Once, a boss walked up behind me and jerked me by the shirt into my chair, spun me around and wagged a finger in my face like I was a puppy who’d just wet the couch. Another employer called me a compound profanity that simultaneously denigrated my intelligence and slurred the nature of my relationship with my mother, despite the fact he knew I wasn’t the employee at fault.
Those same employers, in other ways, took chances on me, gave me opportunities that advanced my career and aided my growth as a professional because they demanded excellence and led by example. Ironically, perhaps, they helped give me the tools that allowed me to leave them for better circumstances.
It’s never OK to touch an employee in a threatening way or use abusive language. But most of us in the workforce have experienced it before, know it was wrong and yet also recognize that, like most things in life, there’s good that comes with the bad.
These gray areas of the modern professional workplace spring to life in The New York Times portrayal of “harsh” conditions at one of our nation’s biggest companies: Amazon.
In the article, we see highly skilled adults regularly crying at their desks and employees treated as if starting a family, caring for a dying father or getting cancer were acts of insubordination. We see employees thrown off the island in corporate boardrooms that resemble a savage, back-stabbing tribal council on “Survivor.”
It’s enough to make you feel like downloading a bestseller on your Kindle is akin to buying blood diamonds from a murderous warlord. When Amazon talks about using “drones” to deliver packages, you might wonder if it means unmanned aircraft or its overworked employees, sometimes called “Ambots.”
Amazon’s executives can commiserate with their friends at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s at their next Ivy League MBA class reunion. The story paints Amazon as the avatar of White Collar Oppression just as unions and the left have made the latter two the collective symbol of Blue Collar Oppression.
For decades, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s led their industries by rigidly wringing out inefficiencies so that they could deliver goods at remarkably low prices. McDonald’s recent troubles notwithstanding, criticism of minimum-wage “McJobs” and scarce benefits did little to hurt the companies’ bottom lines.
Similarly, Amazon is fighting and succeeding in a highly competitive market, and that drive for innovation benefits regular folks like us with increased purchasing power, more convenience and greater selection.
To the credit of the Times story, it’s balanced. While critics could rightly argue it relies on the testimony of disgruntled former employees, it also points out that some “Amazonians” love their jobs. Some dispute the horror stories. And all agree that for every boatload of burned-out employees who quit, another boatload is eager to take their places at their tear-soaked desks.
The story notes that many workers tough out the 80-hour weeks because they’re getting rich: “… Successful midlevel managers can collect the equivalent of an extra salary from grants of a stock that has increased more than tenfold since 2008.”
That’s market forces at work. Amazon can push its workforce to the limit because enough workers are willing to make that trade to get ahead. These high-tech workers are no different than young corporate attorneys working around the clock to one day be partners or med school graduates going without sleep during their residencies.
But those market forces can just as easily work against Amazon, and its CEO Jeff Bezos knows that. Amazon faces competition for the best talent in the field, which may explain why Bezos felt the need to write a public letter saying the story doesn’t describe the company he knows and encouraging workers who see abuses to email him personally. Followup stories suggest that the story accurately reflects how Amazon “used to be” but that conditions have improved.
Amazon’s workers, like its customers, have choices. Their skills and experience are in demand. If a competitor can offer better pay or better work conditions, Amazon will fall behind.
The best way to protect Americans in the workforce is to make sure they have the job skills that empower them with these choices. That should be our united goal this Labor Day.
Now forgive me as I return to reading a book downloaded in one second below retail price onto my Kindle.
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