and it’s 24 hour. this not only includes store-items and the totality of world cuisine, but also any and every recreational drug you may want. NYC has been providing this service for its residents I think since before the internet as we know it, but I was made aware of this on a visit back when Amazon was just books.
As are: The reason the author was visiting New York, the hotel she was staying at, the next stop on her itinerary, her planned outfit, her hair color, her lack of bottle opener.
Ancillary details! Who would ever use those in recounting a story?
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Wait a minute. Why are we not talking about what’s really important here? A BoingBoing writer who doesn’t have some way to open a bottle? No 3-D printed multi-tool? No hand-knitted bottle opener with integrated USB thumb drive styled after something mentioned in the mouseover text of an xkcd comic? Not even hand-painted shoes that used to belong to David Byrne and which secretly have a church key built into the tongue of each shoe?
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“Amazon is literally where I shop” - no, it’s literally the service you use to shop. in this case the hotel room was literally where you shopped.
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Despite my knowing many of Amazon’s flaws — the hatchet they’ve taken to the publication industry, the warehouses where low-paid workers race around all day putting orders into smiley-face boxes — I love using Amazon services.
And that’s exactly why I’ve been saying for 15 years that consumer boycotts don’t work; even when people know companies are shit they’ll still buy from them.
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I have a pair of those; they’re like clown shoes.
If you write well enough, yes.
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There are a lot of naysayers orbiting this article, but I enjoyed it - the details of the various frustrations are interesting and pertinent, the escalating order is a situation many readers no doubt recognise, and Nicole herself observes that she could have run down to a local store for the items, so that’s not a particularly insightful criticism.
I’d like to read a more in-depth article on the logistics of the whole operation, the experience of the workers and so on, but as a personal anecdote about using the system this strikes me as a fine BB post - so I’m commenting to chiefly to accentuate the positive.
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She had a set of keys, and ended up bloodying her hand instead of opening the bottle.
Methinks BoingBoing needs to post a lesson on how to open a bottle with a key.
ITT: people being either REALLY pedantic, or people not understanding the point of this article.
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I’m VERY ashamed to admit that I resemble that remark, especially when Amazon are still participating in the government’s ‘slavery’ programme, meaning they can get away with paying a bunch of people jack shit - and I literally DO mean jack shit; in fact, for every person Amazon ‘enslaves’, the government will give it up to a grand of taxpayers’ moolah!
Y’see, IDS - the work and pensions minister - is a devout Xian, cut from Republican cloth, and he believes that everyone should do an honest day’s work (everyone except him and his Tory chums, obviously). For at least 3 years after the scheme was established, he repeatedly denied there were any kind of targets set for ATOS, or job-centres. Thing is, IDS is a shite liar (I’m autistic, and I know I am, so I don’t. IDS obviously doesn’t realise how shit he is at lying because he still does) and, it was revealed - by a JC+ whistleblower - that staff there have to deny entry to the support group to a MINIMUM of 85% of disability benefit claimants. They are also expected to ‘assess’ a minimum of 20 people an hour and claimants have to try to ‘work the system’ - if your appointment is just before lunch, or just before knocking off time, you know you’re pretty much fucked; if your adviser’s a smoker, you were less likely to get lucky, unless you kept on seeing the same one, and are able to work out when they’re likely to go for a fag break.
It’s all pretty random; doesn’t matter if you’re terminally ill, mentally ill, have a learning disability, chronic illness, variable chronic illness - you had the same chance of being forced to work for squat. Staff are finding themselves being laid off, and then sent back to their old employer under workfare (or, as the government prefers to term it, ‘mandatory work activity’).
That’s not the worst of it; because these people aren’t employed by the companies they’re forced to work at, health and safety and insurance doesn’t apply, and there have been cases where ‘slaves’ have been forced to undertake tasks that a company couldn’t ask an employee to undertake because they’d sue if anything happened. Like the case of an almost-blind woman with MS, who’d been forced to work in McD’s being ordered to move a container of hot spent oil across a work area with a greasy floor. She couldn’t protest, because she knew she’d lose her benefits of she did (you can be sanctioned for up to three years). Of course she slipped, and knocked into a counter with another vat on it. She suffered 4th-degree burns to 90% of her body and died of her injuries. The DWP was found guilty of causing her death, but the High Court appears to be impotent when it comes to enforcing penalty.
I’m an atheist, but Luck must have rolled double six, and got a full house because I got put straight into the support,group without even having to get Atossed.
And the real purpose for MWA…? Why, massaging the unemployment figures, of course! If someone is enslaved somewhere, they’re counted as being employed, so it makes the unemployment figures look less terrible.
I lived through The Maggot, and this shower of shit are coming up with schemes and scams I bet she never even dreamt about…
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The point is that you don’t need to put anything else on your keychain, because it’s already full of keys that one can use to open a bottle, with a bit of knowledge and some practice.
There are many Youtube videos of men mansplainin’ how to do it. I didn’t find one with my favorite method, which involves a lot more control over the non-bloodying aspect of the task.
All it takes is leverage to break the vacuum seal: heck, I can do it with a fork!
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That’s a pretty broad categorization of a subclass of individuals.
Why do we as a society feel the need to label and subsequently belittle people that are different from ourselves? Are we that threatened and insecure in our own foibles?
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It looks coolest when you place the bottle top on the edge of the table & bang it with the heel of your palm like a cowboy. Well, right up until that one time where you smash the whole of the bottle neck off and cut your hand, anyway. I carry a bottle opener now…
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I know, right? Tough crowd tonight. Guys, she tried the silly thing out so you don’t have to. Not bad for $25.
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Oh I’m just unpacking a return from an Amazon Prime customer whose order was, judging by their comments, possessed by demons or something, which caused them to immediately post the generic review that starts “I just want to warn people…”
Naturally, the item returned is damaged and stained. Apparently they got it and dumped something on it as soon as it arrived, then they went on completely out of control binge of vindictive rage when they realized they were going to have to pay return shipping for the thing they just broke.
It dawned on them they also might not get a full refund because they realized it wasn’t to go back into the bowels of the Amazon warehouse system where nobody would see the damage they did.
I shop in the locale defined by the soles of my shoes*, and literally** nowhere else.
* Sometimes defined by one foot, sometimes defined by the other, every-now-and-then defined by the tips of my toes (say, when I’m buying pixie dust), occasionally defined by the seat of my pants, and on more and more rarely rare occasions by my face-down supine form incoherently asking for more purchases.
* Okay, almost literally nowhere else. See above.
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