Like shock collars for dogs- it just delivers a different kind of shock.
I have a special kind of dislike for dominant, controlling bosses. I think those feelings are sourced from the thousands of miners who died putting "rock into the box" from the underground operations in my hometown. As a child, we traded those stories of the people who died and who was responsible for their deaths. It doesn't take long to identify the villains.
So when I read that Amazon Inc., had invented and patented a wristband to track employees, it made the hackles on my neck stand up and brought me out of hiding. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-03/amazon-patents-ultrasonic-tracking-wristbands-control-workers
For years, I've been reading blurbs here and there from current and former Amazon employees about what a crappy place it is to work.
The problem of course- is that corporate America and it's rich campaign contributing owners- get away with this type of conduct. Treating people like dogs, swapping shock collars for wristbands, seems ok we rationalize. We tell ourselves, "Well they can always quit." Unless that's the only job available since Amazon has destroyed every mom and pop business in the U.S. Or until you find yourself wearing a wristband.
That was the dystopian future painted by Orwell's novel, "1984." A future where everything sucks- which is starting to sound a lot like an Amazon warehouse. When you can electronically watch employees you can pressure them into working harder and cut employee overhead because you are forcing one person to do the work of two at a more casual, decent pace.
In the end, those kinds of working conditions trace right back to management and it's owner, Jeff Bezos. Bezos is worth a staggering 120 billion dollars- not quite enough I suppose- to curtail his electronic monitoring of employees. Guys like Bezos can never have enough. That ego of his must be the size of Vermont. You wanna hear the best part?
Wikipedia calls him a "philanthropist." One of the reasons they use this term is because Bezos and his wife contributed 2.5 million for a referendum for same sex marriage. He also donated 33 million for the education of illegal aliens. So I guess if you spend your money on gay marriage and illegal aliens that makes you a philanthropist. Oh and I forgot- Bezos bought the Washington Post so he could slam President Trump. More Bezos philanthropy.
They should let Amazon warehouse employees write the Bezos' biography for wikipedia. I have a strong feeling that despite all of that alleged philanthropy- the warehouse workers might not see it the same way.
Pay attention to how people treat the help. One day, they will treat you exactly the same way.
I've worked for people like Bezos. One place I worked at monitored employees with video cameras- they even caught me putting my feet up on a chair during the graveyard shift- about 3 a.m. one morning. They called me into the office to issue a warning about my deviant and aberrent behavior while the ten other residents of that sober house were sleeping.
Maybe they should have focused more on the residents and a little less on the employees.
Mostly, I considered the job a volunteer gig and at nine bucks an hour- I wasn't looking for a career. A year or two after after I left that job- one resident killed another resident one night. Beat her with a pipe. Thankfully, I wasn't around with my feet up on a chair when that shit happened. https://www.idahopress.com/members/police-murder-victim-beaten-with-pipe/article_60692fae-7c63-11e5-a410-934c3e92c51e.html
I am grateful that I no longer have to work for blood sucking, control freaks who must patent electronic devices to take the place of decent human supervision. Perhaps Bezos could take a few million and instead of endowing it to illegal aliens- offer the same benefits to his employees.
I'm not going to hold my breath looking for a little human decency here though- guys like Bezos never disappoint me.
