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What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

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Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#181
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed about trying to ensure there are as few systemic issues as possible. But on the issue of 'isolated incidents', you have to be realistic. Amazon's size alone would put it as the 31st largest city in the US. And they, like ever more companies, have massive turnover at all levels. Expectation of no isolated incidents is equivalent to expectation of never hiring bad apples -- and that's just impossible.…

Sure, Amazon is also under special scrutiny here, but also has to my knowledge never made a strong public statement admitting any of this ever happened and how it has been corrected. They certainly look like they don't particularly care.

Let's say you're Jeff Bezos, and you genuinely and completely care about the situation and are doing everything you can to remedy it. I'm not saying he is, but just for the sake of argument. Would you then make that strong public statement?

I wouldn't. To explain why, why do you think it is that most of all politicians give non-answers or the most banal safe, focus tested, and inane answers to everything? I mean we elect these people. Do we like that behavior? Well ostensibly no, but consider how we react when a politician does or says anything that might outrage any possible group or segment of society. It spreads like wildfire and we collectively freak out and ensure they're replaced in rapid order by somebody better. Who's that "better" politician? The one who doesn't tell you anything. So while we complain to no end about having lying, duplicitous politicians who never give a straight answer - we ensure that they're the only people that can make it in to office.

Back to Amazon. You admit some weakness and acknowledge a problem and assure people you're going to try to focus on doing better. Are people going to positively receive this message, appreciate your forthrightness, and look forward to future developments. Or are they going to focus on the fact that you just acknowledged a very major issue and utilize that to try to generate even more outrage? And should something, completely outside of Amazon's control, some freak incident occur again - will society understand that they can't stop every single thing? Or will people instead use that as "proof" that Amazon was lying all along and use it generate even greater outrage. You see, since one bad happened - they must have been lying all along...

And on top of this all, we have no attention span. Remember Equifax? Of course you do, but they've probably already started to slip from your mind and become just another blur in the history of things we were fumingly angry at for a week or two, before something else caught our attention. Amazon acknowledging the issue not only stands to turn against them, but makes even less sense given that the issue will disappear from the public mind imminently - especially with elections just around the corner. Our online behavior is shaping the optimal way for companies to treat us. And I think that we're doing exactly what we do in politics - ensuring nobody but demons can survive, and then complaining when all we have are demons.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#182
post #43

Let's say you're a company with a serious PR problem about the working conditions in your warehouses. You set up 15 Twitter accounts claiming to be employees of your warehouses. You make sure the accounts are laughably bad at concealing the fact that they are shills, with cookie-cutter bios and responses that are obviously canned talking points. This ensures that the accounts are discovered and written up by various…

It's amazing how well this works despite being obvious propaganda. I felt my own opinion on Amazon Fullfilment Centers change as I read the article. One thing that makes propaganda like this so effective is that journalists generally do not bother to verify any propaganda claims (eg. does Amazon really pay 30% more?), so even if they write articles making fun of you they still repeat your message.

Gizmodo did, in fact, verify that 30% claim: https://gizmodo.com/on-amazon-s-time-1826570882

> The amounts associates reported receiving in VCP [Variable Compensation Pay] were underwhelming. One claimed his highest monthly payout was $48. Another averaged around $60. The only reason these paltry bonuses are relevant at all is that Amazon itself uses them to arrive at the over $15 per hour figure it estimates as its average Fulfillment Center worker’s pay. “Hourly pay rates are competitive and we offer great benefits – we encourage anyone to compare our pay and benefits to other retailers,” Amazon told Gizmodo in a statement for this piece. Glassdoor lists average warehouse pay for Amazon at $12.33, less at, Home Depot ($12.96), Costco ($13.43), and Target ($14.57). Even stacked against Walmart, its main competition and a business with its own set of unsavory practices, Amazon still comes up twenty cents short on hourly pay.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Vermont, running an open source Patreon project that isn't designed to maximize capital. I know lots and LOTS of minimum wage or near-minimum-age people, and a good selection of much wealthier people. Right now I'm substantially below minimum wage as a sole proprietor, but managing it. Obviously I cannot hire in these conditions, so I don't. I see NO correlation between that and intelligence, verbal profici…

No, what I was trying to say is that an average actual non astroturfing warehouse worker wouldn't answer questions like a trained PR lackey. Read the tweets, the sentence structure, phrasing and uniformity in writing styles between supposedly distinct individuals is obvious.

What do you think Amazon's requirements are for this paid position, and do you think they would be sloppy and tolerant of bad performance here and nowhere else?

Anybody doing this is already a good speaker and writer, and understands what's expected of them. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Again, I know large numbers of poor people who are perfectly capable of this erudition.

If you've got a masters in English Literature, it's probably this or Wal-Mart or death.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure how much better Amazon pays, if at all better, here in SoCal starting pay is around $12-$14 per hour for L1 associates, but anecdotally I feel like this is on the higher end when compared to similar jobs, at least compared to the jobs I've held. I can't speak to the insurance coverage provided since I'm a part time worker but from what I've heard, while pay isn't great, the insurance seems to be…

> He was being paid worker's comp during this time. This certainly made a good impression on me. Just to be clear here: this is required by law, not something that the company is doing out of the goodness of its heart. It's also a fraction of what one's normal wages would be, which I would say is a more likely explanation for the injured person's eagerness to return than that "he missed his coworkers". > they wanted…

I appreciate you taking the time to explain this in more detail for me, I'm admittedly not clear on how this worker's comp stuff is supposed to be handled, thankfully I've never suffered any type of work related injury.

While I didn't mention it in my post my coworker was reassigned to less labor intensive duties once he returned to work. And from my understanding the doctor who treated him ok'd him to return to his normal duties but our direct manager had no problem with him taking longer in this less physical role.

I'm just adding this detail to paint a better picture but I think you've done a good job illustrating that this is the minimum that Amazon in required to do and they shouldn't be praised for doing what the law requires. I'm certainly not here to try and do PR for Amazon, just sharing my personal experiences.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people have forgotten or never experience the satisfaction of doing work - especially after being out of work for a while. Keep it up! :) On Amazon worker treatment generally it's hard to tell whether it is propaganda or maltreatment. Jeff Bezos is obviously a powerful man with a lot of people under him and that attracts all sorts of interest/enemies. It is also not unusual for companies to treat wor…

Right, for someone who sits behind a keyboard all day, working on your feet in a warehouse packing boxes, in a kitchen cooking burgers, or outside hauling lumber around a construction site in the rain, sounds like horrible work. If Amazon warehouses were that bad, people wouldn't work there. I'm sure people get hurt, it's physical work. It's not a job you're going to enjoy if, like most adults, you are overweight and…

> It's not a job you're going to enjoy if, like most adults, you are overweight and out of shape.

This is the real headline, everybody is guilty.

Swear to God if Kim Jong Un somehow managed a hostile takeover of America or my country - then forced us all to do calisthenics each morning - sure it'd start horribly but by the end of the month we'd be singing the praises of Our Dear Leader.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure how much better Amazon pays, if at all better, here in SoCal starting pay is around $12-$14 per hour for L1 associates, but anecdotally I feel like this is on the higher end when compared to similar jobs, at least compared to the jobs I've held. I can't speak to the insurance coverage provided since I'm a part time worker but from what I've heard, while pay isn't great, the insurance seems to be…

I hope I don't sound like too much of a shill but I'm somewhat excited to finally be able to contribute to a topic I have some understanding of. I must admit the first thing I did was look at your comment history as your post sounded suspicious. If it was mixed in with other posts I'd have been inclined to take it more seriously than I can now.

I'd certainly say it's wise to be suspicious of any posts praising a company by current employees, and my posts are no exception. It would probably add more wight to my comments if I posted from my normal account but I don't feel comfortable doing that when talking about my employer, the potential risk for me isn't worth it. With that being said hopefully my comments don't come off quite as unashamedly positive and corporate as those Twitter accounts, which sound pretty over the top to me.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify that post was from quite a while ago and at that time I was living out of my car, I'm actually now sharing a room in an apartment. But I certainly agree it's not a good thing when people who are working are living out of their cars or worse.

People working a full-time job should also be able to afford their own room. It's no knock on you and your lifestyle, but I think we can do better than the standards of the 1920s.

No offense taken, and I'll be the last person to argue that anyone working in a country as wealthy as the USA shouldn't be able to afford a modest home, good healthcare, access to education, and some wiggle room for savings, at a minimum.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#188
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop I wish I had a debating technique named after me.

In school I was interested in debate until I learned some of the rules, then I lost all interest. I expected to find a contest to effectively communicate and apply facts, but I found the opposite - a contest to be better at twisting, denying, or just ignoring facts. An effective debater is more likely to deceive me, not educate me. I've not looked into it since high school, so I sometimes wonder if I misjudged, but l…

I've been debating with a lot of alt-right people lately on Facebook and have been studying their debating tactics and how they apply them to support q-anon, and pizzagate, and Trump.

It's really fastinating to see all of these strategies played out in the real world.

I use these strategies to identify what they are doing and cut through the sophistry and attempt to reach the truth.

The nice thing about online debating is that you have time to think about and analyze the others argument vs on the spot debate where emotions get involved.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#189
post #166

I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

That's so bougouis of you. Believe it or not most people dont work jobs just for kicks. It's their survival. And they can't just get job training to get a new job because they don't have the time or money.

The python of capitalism has cinched itself around their neck.

This is like 50% of America too believe it or not.

Re: What is this Twitter army of Amazon drones cheerfully defending warehouse work?

#190
post #166

I'm not an Amazon shill, look at my post history. I don't understand all of this press. If you don't like your job working at Amazon, quit. If the conditions are terrible, release proof to the public, so other people don't even start working there. Wash, rinse, repeat, and Amazon will either change the supposed working conditions or hopefully fail. Why do we need so much press on both sides for such a non-issue?

"Just get a new job!"

Said the software engineer.

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