diversity except diversity of thought. You'll get a far more interesting range of views from a small team of people delivering pizzas than you will from people working at Google.

sneak 6y ago

Every argument against Amazon-the-employer I have read recently seems to pretend that the people who work there have no choice but to work for Amazon, as if they didn't pick the job for themselves out of the array of possible options available to them. I have a lot of issues with the way Amazon operates, but precisely nobody is forced to work there. This article does a good job of pointing that out.

ipaddr 6y ago
People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time. The array of possible jobs could be one or none. If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.
- sneak 6y ago
  The array of possible unskilled jobs in almost every populated place is almost always >1. It turns out that Amazon actually competes for labor in a vast market for same. So many people work there because they have to be a better option than most unskilled labor jobs because they have so many packages to deliver.
  - dv_dt 6y ago
    I’d you don’t have a lot of financial resources, and work a low paid job, you also tend not to have the time resources to explore the option. It comes at a high transaction cost.
    - splitstud 6y ago
      My experience with wage workers that are struggling to make ends meet is different. They spend a lot of time looking for better jobs and side gigs. Like, it is their primary focus.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        My unwanted opinion on that is their "lot of time" would be better invested in upgrading their skills so they can get a higher paying job.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I felt bad for him in the moment when he talked about being judged for being a senior and doing a "menial" job. Being a delivery driver is certainly not a high status job but I think it's a reminder not to allow ourselves to look down on any particular role in society. We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning.

ergot_vacation 6y ago
It's not an issue of "looking down" though. We absolutely need these jobs (some of them anyway, we don't really need restaurants for example). That's all the more reason to ensure that they are sustainable. We need rules so that people are paid well, working in safe conditions, not being overworked, etc. As a society we need to ensure that people doing vital stuff like delivery are protected and taken care of, for our sake as well as theirs. Post-Covid, Amazon has essentially become a core part of US infrastructure, as much or moreso than the USPS. And of course, all of this is even more important for the reason the article highlights: These are the jobs people end up in now. In a country with a vanishing middle class and terrible social safety nets for seniors, increasingly large numbers of people end up here. Not just criminals, those who aren't especially bright or those who are a bit unlucky, but good, capable ordinary people have nowhere else to go now. If we're all going to be living here now, we need to start cleaning the place up.
magicalhippo 6y ago
When I worked at a grocery store I reflected on how the cleaner who came every night was one of the more important workers we had. After all, who'd want to shop groceries at a dirty place when there's a nice, clean place just a bit down the road?
pmoriarty 6y ago
"We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning." Ok, we can all agree that until a high level of automation is achieved, such jobs are necessary. But how many of the people defending the need for such jobs would actually want to do them? Usually they're happy to let other people do them, but would balk at doing them themselves. This is especially true for "dirty" or "unsavory" jobs such as garbageperson, exterminator, food processing / slaughterhouse worker, etc. People are usually happy to hire such people or consume their products, and talk about how essential they are, but would never want to be one themselves. On top of that, they'd usually look down on people with these jobs and never dream of associating with them or inviting them to their parties.

petey283 6y ago

This section resonated with me too. I can learn a lot about how to have an honest yet positive appraisal of my circumstances from Austin.

ergot_vacation 6y ago

Amazon treats their workers like shit. Nearly all low-wage (and yes, Amazon is still "low-wage" given the work involved) employers do. In Amazon's case they then hire armies of corporate apologists to swarm social media and astroturf any time anyone tries to talk about the shitty way workers are treated. All of this is well established fact at this point. I'm glad the author is doing well. But these are not good jobs. They are not stable, sustainable, safe or high paid enough. A person could have, presumably, led a pretty good life as a writer for a national magazine like SI. It would not destroy them physically. It would probably not destroy them mentally. They would not be forced to carefully regiment their bathroom breaks, or pee in bottles. They would not be forced to work in stifling hot warehouses. They would not be forced to compete with robots and automated processes and suffer when they inevitably failed to be as fast. Writing for SI is (was) a job. Working for Amazon is exploitation. If you can't see the difference, you either haven't taken the time to read about what Amazon jobs are like, or you're arguing in bad faith, possibly because Amazon is paying you to do so.

jozzy-james 6y ago
I worked at a UPS hub before Amazon was much of a thing, and I can say that what you're describing is nothing new or specific to Amazon. Logistics companies, especially in the warehouse/sorting areas, are abjectly horrid to work for. edit: and that was a union gig.
pmoriarty 6y ago
There's a good book on such jobs called "Nickel and Dimed"[1] by Barbara Ehrenreich, who went "undercover" and worked a bunch of such low-paid jobs. A quote from the book: "When someone works for less pay than she can live on ... she has made a great sacrifice for you ... The "working poor" ... are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone." [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

chris_wot 6y ago

I did customer service for an energy company. At the time they paid well! It wasn’t IT, but it taught me a few things. When I was able to do a stint in the hardship division for a few months, it showed me a side of society I hadn’t seen before.

edgarvaldes 6y ago

I feel some Snow Crash vibe in there.

varispeed 6y ago

> Amazon pays well. If company has huge billion dollar profits, then they don't pay well. This is pure greed and exploitation. They get great value out of their employees but they don't share it amongst them. They share just enough so they don't look too bad to an untrained eye.

WalterBright 6y ago
They share it with anyone willing to take a risk and buy a share. Working at a job doesn't automatically give one ownership rights, any more than the mechanic who fixes your car gets a share in the proceeds when you sell it. Many companies, however, do provide ownership rights to employees in the form of stock purchase plans and stock option plans. I don't know if Amazon provides such to warehouse workers, but I'd suspect it would be good business to do so.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Payment in salary and real shares (without dilution) is one of the ways that could work. For example if company made 1 billion profit, they could use 30% to buy stock or use their own and redistribute it to employees into their real broker accounts.