That is a common attitude especially among union jobs. Try driving a Honda to work at a Ford factory.
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Some Japanese are assholes about this, too. I supported an office subcontracting for a Japanese manufacturer. They wanted us to have their brand of printers. The printers were crap and I did not exactly want to dance around them when I had better already in place. We ended up āretouchingā the printers with the āproperā, āinoffensiveā logos. Got away with it until the facility was closed down.
I wonāt let some third-party suit dictate me what I should and should not run in my fiefdom. If they donāt shovel the shit, they donāt get a say in the type of the scoop.
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95% of managers believe that they are capable of managing because they were promoted to the position. I think that most managers are so busy with actual logistics and management that they donāt refine the skills most pertinent to their primary job responsibility. Instead they refine the effective allocation, distribution, and motivation of labor and resources themselves without analyzing their own processes for doing so. Then thereās just about every management seminar, book, or program that is 98% folklore and not sufficiently grounded in data for anyone to waste money on.
Ah, but lefties love a bargain!
In all seriousness, I basically assign ever dollar I have before I earn it, and Iām part of the wonderful dynamic we have in this country where low-wage workers consume low-wage powered services and goods because honestly, what choice they have? While I think thereās a certain cognitive dissonance really want to see an end to it. Let them. Itās not their job to save our labor system by being good consumers. Put another way:
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The thing is, Amazon has done a really good job at becoming the place where you can buy any consumer good new. And Ebay is the catchall.
Theyāre both so entrenched that nothing short of a mass revolt would mean the slightest thing to Amazon, and to put a finer point on it, Bezos. Heās a smart dude and if Prime users made a petition or something I imagine heād do something about it.
But to say there are other online merchants, which is absolutely true, and expect them to make a difference is like expecting that Linux (on the desktop) has any chance of displacing MS market share any time soon.
Sure, if enough people get pissed.
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I have a good friend that worked at a distribution center and had none of the problems reported in the media. I really do think most of these articles are over statements or disgruntled employees. Since we hear relatively few complaints the simple explanation is that there are a few people with either bad experiences or bad attitudes.
Guess what any place employing tens of thousands of people at once is going to piss off a few hundred of them over time. But what do I know Iām a rich white guy.
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Plus, thatās a really shitty blender.
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Not only that - at least in the UK most of the other online retailers you find also sell on Amazon!
I make an effort to buy some stuff from local retailers, even though it costs more sometimes - but I can afford to do that.
The bigger issue where I live is grocery shopping, itās become a massive race-to-the bottom, and even wealthy shoppers resent having to spend more than the absolute bare-minimum on food. I guess theyāre all saving for beach holidays and 3D TVs - and who cares if that means others are suffering, man and beast.
The most horrifying moment of my employment at Amazon was the time I was using the toilet and a coworker began talking from the stall next to me. He asked me why I had not responded to his very pressing email. I closed my eyes and pretended this wasnāt happening. What email could be so important that it could not wait five minutes for me to use the bathroom? He began tapping on the wall between our stalls, asking why I wouldnāt respond, as if inter-stall conversation should be a totally normal, not disgusting means of communication.
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Why shouldnāt it be normal? There are crappier settings to talk in.
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I wish this story had gotten this level of attention back in 2013 when Bloomburg did a feature on āThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,ā an article which goes into much greater detail about this toxic environment at Amazon. The evidence they present is (and was), frankly, shocking and more than a little disturbing. They also give a much more balanced view of the whole thing, addressing almost every point of rebuttal presented in the article that Bezos links to in his recent memo defending Amazonās practices.
One of the more memorable quotes buried on page 6 of the Bloomburg article:
āManagers in departments of 50 people or more are often required to ātop-gradeā their subordinates on a curve and must dismiss the least effective performers. As a result, many Amazon employees live in perpetual fear; those who manage to get a positive review are often genuinely surprised.ā
An aside -
The NYT story, while presenting very little new information, does provide something that Bloomburg did not: drama, intrigue, cheap thrillsā¦clickbait. It frames the story not on Bezos, but on the employees being abused, takes the more dramatic bits of testimony and strings them together into a short article that, while perhaps over-simplified, is definitely hair-raising. Itās a story we can easily identify with; a story that almost demands action for fear that āwe will be nextā. Iām glad this story has finally gotten the attention it deserves, but Iām a little disappointed that it took this long. An interesting example of the dilemma of a journalist these days: get attention to issues that matter, or present well balanced and comprehensive material that people might not actually read.
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Not if you worked for him, he didnāt!
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Yeah, many companies Iāve worked in this was considered ānormalā behavior. I donāt think it is, but thereās a strange sort of implied camaraderie where people believe itās fine to give you no quiet time at any point.
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This also is all too familiar in tech. If you have a team of all AMAZING subordinates, you still have to order them by best-to-āworstā.
Even when companies claim to get rid of stack rankings, they still implement them in other ways 
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Now I remember the flipside of this: a Seinfeld episode (āThe Bottle Depositā) in which George didnāt follow someone into the bathroom, and missed his instructions.
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The international conference calls where someoneās on the can and talking at the same time are the weirdest.
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TMI, perhaps, but here goes:
Some years ago, when I worked from home, I had a daily conference call that always occurred during āquality time.ā The call was at the same time every morning and, without fail, nature called at the same time. (Canāt remember whether I tried moving my coffee intake to an earlier time ā why does coffee do that, anyway?)
In my own defense I will say that at least I had the wisdom and/or decency to use the mute button.
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Only 3 socks in this thread?
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