I posted this as a response to someone essentially asking why people don’t boycott amazon. I don’t know why but that thought triggered me in some way to write this wall of text. Just figured I’d bring the discussion over here.
The fucked up thing about Amazon, it’s not just them it has a massive ripple effect on the entire labor force. I’ve worked for Amazon directly and as a package handler for one of their third parties. They use 3rd parties for that I assume because as opposed to the warehouse industry, which doesn’t have much union presence, the teamsters are an established long standing entity that could easily come in so they keep it fractured intentionally while calling all the shots through the DSPs who have pretty much zero autonomy as private companies.
They’ve left it so all warehousing work, especially e-commerce, is essentially copy/pasted from their model at least at the companies I have worked at since leaving Amazon. Then they have completely slammed our postal system and the private package handlers who despite them having a whole last mile infrastructure at amazon with delivery drivers those companies as well are drowning in amazon packages day in and day out. I feel the worst for the postal workers honestly because they bare the brunt of it out there.
Even brick and mortar retail employees now essentially operate as warehouse pickers, Walmart as a prime example, as they’ve rolled out same day shipping at their stores that I can only assume have unrealistic metrics that must be met that leave you constantly in fear of losing your job just like amazon and any other company that follows that fulfillment model.
I absolutely despise Amazon to my very core, they are everything that is wrong with this country and capitalism as a whole. When discussing amazon you begin to realize that that you as an employee or former employee are truly part of a massive invisible underclass that goes unheard and uncared for. Servants for the upper and dwindling middle class who can even afford to have a constant stream of amazon packages left at their door. It makes me sick to my very core.
That being said I am incredibly grateful I found a job working for a wholesaler as a driver, they are stuck in the 80s in a lot of ways. My first few weeks I worked in the warehouse, you are expected to work hard and get your pallets out for the day but it’s not this psychotic down to the millisecond tracking and micromanagement. The product gets out just fine without scanners and weird corporate jargon. When I drive my truck I don’t have a camera staring me in the face and get reprimanded for hitting the brakes too hard, which takes away from the bonus they dangle in front of your face, when I do so to avoid an accident among various other things that just come with driving no matter how cautious you are because their algorithm doesn’t take into account you, and especially the other drivers on the road, are human beings who are in fact unpredictable. I get paid significantly better, my management doesn’t act like shaved head Bezos wannabe drones, and overall I just feel like i’m a human being rather than a subhuman or robot.
I hope this rant isn’t too incoherent, I just really got flustered thinking about that fucking dogshit company.
I think of my fellow leftist friends who basically write it off like, “well there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.” Which is true, across the board things are pretty horrendous and as bad as it can get here in the US it gets a lot worse. I get it, there will never be a mass boycott of amazon enough to put a dent in their profits, but the idea of giving them a dime of my fucking money makes me sick.
TLDR; Amazon is evil, they have a business model that makes all jobs shittier to compete, employees are part of an unseen underclass that people can easily dismiss, it’s dehumanizing, anti union stuff, and just being happier at my current job that operates like it’s still the 1980s.