What Amazon will probably say to justify this later: “It’s so we can tell if one of our staff is stealing”
What the article says it’s for: “It vibrates or shocks employees if they sort the packaging wrong”
What Amazon’s ulterior motive probably is: “We can track the pace of their work and if they’re taking a few seconds too long or using their hands to wipe their sweaty brows, we bring it up at a performance review and will fire them for it. But remember that if you whine about this or demand better conditions/wages, we’ll just replace you with robots, so keep working you mindless and invasively-monitored drones“
what the fuck kind of dystopian bullshit
OKAY SO normally I would save my comments for the tags but I have first hand experience working at an Amazon warehouse, and I just have some feelings about this especially as a former employee. They paid decently higher than other places I had worked, so I thought it would be worth it. It is not (I made 11/hr before taxes so like not even that much tbh). On the first day of training we were shown the robots. It was presented in a way that was like “wow look how cool these are ps if you fuck up always remember that you are replaceable with one of these.” Then we were taught how to sort packages. I’m a very very petite person, and there were some boxes that I could barely lift on my own but the supervisors basically stood around and watched as I struggled several feet with a box bigger than myself. It was only the other ‘lower level’ warehouse workers who helped, and one girl was the same size as me. We had legally mandated breaks, which they would often send us late to and call us back early from. On top of all this general poor treatment, if it was seeming too slow (this happened every single day before the big package rush btw) they’d send tons of people home so that they wouldn’t have to pay them. Of course then everyone left behind was stuck dealing with the rush that inevitably happened, but again management didn’t care because it saved them money to pay less people for more work. I got scolded and yelled at on the daily for not working fast enough or because I was carrying only one box at a time, even if it was a massive one. We were judged based on number of boxes scanned per hour, and I was like super slow at maybe 100 an hour I think?? Don’t really remember but most people did 200+ and so I got in trouble a lot. Anyway, TLDR, Amazon fucking sucks and they treat employees like garbage so this is definitely believable imho as a way to further dehumanize and control their workers.
This is why we unionize.
Look, folks. I get how scary unionizing and strikes can be. I’ve both been involved in unions and refused to cross pickets in my life. Back when we had to fight this war the first time, violence regularly broke out against workers striking. Even here where I live.
But that’s what we need to do. It’s our turn to organize and fight for our rights. This is how we reclaim the country that has increasingly swung backwards to the days of moguls and dynasties.
We’ve been here before. No kidding. This? This is nothing new. Even 45, corrupt moron rich man, is nothing new in this world. Bezos, mistreatment of workers, brutal hours and poor pay is nothing new. Think industrial revolution.
The way we won then was by coming together and unionizing. It was organizing and unfortunately, it was risking too. But don’t ever forget, we outnumber them. We outnumber them even with the militarized police and even with their money, and somewhere deep down, they sure as hell know it.
Join a union. Organize your workplace. Fight back. The robots are coming anyway, we might as well organize now so we’re ready to support each other and hold our politicians feet to the fires.
I work for UPS. It is INFINITELY better than Amazon, and there’s one major reason why.
We’re fucking TEAMSTERS.
I don’t like the union and I know they’ve shafted part-timers like me but honest to god? We’re a LOT better off than anyone at Amazon.
It’s not an easy job but they’d rather get you a position where you can fit rather than force you to do one you’ll fail at.
So I had the strangest dream this weekend and nobody understands me so I need to share it with you because you might. Press J to skip this post if you can’t deal, I will accept this.
In my dream I was standing on the back deck of a rural cabin that overlooked a beautiful Vermont/Scottish Highlands landscape of unspoiled wilderness. It was a crisp, perfect autumn morning. I held a cup of cooling coffee in my hands as I leaned against the railing and scanned the perfect rolling hills in the midground, behind which the great patterned mountains with their snowcaps marched on until they blended with the horizon: #aesthetic
As I gazed at a distant meadow clearing in the trees, a pair of brightly coloured humanoid creatures emerged from the woods and began to dance for each other. It was an esoteric, beautiful mating dance, a strange combination of instinct and choreography. I felt awe washing over me. I marvelled. I felt a deep sense of wonder and peace as I observed this vanishingly rare encounter that I had never thought to observe in person. These animals were instantly recognisable but had never been studied in the wild. I felt incredibly humbled and privileged to witness this behaviour – I knew that I was the first human witness to observe this behaviour – and I reached for my phone, wondering if I should film it, so it could join the scholarly record, where it NEEDED to be. This could change everything. But then I held back – something told me “no,” to let the creatures have their privacy.
Ok, I can’t go any further without telling you that they were Teletubbies.
A red one and a yellow one. I know. I know. Stay with me here.
The cryptids melted back into the woods. My subconscious drew a discreet veil over the rest of their mating ritual, but I knew instinctively that this had been a dance of courtship. I was busy pondering the implications, because they were critical. You see, although the creatures were instantly recognisable as Teletubbies, as I had studied them, even at a distance, I had an incredible realisation.
They were adult Teletubbies.
This realisation dawned on me and in my dream I understood it fully. The ones that we know of – the captive ones that we have seen on television – are juveniles. In fact, they are the equivalent of toddlers. When you see the adults this becomes obvious. The garbled speech and silly movements of the four captive Teletubbies we know are the babbles of babyhood, a private primal toddler-language brewed up between sentient beings who have never encountered an adult of their own kind.
The adult Teletubbies have more branching, complex antlers and shaggy coats. They are less brightly coloured. They are terrifyingly large. Their strangely human faces, emerging from the thick fur, are unquestionably adult; remote, serene, reproachful. Their television screens are glitchy, esoteric and unknowable. They are cryptids whose public exploitation has undermined their rarity and their strange, alien dignity.
In my dream my feelings of awe and peace turned to great sadness at the fate of the captive toddler Teletubbies. I realised that I had to be the scientist who brought this discovery to the world and raised awareness of their plight. And I also questioned: are Teletubbies like axolotls? Do they exhibit neoteny? (Axolotls, the cute aquarium pets with flaring gills, are actually juveniles of an amphibious species – if given the right conditions they’ll grow up into land-dwelling black newts. But they can breed in their aquatic juvenile form, and most spend their whole lives in this form. Deprived of their wild potential, will the Teletubbies ever mature? Or are they merely experiencing a long childhood, natural for a species that is unimaginably long-lived?)
So in my dream my husband came out onto the back deck and I began to share these discoveries with him and before I could even bring up the axolotls he just said “what the fucking fuck” and went away again.
I woke up disgruntled and unable to capture the feeling of peace and sadness. I then tried to explain this to my husband in the waking world, and he said “what the fucking fuck” and walked away before I even got to the explanation of the Teletubbies being toddlers, which just goes to show that you never know someone as well as you think you do.
Anyway I’m sure you guys will join me in this knowledge. And also I’ve googled it and apparently the Teletubbies reboot features infant Teletubbies, so clearly they are getting more from somewhere and the time to question this is NOW
I have a personal theory that how a dream makes you feel is more meaningful than the content.
What I got from your dream was a sense of wonder and privilege (the good kind), followed by the need to bear witness and advocate for the cryptids. Topped off with a disturbingly accurate example of the attitudes you’d face.
(staring nobly into the distance) yes. yes, you understand. you understand.
I’m so sorry but this is what came to mind and so this is what I drew
Holy
Thank you so much for sharing that dream, it was EXACTLY what I needed to stop feeling like shit. Now I, too, am honored by the knowledge of adult teletubbies.
bureau of balance employees who have never interacted with tres horny boys: wow.. the reclaimers are so cool…. the saviors of our organization
bureau employees who are forced to interact with thb on more than a monthly basis: taako broke into my office the other day and emptied all my staplers and sat on my filing cabinet throwing individual staples at me for five hours
fav thing about reading the tags on this post: people making their own callouts
so I’ve been meaning to put this on tumblr and keep forgetting but, in the campaign I’m running my sister is playing an orc fighter, and one of the options you can pick for a fighter’s signature weapon is that it “glows in the presence of [fill in the blank].”
I was like, “oh, that’s funny because it’s a reference to that sword in The Hobbit that glows in the presence of orcs. Your weapon probably doesn’t glow in the presence of orcs.”
to which she responded, “FUCK YEAH it does.”
So now we have in the party an orc fighter with a club that glows in the presence of orcs. Or, as far as the character is concerned, a club that glows. It’s been in her family for generations since some ancestor won it in a battle, and it’s just always glowed. She has a sack to put it in when she’s trying to be stealthy.
I do not watch figure skating for reasons. This is absolutely beautiful. They are so well physically matched, they are like one being. Neither tries to outshine the other. Go watch it.
…holy crap. Talk about in sync with each other.
holy shot how even?!
1, this is worth a view because it’s gorgeous skating.
2, someone stop me because I don’t know nearly enough to work my way through an Awaken the Stars ice skating AU.
I used to watch a lot of figure skating (and though I was terrible at it, I did figure skate for a while). This is one of the most fluid and lyrical routines I have ever seen. I didn’t hold my breath, even though it seems like the kind of routine where you’d want to, because it was just so flowing that I had to inhale and exhale along with it. Glorious. I’m sort of sad I cancelled my cable now, because I definitely want to watch more of this pair. Good thing for youtube!
just moving along like everyone else 