The Demon Called Speed

I was a little alarmed by a recent PBS story from the Center for Investigative Reporting on life at an Amazon ”fulfillment center” in Southern California. This is a place where human workers and robots are both involved in getting all those iconic Amazon boxes ready for shipping. As you might expect, it’s a frenetic place right now.

According to the story, it’s also a little dangerous. Reporter Will Evans interviewed a woman whose job at Amazon was loading filled boxes into storage bins. She moved box after box, many of them heavy, in quick succession – necessary, because she was being timed, if she didn’t keep up with the expected pace, she was subject to write-up or even firing. The day came when she threw her back out. She got workers’ comp, but the money is running out, and even simple tasks at home give her pain.

In these centers, according to the story, the boxes are processed by robots at such a rate that the human workers down the line have trouble keeping up. The injury rate among workers is said to be at least double the industry standard.

II’s one thing for many of us to be so busy thinking about holiday gifts and the need to get them quickly that we are oblivious to the working conditions in the Third World country that produced them. It’s quite another thing, though, when we hear of what seem like oppressive working conditions right here at home. There shouldn’t be a difference, I guess, but there is. To paraphrase the late Elijah Cummings, we should be better than this.

I was never an especially patient person, but I find myself becoming less and less tolerant of delay now.  Is it a character flaw, or am I just going with the cultural flow? These days, we get miffed if no one responds immediately to our email or text, likes our post, or reads and comments on our blog (thank you in advance, BTW).

Look, I’m not here to bash Amazon and go into a rant on whether it should be broken up. That’s for another day. Amazon saw a need and satisfied it. You can’t get more American than that, right? I’m a Prime member myself  But if my need for speed is actually getting someone hurt, maybe I have an obligation to take at least an extra second or two to think about where and how I shop. If I really need something right now, today, there is that quaint old institution called a store, and I’ll bring along a little extra holiday patience for one of the human beings there waiting on me.