I feel like this is twitter in a nutshell, and that goes for everyone involved.
The very first response is "eally like? cause your workers are liars?"
There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc.
Nobody is talking to each other in any of that. They're just posting for everyone else to see.
The medium is the message and twitter is dumb, and it makes everyone on it dumb.
well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response.
Do you seriously think if you chat nicely with these PR people they're going to hook you up with someone who matters and amazon is going to have a nice chat about their anti-union practises with you over a cup of tea? Makes about as much sense as telling hong kongers to be friendly to the people's liberation army
Calling on workers to fight amazon is the only reasonable thing to do and if these combatative tweets bring attention to their PR campaigns than that's a plus
Putting aside that you've given up entirely on any form of discourse with the account you're responding to...
You aren't only talking to that account - you are having a public conversation in front of millions of people.
...and if the discussion goes something like:
Company A: "We believe in xyz."
Twitter B: "You are an <insert insult>."
...then what benefit have you delivered to the other millions of people reading? All you are doing is stroking the ego of those who agree, and fueling outrage for those that don't. No ones position is evolving.
Instead, you should recognize that the audience of your comment is the millions of silent readers whose combined opinions/votes/dollars have an actual impact. To them, a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.
I had to delete Twitter from my phone - I found it would make me angry for no discernible reason, and I'm generally a pretty even-tempered person. Not healthy.
Once you detach, you realize quickly that much of Twitter represents a tiny minority of loud, self-righteous people. When "Twitter explodes" in righteous indignation, I feel like the best move would simply be to ignore it and wait for everyone to move on.
I'm right on the edge. That said, there's some parts of Twitter I really enjoy (patio11, for example). But since a lot of his best stuff is hidden in the "Tweets and replies" section of his profile, I rarely get to see it in my feed, so I have to go through the "Search" section and see everything that's "just for me". Which seems to translate to "Just for getting me angry for no discernible reason" a lot of the time.
Yeah, same. I actually found this with facebook as well. Since I quit both networks about a year ago I've been overall happier and have shifted that downtime to either just not using my phone or reading a book via kindle.
I've thought about making a twitter to follow some InfoSec/Cyber-security people but I know I'd get caught up in the wider twittersphere. I always found it amusing that BBC news would report people getting upset about X on twitter when that's kind of what the whole platform is about.
It's so hard to know what "twitter explodes" even means.
I imagine hundreds of thousands of users could go bonkers about something and it not matter at all. Also 1k users get upset and in the larger world that issue really matters.
I have to work really hard at pruning what I follow on twitter in a constant effort to keep things "on topic" in regard to why I followed some things.
>There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc.
I really think this is by design at Twitter. The confusing way that the conversations are structured, and intentionally limited to allow any possibility for nuance of any kind, just maximizes outrage.
Essentislly twitter wants you to go to the service and get angry. That keeps you addicted and coming back to see how the argument has progressed. It’s like a much more addicting/toxic version of cable news.
That's an interesting fantasy, but, Twitter's "design" originates from being nothing more than a simplistic broadcast SMS tool where every message had to fit in an SMS including the username/command part as originally SMS was the primary way people used Twitter.
After that, nearly every single aspect of Twitter was actually invented by its users including @ replies, and mechanisms for "threading." All that Twitter has done is ride that user behavior by slightly conforming to it through actions like UI trying to follow threads via text relationships, or eventually adding actual reply metadata to tweets.
And the increase in messages size? That came with a huge backlash from many of its users.
To imply that Twitter has somehow cleverly engineered the dumpster fire that burns everlasting there is giving them FAR, FAR more credit than they deserve.
It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have a like/retweet Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance.
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have an upvote Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance.
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
You need to train your skill of critical perception of information. They are really paid accounts and you still think it's ok to "talk" to them. You better read whole thread, not just first tweet.
This is exactly how it feels. None of the messages to the reps are actually directed at them - it's a show made for everyone else to see and retweet and get upset over.
The tweet from Amazon she was replying to said "come see what our warehouses are really like" - strongly implying that the workers who complained are dishonest - not misinformed, they work there. So, dishonest.
This is a parroted response used every time someone attempts to meta-analyze the method that allows discourse to propagate. Someone going "ha, you just want to feel superior," is pretty ironic, isn't it?
Examining and critizicing communication mediums is an important and valuable thing to do, especially with respect to the internet. Do you truly believe that sound-bite length tweets that focus more on trying "burn" the opposing side instead of making cogent points are the best way of having rational discussions? If not, then what the OP mentioned is important - the format of Twitter just _doesn't_ lend itself to good discussions as much as it does to fanning flames and coming up with good quips. It promotes the worst parts of discourse, and viewing everything that comes out of it through that lens isn't an attempt to feel superior - it's a _necessary_ thing to keep in mind. In order to fully appreciate a message, you have to fully understand its medium. And Twitter is a shitty medium.
A real gem in there was the comment of "there is actually an open door policy at the FCs, which allows us to directly communicate with our managers if we have concerns or issues."
Think about that for a second. The fact that they feel that is notable to call out, saying they "actually" have that... implies that they believe it is normal to not have an open door policy, and not be allowed to talk to their managers about problems.
I have worked warehouse jobs at a couple points in my life, and it was always OK to talk to your manager. It wasn't a perk, it was just how things were.
That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."
> That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."
To me, it sounds like an echo of standard anti-union propaganda: e.g. "I don't need a union, because I can work out any problems I have directly with my manager!"
The past reports on Amazon warehouses call out how strict and automated the management is: that the local managers don't have the authority to really do much in the way of providing flexibility (or humanity) to people.
That jumped out at me too. My reading was the implication that if there was a union, you would lose that. It seems like a common anti-union talking point, from what I've seen at Walmart and Whole Foods.
I work in a large and friendly company, in which there seems to be a general fear of speaking up. if a company as employee-friendly as mine has difficulty in moving people towards an open speak-up culture, I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that many companies aren't successful at this, either.
It should therefore be reasonable for an Amazon warehouse employee to point out the counter-case for their experience, without you ascribing negatives to Amazon itself based on this.
My company has a quarterly "engagement" survey. If our supervisor doesn't get a 5 rating (highest) from us, he gets in trouble, so as shit rolls downhill, we get in trouble.
The majority of the team answers the survey questions dishonestly, so as to avoid rolling shit. The others feel it's their only way of expressing discontent short of leaving.
That's more just corporate pr speak to turn something that is incredibly standard into an incredible perk of how great the company is. One of the first places I worked my boss talked about how he let his developers listen to music on the job.
This may also stem from some union-busting messaging. One of the talking points that you see on anti-union posters and in videos is "unions get in the way of you talking to your manager, when you can talk to your manager directly you can address concerns straightaway with them."
There is a difference between open door as a matter of policy and open door as a matter of practice. I've dealt with both, and the latter actually works, the former does not. Most retail is the former.
> I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow.
While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a restaurant.
I also think it's ironic that the instigator here claims to care about "the working class":
> really like? cause your workers are liars? you’re not going to convince the working class that everything is fine by telling us where to avert our eyes, we already know what it’s really like. why don’t you really treat your workers better, you can afford it
She's talking to working class people and when they disagree with her, she accuses them of literally not being human.
If people want to advocate for the working class, they need to step outside of the simplistic fiction that "evil corporations are ruining people's lives by employing them and not treating them well". The truth is much more complicated and jobs don't grow on trees.
> I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs
I agree that these folks are probably real people, but you must have missed the last several month's worth of very public information about the conditions in their warehouses.
I'm friends with a couple people who work (or have worked) in these FC centers. They don't complain about these things. They work their ass off and happily collect their paycheck.
In my younger days, I used to work unloading boxes at FedEx for minimum wage. It was hard, back breaking work, and you better believe at holiday time it was crazy hectic and no time off. So I can imagine what it's like at one of these facilities, it's got to be hard as hell.
I'm sure all of us want these people to have the best conditions possible. The concerning thing to me is the tone of conversations like this in the 'Age of outrage'. It's a lot of virtue signaling, and then attacking of anyone who says anything to the contrary. "Oh you're not outraged about this like I am? Well you're an Amazon shill & hate the workers!"
Isn't the bigger issue, why is it these folks don't have better opportunities available to them? They are working these hard, back breaking jobs likely because it is better than anything else they can find in their area.
If the conditions are so bad, why are there more complaints? I'm very distrustful of the media in general and feel like they're pushing an agenda more than anything.
I know people personally that work in distribution centres and they find it a perfectly fine job. It'd hard work, yes, but you see complaints like "boiling hot in summer and freezing in winter", and it's like.. yeah.. Which loading bay isn't like that?
I find it difficult to distinguish between people with legitimate complaints and people who are ideologically opposed to amazon (BigCo) existing at all.
"really like? cause your workers are liars?" is not an ad hominem attack, it's contradicting you by pointing to evidence. Eyewitness testimony, by your workers contradicting you, is evidence.
I wouldn’t take the term “Bot” literally - here it’s meant in the same vein as a “Russian troll” or more clearly an astroturfer.
I think many of the people who find fault with rulesobeyer don’t use Twitter. The ambassadors are comoletely robotic in the way they use Twitter - they don’t come across as people, they come across as corporate accounts. Even developer advocates aren’t this robotic.
I feel like I’m looking at stepford wives here and everyone in the comments here are apart of the farce
I insist on taking those terms literally, and you should too. Public discourse isn't going to work if "bot" and "Russian troll" become synonyms for "I don't believe what you're saying and don't think you do either".
Which leads me to think they are not actually PR professionals (they would actually not talk in such a robotic way), but really low level employees that are paid extra to talk good on social media, and are repeating from some officially sanctioned book of “what you should and shouldn’t say”
they don’t sound like Borg, they sound like McDonald’s cashiers, just doing their assignments
This sentiment is quite common in blue collar sectors. Calling them stupid and naive is, at best, out of touch with at least half the voting block of the United States.
I do believe they are actual fulfillment center employees like they say. What's astonishing to me is that Amazon thought this was actually a good idea.
I think this program was a great idea because it gives Amazon a chance to defend itself by letting the people who have been accused of slave labor, speak for themselves about it. It lets the general public see the opinions of actual employees who work in fulfillment centers for Amazon.
Also, I can definitely foresee normal people just putting the FC Ambassador Tag behind their name on twitter, getting the amazon banner, and just impersonating amazon employees. Say funny/offensive things, throw in a bit of amazon shade and you have a serious problem.
Who came up with this idea. Having normal people act as PR, replying to everything is a TERRIBLE idea, especially for a huge company. It makes your brand look way worse, especially when they happily engage in twitter fights.
I've seen them post before, but never in a group inside a long running thread like this before. Seeing their responses and then their profiles (small personal details to humanize them, but most of them follow 0 people) makes it so incredibly creepy.
Most online shill-bots are 1) bots, 2) outsourced to india/china/russia/rural US/etc.
They sound like real people who aren't PR execs because that's what they are. They're just hired by [3rd Party Marketing Firm] cuz they're stay at home moms or making use of Mechanical Turk for cash on the side.
I'm pretty sure it's data driven like the rest of Amazon, probably even operated similarly to MTurk. The borg effect comes from people getting assignments but not sticking around long enough to have an actual conversation.
Frankly, I find it appalling that this person is being aggressive towards the people she is supposidly trying to "help". This isn't a "let's fight the man" kind of mentality, but a "You're not getting what you deserve, and I'll tell you what you need" kind of mentality - quite pretentious".
Having worked for a far lower minimum wage at 10 hours a day, I can understand Amazon employees plight. I also know two people working at the fulfillment centers and they were and are insanely grateful for the job(s).
It was the first time in their lives they had real, solid employment and took advantage of trainings, saved, etc. After seeing this and living my own experiences, honestly $15 / hour is probably overpaying for their labor. They are happy to have the job over paying them.
I think really only the employees should have a voice here. I don't think people from the outside really understand the situation. Unless you've lived that kind of life, it's difficult to relate. Same for the ultra-rich, I have no ability to empathize or comprehend their lives, living in the rat-race.
It looks to me like a wall of talking points designed to shut down criticism, weirdly speaking in unison across multiple accounts. And even assuming, against appearances, that these are real workers, they are certainly not free to say what they want. This is Amazon's corporate voice, it can't possibly represent "the people she is supposidly trying to "help", and it's weird to me that people are conflating them.
> I think really only the employees should have a voice here.
Then let's give them a soap box free from the threat of repercussion and hear what they have to say. Maybe from an union representative?
I used to work a hard labor job. People got injured. I got injured more than once. Some people died. It was part of the job and we knew what we were getting into in exchange for money. It was the best way we had to make a living.
I don't know if conditions were as hard as working in an Amazon FC, but it was definitely hard work. We needed the money and appreciated the opportunity to earn a living.
If the media had decided that we were some kind of downtrodden worker class cause and had descended upon us to ask these kinds of antagonizing questions our answers would have been very much the same. I'm sure we would have answered back with our employers talking points when ridiculed for the type of work we were doing. People in tech do this all the time when they explain why they work at some tech company "changing the world".
This whole thing is in very poor taste. This public Amazon FC bashing feels very much like virtue signaling and I find it disgusting.
I worked a similar job when I was out of college at FedEx. I unloaded trailers by hand, usually just 2 of us. We were expected to go nonstop until it was done, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored. It was hard, back breaking work & it paid minimum wage. I did it at the time because I didn't have many other opportunities. I imagine this is one of the best jobs available to these people, for one reason or another, otherwise they wouldn't voluntarily work there. Should this be the larger issue we are discussing?
I did find the whole exchange very gross. Some girl who thinks she knows everything about what it's like working at Amazon from reading a few news articles. She was very rude and mean to those people. Kind of ironic she's 'fighting' to improve those peoples working conditions, meanwhile (while they are working) she's actively directing nasty comments and leading others to do the same.
We all know it feels bad when people give negative comments on social media. How does she think those folks will feel when they go home after a full day of negativity directed at them from strangers on the internet?
It doesn't matter to her so since she is not doing the back breaking jobs anyway. Part of the equality movements should be directed to the fact that there are not enough women doing dangerous and physical labor.
It is disgusting. But it is because we are collectively diving into a dead horse.
Amazon FCs pay minimum wage, and even if some people truly appreciate the money, it's not because it's great, but because it's the best thing available. Which is an absolute shame of social support.
(And to reply regarding the media picking a working class hero as an interview subject: I still remember vividly the summer jobs I did fifteen years ago (detasseling corn). At the time I thought how great the money is. I remember how fortunate we felt to earn more than other farm workers, and that what we did was obviously the hardest work, hence the highest wage. Never mind it was paid under the table.)
... imagine this the other way. Imagine that "@rulesObeyer" is the one with the agenda. Imagine RO is paid by a competitor to spread misinformation and "stir the pot", then re-read the thread. Suddenly RO seems incapable of reason or adapting in the face of clear evidence against its assertions. It makes for a fun read.
(Similarly, "anyone condemning this comment or defending @rulesObeyer must just be @rulesObeyer in disguise, no matter the evidence to the contrary.")
Not seeing it. RO is speaking like a real person with pretty reasonable arguments; the others feel like exactly what she accuses them of being: paid shills.
>are you a robot, did they make a bunch of ai to lie for them instead of helping real workers
Talking to a real human this way is not reasonable. Nor is it an argument.
>how much are you compensated per tweet like this
This is like the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" When the assumption of malintent/guilt is there from the start, you're setting yourself up for a very unreasonable conversation.
>so they’re paying you to tweet that you like your job, which is tweeting about liking your job...lol yes!! you are paid to say that you like your job. it’s your job!
This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
I have to agree with GP. While I found the ambassador tweets to be, well, weird, her tweets are the ones that stood out to me as very unreasonable. She does not seem at all interested in anything that contradicts her world view.
The "Amazon Ambassadors" look extremely sketchy even without anyone criticizing them, though. They don't use Twitter except to praise Amazon, they are universally 100% positive without a single complaint, they all echo a few specific talking points, and they openly admit to being paid to make these tweets. (One of them claims that spending two paid days a week tweeting instead of working the warehouse floor doesn't count as "being paid to tweet," but come on.)
Even if @rulesObeyer is also a paid shill, all they're doing is drawing attention to the obvious.
Imagine RO is a former Amazon employee who was severely injured on the job and fired, whose life was destroyed by this faceless company, and who resents the sentiment that it is anything but. It is also a fun read imagining them this way.
Yes, if the situation was different, than my judgement of it would be different. This is not a novel observation.
The context matters - you cannot decouple[0] this interaction from the economic and social structures it arose from.
Does rather show how important it is to have good personal heuristics for "this is a real person's account speaking authentically", which is very difficult to verify for strangers.
Precisely. We're even psychologically inclined to agree with RO because "it" is "fighting the good fight" and "fighting The Man", etc. Whether she's legitimately exactly who she says she is or "it" is just a next-level PR AI whose sole purpose is harming Amazon, we have little way of knowing, especially outside this specific example.
A similar thought occurred to me, but it was more in the vein of “what if this person is sockpuppeting on Twitter?” Like a socratic dialogue. It could even be based on real interactions, just reconstructed.
I don’t actually believe that’s what’s happening but it’d be tough to prove one way or the other, if you’re dealing with a sufficiently motivated actor. One of many good reasons not to take social media seriously.
Can somebody explain how to parse the page linked here? This seems like deeplinking Intl the middle of a conversation.
Side note: it feels like Twitter specifically has done immeasurable damage to the discourse. Why does the communication have to be presented so confusingly? To an outsider it seems like it’s to create maximum outrage/confusion/dopamine response. That’s much scarier to me than a customer service team.
I see this complaint a lot, but I absolutely disagree. It's a conversation back and forth between "Diana Wilde @rulesObeyer" and a series of different accounts in the format @AmazonFC<Name>, culminating in "Diana" saying the tweet that was linked. The lines connecting the tweets very clearly show the flow of responses. There are instances where conversations can be hard to follow if you're not involved, because the replies are more of trees than lists, but this is really not one of those cases.
Came here to ask the same. Twitter is utterly unreadble to me. Since they are linked to quite often, I once wanted to give them feedback that their website is pretty bad and _really_ annoying to use with a browser since they nag and nag and nag about using their app instead (just like reddit). Well, that was fruitless since they of course wanted me to have an account for that... The web is not as good nowadays unfortunately.
Can't people stop linking to Twitter? Not everyone uses twitter, and to non-users, their website sucks.
These accounts are not costumer service, they are specifically paid to talk up how nice it is to work for Amazon, amidst reports of incredibly terrible working conditions.
I refuse to believe HN users are this genuinely ignorant about such a basic website. It's really nowhere near as hard to read as anyone here makes it out to be.
The first tweet when I scroll up is an answer in the middle of the conversation. The actual start isn't visible. And if I need to scroll up in order to understand anything, why not load the page from the top instead of jumping to some random place? It's almost like any basic website does this better.
I took your advice, and the fifth message in the list (by "@amazonfcrafael") starts with "(2/2)". I don't see the (1/2) of that message, so it seems parts of the conversation are missing and I'm looking at some kind of automatically generated subset of all the relevant tweets. But I guess I'm "ignorant"...
It's buggy, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Looks like the redesign still had some issues to shake out. No need to suggest that the commenters are ignorant.
Readit News
The very first response is "eally like? cause your workers are liars?"
There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc.
Nobody is talking to each other in any of that. They're just posting for everyone else to see.
The medium is the message and twitter is dumb, and it makes everyone on it dumb.
well if you're dealing with a corporate entity the size of amazon and their weird bot/shill twitter army that's pretty much the only sane response.
Do you seriously think if you chat nicely with these PR people they're going to hook you up with someone who matters and amazon is going to have a nice chat about their anti-union practises with you over a cup of tea? Makes about as much sense as telling hong kongers to be friendly to the people's liberation army
Calling on workers to fight amazon is the only reasonable thing to do and if these combatative tweets bring attention to their PR campaigns than that's a plus
You aren't only talking to that account - you are having a public conversation in front of millions of people.
...and if the discussion goes something like:
Company A: "We believe in xyz."
Twitter B: "You are an <insert insult>."
...then what benefit have you delivered to the other millions of people reading? All you are doing is stroking the ego of those who agree, and fueling outrage for those that don't. No ones position is evolving.
Instead, you should recognize that the audience of your comment is the millions of silent readers whose combined opinions/votes/dollars have an actual impact. To them, a logical, well reasoned, and UN-emotional argument is persuasive, and far more likely to help you achieve your goal.
I'm not convinced that's a thing. I see a lot of twitter styled activism and I'm not sure what the impact is outside of maybe some anecdotal events.
I don't see anything bot-like about the responses, I mean check this one out:
> Actually, we aren’t robots! We just love the Amazon website.
That's a perfectly normal human thing to say to another human who also likes human things such as carbohydrates and oxygen.
Once you detach, you realize quickly that much of Twitter represents a tiny minority of loud, self-righteous people. When "Twitter explodes" in righteous indignation, I feel like the best move would simply be to ignore it and wait for everyone to move on.
I imagine hundreds of thousands of users could go bonkers about something and it not matter at all. Also 1k users get upset and in the larger world that issue really matters.
I have to work really hard at pruning what I follow on twitter in a constant effort to keep things "on topic" in regard to why I followed some things.
I really think this is by design at Twitter. The confusing way that the conversations are structured, and intentionally limited to allow any possibility for nuance of any kind, just maximizes outrage.
Essentislly twitter wants you to go to the service and get angry. That keeps you addicted and coming back to see how the argument has progressed. It’s like a much more addicting/toxic version of cable news.
After that, nearly every single aspect of Twitter was actually invented by its users including @ replies, and mechanisms for "threading." All that Twitter has done is ride that user behavior by slightly conforming to it through actions like UI trying to follow threads via text relationships, or eventually adding actual reply metadata to tweets.
And the increase in messages size? That came with a huge backlash from many of its users.
To imply that Twitter has somehow cleverly engineered the dumpster fire that burns everlasting there is giving them FAR, FAR more credit than they deserve.
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
les measurables
The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.
I was commenting on twitter as a medium.
The tweet from Amazon she was replying to said "come see what our warehouses are really like" - strongly implying that the workers who complained are dishonest - not misinformed, they work there. So, dishonest.
So her response was perfectly reasonable imo.
Examining and critizicing communication mediums is an important and valuable thing to do, especially with respect to the internet. Do you truly believe that sound-bite length tweets that focus more on trying "burn" the opposing side instead of making cogent points are the best way of having rational discussions? If not, then what the OP mentioned is important - the format of Twitter just _doesn't_ lend itself to good discussions as much as it does to fanning flames and coming up with good quips. It promotes the worst parts of discourse, and viewing everything that comes out of it through that lens isn't an attempt to feel superior - it's a _necessary_ thing to keep in mind. In order to fully appreciate a message, you have to fully understand its medium. And Twitter is a shitty medium.
Think about that for a second. The fact that they feel that is notable to call out, saying they "actually" have that... implies that they believe it is normal to not have an open door policy, and not be allowed to talk to their managers about problems.
I have worked warehouse jobs at a couple points in my life, and it was always OK to talk to your manager. It wasn't a perk, it was just how things were.
To me, it sounds like an echo of standard anti-union propaganda: e.g. "I don't need a union, because I can work out any problems I have directly with my manager!"
IIRC, this Wal-mart video has a line like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cle_OuOpBZc.
Unions have sued their own members for speaking with managers about grievances.
It should therefore be reasonable for an Amazon warehouse employee to point out the counter-case for their experience, without you ascribing negatives to Amazon itself based on this.
The majority of the team answers the survey questions dishonestly, so as to avoid rolling shit. The others feel it's their only way of expressing discontent short of leaving.
This reminds me of that.
My experience being in a union tells me it is.
One of them says:
> I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow.
While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a restaurant.
I also think it's ironic that the instigator here claims to care about "the working class":
> really like? cause your workers are liars? you’re not going to convince the working class that everything is fine by telling us where to avert our eyes, we already know what it’s really like. why don’t you really treat your workers better, you can afford it
She's talking to working class people and when they disagree with her, she accuses them of literally not being human.
If people want to advocate for the working class, they need to step outside of the simplistic fiction that "evil corporations are ruining people's lives by employing them and not treating them well". The truth is much more complicated and jobs don't grow on trees.
I agree that these folks are probably real people, but you must have missed the last several month's worth of very public information about the conditions in their warehouses.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-describe-pe...
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/11/18260472/amazon-ware...
https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-drivers-warehouse-conditions...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/01/amazon-fu...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20696154/amazon-prime-day...
https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/amazon-prime-day-fulfil...
In my younger days, I used to work unloading boxes at FedEx for minimum wage. It was hard, back breaking work, and you better believe at holiday time it was crazy hectic and no time off. So I can imagine what it's like at one of these facilities, it's got to be hard as hell.
I'm sure all of us want these people to have the best conditions possible. The concerning thing to me is the tone of conversations like this in the 'Age of outrage'. It's a lot of virtue signaling, and then attacking of anyone who says anything to the contrary. "Oh you're not outraged about this like I am? Well you're an Amazon shill & hate the workers!"
Isn't the bigger issue, why is it these folks don't have better opportunities available to them? They are working these hard, back breaking jobs likely because it is better than anything else they can find in their area.
I know people personally that work in distribution centres and they find it a perfectly fine job. It'd hard work, yes, but you see complaints like "boiling hot in summer and freezing in winter", and it's like.. yeah.. Which loading bay isn't like that?
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397...
I'd guess that Rafael didn't log out of the app (or the nana forgot to do that).
I think many of the people who find fault with rulesobeyer don’t use Twitter. The ambassadors are comoletely robotic in the way they use Twitter - they don’t come across as people, they come across as corporate accounts. Even developer advocates aren’t this robotic.
I feel like I’m looking at stepford wives here and everyone in the comments here are apart of the farce
Which leads me to think they are not actually PR professionals (they would actually not talk in such a robotic way), but really low level employees that are paid extra to talk good on social media, and are repeating from some officially sanctioned book of “what you should and shouldn’t say”
they don’t sound like Borg, they sound like McDonald’s cashiers, just doing their assignments
> Sure some dont like it here, but they may just dont like to work.
Ignoring the grammar..
How stupid or naive do you have to be to a) believe that and b) repeat it.
A not so subtle attempt at saying anyone who has a problem here is actually themselves the problem.
Who came up with this idea. Having normal people act as PR, replying to everything is a TERRIBLE idea, especially for a huge company. It makes your brand look way worse, especially when they happily engage in twitter fights.
They sound like real people who aren't PR execs because that's what they are. They're just hired by [3rd Party Marketing Firm] cuz they're stay at home moms or making use of Mechanical Turk for cash on the side.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/what-is-this-weird-twitter...
Having worked for a far lower minimum wage at 10 hours a day, I can understand Amazon employees plight. I also know two people working at the fulfillment centers and they were and are insanely grateful for the job(s).
It was the first time in their lives they had real, solid employment and took advantage of trainings, saved, etc. After seeing this and living my own experiences, honestly $15 / hour is probably overpaying for their labor. They are happy to have the job over paying them.
I think really only the employees should have a voice here. I don't think people from the outside really understand the situation. Unless you've lived that kind of life, it's difficult to relate. Same for the ultra-rich, I have no ability to empathize or comprehend their lives, living in the rat-race.
Also there is something else very fishy about the accounts, check this out. What do you think about this?
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397...
> I think really only the employees should have a voice here.
Then let's give them a soap box free from the threat of repercussion and hear what they have to say. Maybe from an union representative?
I don't know if conditions were as hard as working in an Amazon FC, but it was definitely hard work. We needed the money and appreciated the opportunity to earn a living.
If the media had decided that we were some kind of downtrodden worker class cause and had descended upon us to ask these kinds of antagonizing questions our answers would have been very much the same. I'm sure we would have answered back with our employers talking points when ridiculed for the type of work we were doing. People in tech do this all the time when they explain why they work at some tech company "changing the world".
This whole thing is in very poor taste. This public Amazon FC bashing feels very much like virtue signaling and I find it disgusting.
I worked a similar job when I was out of college at FedEx. I unloaded trailers by hand, usually just 2 of us. We were expected to go nonstop until it was done, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored. It was hard, back breaking work & it paid minimum wage. I did it at the time because I didn't have many other opportunities. I imagine this is one of the best jobs available to these people, for one reason or another, otherwise they wouldn't voluntarily work there. Should this be the larger issue we are discussing?
I did find the whole exchange very gross. Some girl who thinks she knows everything about what it's like working at Amazon from reading a few news articles. She was very rude and mean to those people. Kind of ironic she's 'fighting' to improve those peoples working conditions, meanwhile (while they are working) she's actively directing nasty comments and leading others to do the same.
We all know it feels bad when people give negative comments on social media. How does she think those folks will feel when they go home after a full day of negativity directed at them from strangers on the internet?
Amazon FCs pay minimum wage, and even if some people truly appreciate the money, it's not because it's great, but because it's the best thing available. Which is an absolute shame of social support.
(And to reply regarding the media picking a working class hero as an interview subject: I still remember vividly the summer jobs I did fifteen years ago (detasseling corn). At the time I thought how great the money is. I remember how fortunate we felt to earn more than other farm workers, and that what we did was obviously the hardest work, hence the highest wage. Never mind it was paid under the table.)
(Similarly, "anyone condemning this comment or defending @rulesObeyer must just be @rulesObeyer in disguise, no matter the evidence to the contrary.")
Talking to a real human this way is not reasonable. Nor is it an argument.
>how much are you compensated per tweet like this
This is like the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" When the assumption of malintent/guilt is there from the start, you're setting yourself up for a very unreasonable conversation.
>so they’re paying you to tweet that you like your job, which is tweeting about liking your job...lol yes!! you are paid to say that you like your job. it’s your job!
This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
I have to agree with GP. While I found the ambassador tweets to be, well, weird, her tweets are the ones that stood out to me as very unreasonable. She does not seem at all interested in anything that contradicts her world view.
Even if @rulesObeyer is also a paid shill, all they're doing is drawing attention to the obvious.
Yes, if the situation was different, than my judgement of it would be different. This is not a novel observation.
The context matters - you cannot decouple[0] this interaction from the economic and social structures it arose from.
[0] https://everythingstudies.com/2018/05/25/decoupling-revisite...
Dead Comment
And yes, the Amazon people talk like politicians. There are actually many people that think politician-talking inspires confidence.
I don’t actually believe that’s what’s happening but it’d be tough to prove one way or the other, if you’re dealing with a sufficiently motivated actor. One of many good reasons not to take social media seriously.
Yes, all of that "evidence" from paid "Amazon FC ambassadors".
Side note: it feels like Twitter specifically has done immeasurable damage to the discourse. Why does the communication have to be presented so confusingly? To an outsider it seems like it’s to create maximum outrage/confusion/dopamine response. That’s much scarier to me than a customer service team.
Can't people stop linking to Twitter? Not everyone uses twitter, and to non-users, their website sucks.
You are not required to read every post on HN, and you can see on the front page which ones go to sites you don't like.
This link provides some context.
Deleted Comment
Diana Wilde @rulesObeyer
16h16 hours ago Replying to @AmazonFCRafael
are you a robot, did they make a bunch of ai to lie for them instead of helping real workers
So still diving into the middle of a conversation.
I refuse to believe HN users are this genuinely ignorant about such a basic website. It's really nowhere near as hard to read as anyone here makes it out to be.
You sound a lot like @rulesObeyer.