opinion of amazon.com

[Leftbehind]

Needs to be firebombed ASAP.

[Leftbehind]

WOW SO TOTALLY SAGE GUISE!

I expect this is the part where you turn off your Apple laptop and go to Taco Bell in your Nike shoes congratulating yourself on your moral superiority in not using products made by companies that endlessly exploit their labor!

. . . . oh wait.

Yawn, it's not about feeling "morally superior", it's about condemning the very worst of business - and how it brazenly f**ks us over. You acknowledge the exploitative practices they've became known for in that very post, but apparently we're not allowed to, nor condemn it, because it seems we've still not earnt the right to criticise in your eyes until we undertake the frankly impossible task in avoiding buying from nearly all businesses - and I suppose working for them, and pissing away our leisure time on researching every business as if 'consumer-activism' is anything but a sham anyway, prescribed by people like you for its ability to chill and discredit opposition to what is a plainly awful state of events.

In short, if anyone's being an insufferable prick here, it's you.

[Leftbehind]

WOW SO TOTALLY SAGE GUISE!

I expect this is the part where you turn off your Apple laptop and go to Taco Bell in your Nike shoes congratulating yourself on your moral superiority in not using products made by companies that endlessly exploit their labor!

. . . . oh wait.

Yawn, it's not about feeling "morally superior", it's about condemning the very worst of business - and how it brazenly f**ks us over. You acknowledge the exploitative practices they've became known for in that very post, but apparently we're not allowed to, nor condemn it, because it seems we've still not earnt the right to criticise in your eyes until we undertake the frankly impossible task in avoiding buying from nearly all businesses - and I suppose working for them, and pissing away our leisure time on researching every business as if 'consumer-activism' is anything but a sham anyway, prescribed by people like you for its ability to chill and discredit opposition to what is a plainly awful state of events.

In short, if anyone's being an insufferable prick here, it's you.

I didn't accuse anybody of being a prick here.  ANd I acknowledge that's a bad tendency of mine, especially when people are acting like reactionary butthurts.

Also, I want to comment on how incredibly lame the whole "you don't believe we have a right to dispute something!" line is that is used all too often.  If I didn't believe you had a right to dispute something, I would've called the police and had your ass arrested, not insult your self conscious need to single out a single corporation for what is common practice (sad fact) in multi-billion dollar corporations.  I do admit, I buy stuff from amazon.com.  HOwever, I refuse to believe that I am being a monster just because I buy stuff off from it.  I am no more a monster than the hipster vegan morons who buy ultra expensive Apple Laptops.  Just saying.

I believe Tik really said it best[...]

As somebody who has worked at a Kohls backroom, Amazon doesn't sound so horrible.  We got fifteen minute breaks for dinner, which was very little time to go next door to get a Subway sandwich and be able to eat it.  If we were still in the breakroom after the fifteen minutes (which included us walking from the back of the store, out the front, and into the Subway or Dollar Store next door) the fascist managers would come out and throw a total bitchfit about it.  Even if it was a minute over.  Oh yes, there was also no climate control except for some sh*tty fans that were probably made in the 1980s.  The overnight supervisor's job was to pretty much walk around the store harassing you into being able to unload 50 boxes worth of merchandise per hour and being able to religiously tell where to place each item, even though they changed who went into what department each night.  Like Tik said, a robot would be nicer.  I don't remember getting offered to join any union.  Kohls loved firing people for being five minutes late (not kidding) and probably would actually deny somebody who was laid off unemployment benefits.
You call this "the worst of business", the sad fact is jack this is far from "worst".

So sorry that I am not sobbing sad about this one case with Amazon, it's an unfortunate reality.  Seriously, I wouldn't be surprise if among the big corporations Amazon actually has more favorable conditions in it's warehouses.  Which is really saying something about the status of working conditions in this country.  "Boycotting" is the ultimate in "feel good" demonstration in that it does little but to soothe the few socially conscious bourgeois who loudly promote their right to free speech, but really does little to actually force action.  Especially with a company like Amazon, which at the end of the day, would still be one of the cheapest places you could go to find things.  Demonstrations and marches for widespread government action on such disreputable practices would have more of an effect.  Sure, that's failed too, but which is more likely to actually benefit society as a whole?  One company reforming it's work environments because of a boycott, or HUNDREDS OF COMPANIES being forced into reform due to government laws that make their practices illegal?

[/steps off soap box]

Ironically, the only person here calling for boycotts is you, in your demand for us to quit all awful businesses before our criticism becomes legitimate. Oh and what was your point in that, then, if not to question our right to criticise? I thought I made it pretty clear in my post I believe consumer activism to be a joke usually recommended by right-wingers for its self-defeating qualities - so I don't know where you got the view/persecution-complex that I was calling people who shopped there monsters. I was merely calling a HC a HC and amazed that you and others are falling all over yourselves to refute, and defend it.

I haven't got a "self-conscious need" to single out one company - if there were documentaries, articles, and more crucially polls on here I'd recommend firebombing others too (I'm sceptical of business as a rule), and I'm all too aware it's the standard (although their tax avoidance isn't) - but funny how it's a-ok to acknowledge that on here but then if you make an anti-business statement you're mocked, with the usual remarks of 'SAGE'. It's very much of the cake and eating it sort.

Kohls sound more or less exactly what I've heard of Amazon, and I'd be quite happy to call that a HC and calling for action, but it strikes me I'd probably be in a minority in that too - because your defence has long since became, effectively, approval: witness the overwhelming 'great' vote (you probably voted for it yourself).

So how do you think - in this air of approval, apologism and apathy - this will help meaningful efforts to effectively pressurise action to tackle it? It won't, everyone's shrugging their shoulders and voting "fantastic". F**k the workers, essentially.

[Leftbehind]

But work is work. It's pretty hard to find jobs you'll enjoy out. I guess since most of the people on this board are college-educated and work white-collar jobs, we kinda forget that. We forget that for most people, this is reality(or something not as horrible).

Or some of us haven't got degrees and have worked unskilled jobs most of our working lives to recognise this horrible reality, and that your 'work is work' slogan can equally be extended to sweatshops.

[Leftbehind]

But work is work. It's pretty hard to find jobs you'll enjoy out. I guess since most of the people on this board are college-educated and work white-collar jobs, we kinda forget that. We forget that for most people, this is reality(or something not as horrible).

Or some of us haven't got degrees and have worked unskilled jobs most of our working lives to recognise this horrible reality, and that your 'work is work' slogan can equally be extended to sweatshops.

If I was a horrible blood-sucking CEO, sure.

I don't have a degree and have worked unskilled jobs either, but I can recognize that no matter how bad working for Amazon may be, it is not nearly comparable to the nightmare that is a 3rd-world sweatshop.

...and being imprisoned is better than being executed. Best just accept it, then.

[Leftbehind]

But work is work. It's pretty hard to find jobs you'll enjoy out. I guess since most of the people on this board are college-educated and work white-collar jobs, we kinda forget that. We forget that for most people, this is reality(or something not as horrible).

Or some of us haven't got degrees and have worked unskilled jobs most of our working lives to recognise this horrible reality, and that your 'work is work' slogan can equally be extended to sweatshops.

If I was a horrible blood-sucking CEO, sure.

I don't have a degree and have worked unskilled jobs either, but I can recognize that no matter how bad working for Amazon may be, it is not nearly comparable to the nightmare that is a 3rd-world sweatshop.

...and being imprisoned is better than being executed. Best just accept it, then.

That is not nearly comparable to the subject at hand.

Okay - as long as it's not the worst job in the world, it's fine.

[Leftbehind]

You know, I tried to explain this to you logically.  Instead, you've decided to stay in your precious little phonebooth glass of emotion and rage in your mad rush to twist and distort the vast majority of my post.  Which, from the rageorgasm tone of this post, probably feels good.

Ha, no, you continued on in your usual tone, which you've clearly ramped up in this latest response, and I responded with a less forgiving tone. I at least took the time to read and respond to your arguments, and find it laughable you're accusing me of strawmen when you're still contending I advocate boycotts, having 'ragegasms' and think people shopping there are monsters.

Note for instance, how this Great Orator has completely ignored the last part about putting the real focus where it belongs: on the governments that empower such companies to behave like this.  But of course, it's much easier for some of us to protest companies instead of countries and governments, and this is what we get.

When you feel like settling down and talking like a calm individual who read the last part about pressuring society to make drastic changes instead of assigning blatantly dishonest strawmen to my actual argument, I will engage in conversation with you.

Note for instance, you've completely ignored my final paragraph, which addressed that: because after all we know our governments are full of reformers that are just itching to regulate business, and don't have to be pressured into it - and my point was the prevailing attitude - and one eminating from your posts - of acceptance is currently pissing all over any hopes of that. It doesn't even need to be said I hold our governments in contempt, but no-one's defending them here in contrast to all your apologism for Amazon.

Engage in boycotts if you want, be mad if you want.  Just know that there are better ways to do it.  Which really is the ultimate jerk point I was trying to make.

Sigh. And there we have it, proof you haven't read - or understood - any of my posts. Where have I called for a boycott?! The "better way to do it", relies on people actually being mad about it and not being massive apologists, but I understand, you clearly feel some sort of guilt from shopping there so are willing to join in defending it. Just know you're part of the problem, not the solution.

I suppose you are chock full of insightful, specific methods to improve the working conditions of picking/packing jobs. Assuming you do, I still doubt it would break the nature of such work: methodical, efficiency-oriented drudgery. These jobs just suck if you aren't fond of that style of work. Your best bets are either to fully automate the processes (which can and has been done in many warehouses - look into how LEGO picks pieces for their products sometime) or to pay your workers a wage that accounts for the mental and physical impacts of such work. But, then, Amazon does offer above-average pay. Still low, but better than many. It's disingenuous and dishonest to single them out.

Absolutely anything would be better than current conditions - allowing their workers to unionise; employing all their workers, rather than using agencies; higher wages; employing more workers/decreased work-load; longer breaks; climate control; not penalising people or not paying them when ill; getting rid/relaxing their ridiculous error system; remove their compulsory-overtime policy; stop avoiding tax so governments have more money to spend on their workers; just generally stop treating their workers like sh**t. Of course non of this will happen, because they're sociopathic capitalist scumbags solely concerned with how much they can get away with - and no, I haven't once singled them out - this is exactly what I've come to expect from business. The fact you think the monotomy of the work is what's at fault here, and that this sort of work is "for people", as if there's middle-class people rushing to it from other jobs and not the monolithically desperate working-class seeing any job better than unemployment (if not being forced into it by the Job Centre) just beggars belief.

Yes, actually. They are  recieving a living wage and decent benefits, and their workplaces are safe due to US labor laws.

lol What a joke, and US labour laws are in no way a guarantee of anything.

Despite Amazon's bad-cop management, this  not a return to the Gilded Age. They are not losing limbs, or being beaten, or wage slaves.

It's alright, I'll stop, it appears you're parodying yourself now, and frankly I give up banging my head against a wall. I've only bothered this long because you were people whose opinions I respected.