⊕ Photo by Ariel Zambelich.





If you need to let off some steam on shift at the delivery station, wait for a nice long train of packages. Skim each label and try to find one that was picked and packed the same day. These are the priority packages: One-Day or Two-Day – in any case Prime packages. Quickly swat it off the conveyor belt, and knock it over to its stowing rack. Once you get it over there, and no stower or team leader is in sight, prop it against a rack leg and just kick the shit out of it. When you’re done, put it in its proper place. Ten minutes, or less, from now, the stower will flag you down. Hey ,they’ll say. This one’s damaged. Send it over to Problem Solve. You’ll apologize, say you didn’t catch it, and toss it back onto the conveyor belt. Ah, man ,you’ll think, I can’t believe a Prime member is gonna miss out on all its great benefits. The damaged package will likely take more than a few days to replace if you successfully busted its contents.

The main problem the AI management system poses in the delivery stations is regulating the flow of production. The secondary problem is maintaining the nominal productivity rate per hour, per worker, in proportion to daily output targets, which are always rising with “consumer demand.” Amazon’s business is the realization of value. Maintaining their monopoly position, their market share, is a matter of making sure their product makes it to people’s doorsteps or offices in a matter of days, or increasingly mere hours. Without this, they’re still a very profitable online marketplace, but they’re no longer Amazon. No longer could they hold any claim to their megalomaniacal ethos – “Everyone is a customer.”

Be prepared to see the conveyor belt congested with literally hundreds of packages as the buffers struggle to keep up with the unloaders. Be prepared to see the aisles littered with loose packages, in an unmanageable heap, as the stowers struggle to keep up with the buffers. Be prepared to get shouted down by your supervisor or your team leader at the tail end of your shift, telling you you’ll have to stay for another two hours – because the fucking Computer-God doubled the quota during your lunch break. No one is relaying this information because the workers are only useful to the supervisors as a way of making the numbers go up.

I hate my supervisor not because he’s breathing down my neck, calling me and telling me to cover for some asshole’s shift, or something; I hate my supervisor because he’s a fucking caveman who doesn’t understand, doesn’t have to understand, the systems he implements or the laptop he’s always glued to. People keep leaving in the middle of this shift, it’s not just me. I hate the fucking cunt because he has been trained to convert his frustrations with the company’s program into contempt for the workers. For this reason, when his beady little eyes glaze over me – he’s scanning the aisles again – as I’m lifting a 75 pound shipment of home décor off the belt, I feel loathing. I feel like I’m going to maim that son of a bitch.

The stower can only stow as fast as the buffer can buff, and the buffer can only buff as fast as unloaders unload. The AI sets the pace of production, the supervisor is tasked with calibrating the speed of the conveyor belt in accordance with it. The belts are always, always, turning. Someday the belts will run faster than you thought was possible. Someday, corporate hopes, the stowers, buffers, unloaders, supervisors, and the computer that runs it all will achieve equilibrium and rise together on promises of company swag and free takeout for lunch. Everyone is a customer.

The problem of employing machinery in any industrial venture, whether that’s logistical or mass manufacture, is the problem of fixed capital. Even with bleeding-edge hardware or software, labor or time-saving devices, whatever, the venture is only as profitable as its workers. The machines can and will provide or make possible certain productivity rates yielding a certain quota, per shift, but only that baseline. To increase the surplus, to keep it rising, to make the workers – the human capital – more productive, the capitalist must employ other means. Automation was and wasn’t a bluff. Code, GPS trackers, apps, the scanner strapped to your fingers, the burner phones strapped to your bicep, your forearm, are the new regime now.

Amazon’s closest competitor is Walmart. Where Walmart has excelled with its vertically-integrated brand cult, its insane hierarchies, its cheap managerial-authoritarian ethos, Amazon has implemented a relatively lateral form of organization, producing a diffusion of power under a Cyber-Moloch which is understood and controlled by no one. Minimal human intervention is the rule. Higher rates, for the stowers and the sorters and the pickers and the packers, is the grand notion. Aim high, for the consumer pigs, the program, and the company, and always keep aiming high is the singular order.

You can’t have fun in the fulfillment centers. In the fulfillment centers, the nominal rate of productivity per shift is the primary issue. It’s a matter of contriving layer upon layer of arbitrary, oppressive, and infantilizing systems in order to boost the average picking/packing/sorting rate per worker and justify the fucking imposition of progressive increases in daily output targets. You can’t have any fun, you can’t break anything. Cameras are everywhere. Everything is tracked, including the product – especially you and everyone else – and there is a certain chain of accountability running through the whole division of labor in the facility. Everyone is working as hard as they possibly can: they are tricking themselves into thinking they’ll shape up to the system’s expectations when they’re only pushing the rates and quotas higher. You’re competing against everyone else, you’re racing for the quota. The only thing moving your two legs is the fear. The only thing that’s moving them this fast is this vain hope: maybe you’ll go home early.

The new feature for the system are these minigames on your little burner and we’re trying to beat each other. Are you winning? Shoot for those rates, punch above your purchasing power. Are you getting addicted? I think they’re trying to simulate some kind of dopamine rush. It’s 86 degrees in the facility, the heat index is 89. Did you think they had central? My sweat is sizzling on my skin, miles to go with all your fucking bulk packs of Bounty paper towels, rice cookers, and upholstery. I’m delirious. I forgot to eat today but the burning in my stomach means it doesn’t matter. Four giant overhead fans in the whole place. At the uppermost edge of my eyeline they look like pendulums. This is the third consecutive week the supervisors have pulled us all together to remind us that Amazon is not liable if you suffer heat stroke on the job and die; furthermore, if you have any medical conditions it must be cleared by an Amazon-certified doctor. Furthermore, drink water. We’ll only give it out for free sometimes, but drink water.

The Sunday shift is always too much for people. It’s a skeleton crew again and the program has simply assumed there’s a full staff. Aren’t you thankful you scored the overnight shift? I think about the best way to die in a fulfillment center: nestled in some obscure corner where it’ll take a week for somebody to find me? Or should I throw myself at one of these big sortation racks, use my last bit of strength to bury myself under a mound of toys and video games and the occasional toaster? When I start falling, I’m taking you all down with me. No. No, fuck it. Fuck it.

An overwhelmingly hostile form of organization, always pursuing the offensive. The supervisors keep insinuating that they can automate us out of our jobs. They keep lying about how bad it used to be but nothing’s changed. They are watching our footsteps and tracking our subtle movements. Amazon puts out a press release: their facial identification algorithm has successfully identified “fear” –“It’s afraid!” – another lie but a useful one. Are they training it on us? We are subsidizing state security services all over the planet. Amazon is cloud-based services. Amazon is the CIA and and the DoD and ICE. In Germany, they are deploying the subtly-named Rudolf Hess private security company to suppress the organizing efforts of migrant workers at their facilities. In Southeast Asia and Taiwan, they are fraying the nerves of contracted production workers for a fraction of our pay, which the company would like to convince you was a reward for increased productivity. Everyone is a customer.