EXAMINING AMAZON: THE REALITY OF WORKING FOR THE GLOBAL RETAILER by Vic Johnson

The SUV bottoms out in a gutter of slush as I turn into the pothole-strewn parking lot, each hole its own jolting crater of worn asphalt, ice, salt, and discarded cigs. The late-winter slurry is unrelenting but I do manage to glimpse faint light at the far end of the row of the decrepit strip mall. The light is filtering from a Brunswick bowling alley.

I park, step from my car and almost lose my footing as I’m astounded to see the Dairy Queen still operating in a vintage building near the lot’s entrance, the empty grocery where my brother Ned had summered as a bag and cart boy, and the shuttered hexagonal service station with a flip sign that still read $.86.

I shiver my way past smokers huddled outside but once I make it into the overheated vestibule a hazy memory of attending a retirement party here back in the day surfaces. The bar then had been thick with smoke and gossip, packed with workers, managers, stewards, wives, husbands, giving a sendoff to bawdy Uncle Art. He had rotated his way through nearly department on the shop-floor.

Why am I here? In the late 20 tens, hiring mega-events for entry-level work at Amazon warehouses are held in large discarded places: empty big-box stores, unused convention centers, closed factories, abandoned malls. Over the last three years I’d been laid off multiple times as companies I worked for pivoted, were disrupted, or re-platformed.

My income is a lukewarm mixture of unprofitable consulting gigs, temp positions that never solidify, dribbles of unemployment. Household finances are unhinged—hubby recently retired and I’m the major breadwinner. We still have two sons in their teens. I wake daily to white-hot terror. I’m an older woman with a once-respectable bookish career in a profession that’s become saturated by 20-something tech-bros, in a stagnant metro area with few opportunities and a professional culture of insular thievery.

Word was these Amazon jobs were easy to get; the company was lapping up anyone who possessed the bare necessities: an ability to stand, walk and lift, a valid social security card, and a clear record.

I join the line of applicants that eventually snakes around high-top tables with well-worn men playing cards and sharing pitchers of Old Style. They seem bewildered by the nature of these  jobs that have a line stretching out the door. “What’s going on in there young lady?” asks a raspy voice that manages to make itself heard above the sound of scattering pins and pneumatic ball stackers.

Since this is 2017 and the COVID19 pandemic was unforeseen except perhaps to Bill Gates, Amazon is not a household word, has not yet been turned into a verb, has not yet started its ubiquitous delivery service where the sight of a blue van meant rescue, excitement, endless possibilities and ultimate convenience. It was a bookstore that sold other stuff.

Two days later I receive an email telling me I’ve been hired for a temporary part-time position at an Amazon Sort Center. What’s a Sort Center? “Our Sortation Centers are at the intersection of our passion between our transportation and logistics networks” is what the description says, portending the opaque jargon-speak that is Amazon. Terror abates to just mere panic, but the relief is real. Something. Something between my family and homelessness.

Eight years later I am a full-time Tier 1 Amazon Associate at a Fulfillment Center. It’s a love/hate mutually-parasitical relationship. It’s evolved as together we’ve experienced the acceleration of online shopping, pandemics, larger and large shipping container sizes, canal blockages, market swings, leadership changes; aided by the development and emergence of virtual and physical edge-breaking. I find myself code-switching between my scholarship on economic development and data, and the on-the-ground warehouse experience. My scholarship is informed by the warehouse work and fellow workers. I struggle to explain the work to academic colleagues but also curiously fit comfortably on the floor.

In these posts I hope to take you on the journey with me, exploring the challenges faced by middle-aged women in the workforce, what it’s like to work at Amazon, and reflections on the emergence of the global brand, Amazon.com.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­