Today comes another report alleging how the drive at Amazon to deliver packages quickly overrides basic human decency.
On the morning of 27 December 2022 at the Amazon DEN4 warehouse in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 61-year-old Rick Jacobs died on the job after experiencing a cardiac event, right before a shift change. What happened next has angered his former colleagues.
Witnesses say a makeshift barrier around the deceased worker using large cardboard bins was used to block off the area on the outbound shipping dock where the incident occurred, and workers criticized the response and lack of transparency about the incident. Amazon denied boxes were used to cordon off the area, but said managers stood around to make sure no one came near for privacy and security.
As workers arrived for their day shift, they say they were not notified about what was going on and continued working as usual while a deceased colleague remained in the facility and emergency responders awaited the arrival of a coroner.
I find it hard to believe Amazon’s story that they used managers to cordon off the area to ensure privacy. Use real people that you have to pay instead of cheap cardboard boxes could achieve that same result? That is not the Amazon model, surely?
As I have said repeatedly, the drive for ever-increasing speed of delivery at the cheapest price, even when there is absolutely no need to get stuff quickly, creates an inhumane workspace.
You clearly disapprove of Amazon’s practices. To what extent are you boycotting their services?
(a) To an extent that mildly inconveniences you by requiring you to shop elsewhere?
(b) To an extent that has any impact on your income by only selling your books through all the other channels but not them?
(c) Neither of the above
(d) Both of the above?
Just curious.
Full disclosure, my answer is (c), but then I don’t post blog posts slagging them off.
I honestly don’t see the problem here.
What’s wrong with that? What’s inhumane about it?
@#1,
I do not buy stuff from Amazon. My first preference is to use local brick-and-mortar stores. If I need to shop online, there are always other outlets that sell the things I need, even if at a higher price. My publishers own the copyright to my books and I do not control what outlets they choose to use.
But I reject what seems to be the premise of your questions. Even if someone were to use Amazon for whatever reason, that still would not disqualify them from criticizing their horrible business practices or make them hypocritical. The modern world of mega corporations is such that it is almost impossible to avoid being complicit to some extent with some of them. To argue that one must be perfectly pure in one’s practices would be to shut down criticism of some of the worst business practices. Not everyone has the luxury that I have to pick and choose what businesses to buy from. So I do not sit in judgment on people who criticize Amazon (and other businesses) even while occasionally using it. I welcome their voices. The more the better.
Like Mano, I prefer brick-and-mortar stores where I can deal with a person. I have never knowingly used Amazon, but it’s possible that some other order of mine went through them without my knowing it; and it’s hard to imagine that we might some day be required to use Amazon if the expand their monopoly. sonofrojblake’s tu quoque argument doesn’t convince me of anything at all.
[billseymour, not a tu quoque, just an insinuation of hypocrisy — as Mano noted @3. People keep misusing that term, just as they do argumentum ad hominem)]
It’s not an insinuation of hypocrisy, it’s just a query how far one’s commitment to a position goes.
In this case, we have someone describing Amazon’s business practices as “inhumane” and “overid[ing] basic human decency”, and choosing, presumably partly on that basis, not to shop with them, which is of course easy enough… but also choosing, despite that, to make part of their income selling books through them. Choosing not to do that would cost real money, which is a different thing entirely.
I certainly don’t expect anyone to be “perfectly pure”. But actually making a measurable portion of your income from stuff you produce that gets sold through (and presumably delivered by) Amazon isn’t really close to “pure”, is it?
Not everyone has the luxury of an income derived partly from books you wrote being sold through Amazon, and thus directly supporting their business while making you some money too. That’s rather more relevant than where you choose to shop or not shop.
And I don’t sit in judgement on people who criticise Amazon even while actively participating in exploiting their workers themselves to make money. As I made absolutely clear in my first post, I do the same. I’m just clarifying the context of this criticism.
A followup question: just how bad would Amazon’s business practices have to get before you decided you DID need to boycott them properly and stop making money through them? Slavery? Child exploitation? Rainforest destruction? Genocide? Again in the spirit of full disclosure I’d say that for me it wouldn’t take much more than they’re already doing -- but that’s easy for me to say as my income from sales of my stuff on Amazon has totalled in the low single digit thousands of pounds, so I wouldn’t really miss it. I obviously have no idea how much you make from them, but it’s an interesting thought experiment I think to consider just how bad they’d need to be before doing business with them started to be a moral problem for you sufficient that you actually allowed to literally cost you money.
After all -- there are other bookstores.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mano-Singham/e/B001K8AT2K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
Regarding this actual incident, I have to say I can’t see the problem either. Workers upset they weren’t told what had happened should mind their own fucking business and get on with their jobs, and cordoning off the area with boxes so that the same nosy workers can’t come and gawk at the body rather than working sounds like perfectly reasonable behaviour and in actual fact considerate of the dignity of the unfortunate employee who died.
I do wonder why Amazon bothered to lie (presumably) and pretend (presumably) that they didn’t use boxes, because actually boxes sounds like a much better solution than a bunch of humans doing the “move along, nothing to see here” thing.
I’ve had a couple of experiences with deaths at work. It is absolutely standard practice to expect everyone to continue working while the body remains where it is until some official or other (police, coroner, whatever) can get to the site. “Lack of transparency” is absolutely par for the course, because having people running around saying “did you hear? Frank died! About 20 minutes ago, right there on the loading dock” -- THAT is a violation of basic decency.
sonofrojblake, no point denying what’s bleedingly obvious.
Everyone who looks at the site can see the pinned post, and ‘everyone’ includes you.
Um, sure. Your #1 is Just Asking Questions. Not at all judgmental.
No insinuation there, no siree!
Me, I’ve never even considered either selling or buying anything with Amazon. So I’m as pure as could be in this regard; furthermore, I could not possibly boycott them unless I was at the very least considering using their services, could I?
(A bit like Twitter, actually)
I actually work at this facility. I was not there when this happened. We were upset clearly, that someone died there. Our co-worker. Especially after the holidays. What made most of us upset is we wanted to help the family and give money and such. Nothing like that was done. That in itself makes me mad. Rest in Peace Rick. Prayers to the family.
sonofrojblake,
I think that your kind of criticism plays right into the hands of these corporations.
I don’t care if people who criticize Starbucks buy coffee from them. I don’t care if people who criticize McDonalds buy hamburgers from them. I don’t care about measuring their ‘commitment’ in these ways. These are giant corporations and we need everyone to help in fighting their abusive practices. By shifting our attention to the people who are criticizing them and instead examining their ‘commitment’ to the cause in the ways you suggest, we are playing into the hands of these corporations, because it shifts attention away from them and on to ordinary people. What exactly do you gain by doing so? Why is it necessary for people to pay a personal price in order to criticize?
@3:
cf. Beau’s recent video, which as I understand it paraphrases as “you can’t be ideologically pure and still get anything done”.
(I’m sure I remember in the last month another video where he basically said that accusations of hypocrisy ought to be a far less useful rhetorical strategy that you might imagine, but that’s a bit of an aside and I can’t immediately find it.)
On online-vs-bricks-and-mortar: tomorrow I’m likely going to have to make the arduous 3 mile journey across town to pick up small piece of connecting hardware, and it astonished me that there was somewhere local that both sold it and had it in stock, because the most similar (and mostly much less good) Amazon options were either shipping from Germany or China with 2-3 week delays. Small pieces of hardware appear to be the bane of my existence as manufacturers appear to delight in designing things with attachment points that wont connect to anything available within 10,000km radius if at all.
@sonofrojblake @1
What next? People who vote Democrat don’t get to criticise the Clintons/Biden ?
@9
Thank you for sharing. And for HR people everywhere, the message that your deepest regret was not that you didn’t get extra PTO, but rather that you couldn’t share your grief and show compassion to his family is an important one.
Adding to #9, people in workplaces do feel a sense of loss when someone in that workplace dies, even if they did not know them personally. Any halfway compassionate organization would recognize and acknowledge that, not simply try to get it out of the way as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
Mano @14, so… what should they have done, ideally?
marner:
So what exactly is stopping people from so doing?
Where’s the immediate urgency?
John @#15,
At my university, whenever anyone died, whether faculty or staff or student, the university would let everyone know through the information channels and express condolences to the family and provide counseling services for those who needed some outlet for expressing their sorrow. Doing do sent a message that recognized the sense of loss that the death of a member of the institution created, that the person who died was not an anonymous cog in the wheel.
I get the sentiment, Mano, I just don’t share it.
I also get the analogy, except I think it’s not particularly applicable in this case.
Replacing, I get: At Amazon, whenever anyone dies, whether management or staff or customer, Amazon should let everyone know through the information channels and express condolences to the family and provide counseling services for those who need some outlet for expressing their sorrow.
Doesn’t seem too practical to me. Or profitable.
Different enterprises.
—
And again, if the family doesn’t get condolences and whatnot from other staff until after the shift ends, what’s the biggie? They can still raise money and support them, they can still grieve all they want.
(Heck, they can quit their job if they want to do so)
@16
John, I appreciate your frequent comments and actually agree with you a fair bit, but somehow I feel that having a conversation with you about a company’s opportunity to show its humanity to its employees would be a waste of my time.
marner, indeed. It’s a company. A corporation. An enterprise.
Not a human. How can it possibly show its humanity?
(Category error to think of it as such)
I honestly don’t see the problem here.
You’re honestly a fucking idiot. Here, lemme ‘splain in small(ish) words: THE PROBLEM HERE is that the plant managers HID THE INCIDENT using some sort of barriers, and chose — in their own words, mind you — “privacy and security” over getting someone in to at least assess the situation and try to render assistance. Excuse me for stating the obvious here, but this is contrary to just about every medical-incident response I’ve ever witnessed or heard of anywhere.
Seriously, has anyone ever been in a situation where a person collapses or suffers some sort of apparent medical emergency and “Quick, set up barriers and don’t tell anyone else what’s happened!” is considered an appropriate first response?
Not a human. How can it possibly show its humanity? (Category error to think of it as such)
It’s an organized group of humans. Why should they NOT “show humanity?”
Raging Bee:
What? Did we read the same thing?
“As workers arrived for their day shift, they say they were not notified about what was going on and continued working as usual while a deceased colleague remained in the facility and emergency responders awaited the arrival of a coroner.”
It was so very hidden, it’s in Mano’s blog and we are discussing it.
What, you wanted a hooting siren and flashing lights pointing to the body as the day shift came in? Put it on a pedestal or something?
(Also, how one renders assistance to a dead person is left unstated)
(sigh)
Kinda hard to explain to someone who does not get the concept of a category error.
PS
Wow. What does that make you? 😉
I really wish WordPress had a block commenter option.
[OT]
Tabby, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-comments-everywhere/
(There are other add-ons, as well)
John @#18,
I am not suggesting that if anyone in Amazon dies, then everyone in the entire corporation should be notified. I am talking about those working at that particular facility where it is likely that many people will know the deceased and would feel a sense of loss and like some sensitivity to be shown.
Fair enough, Mano.
I concede that, were I a member of the dayshift coming in to work, I too would have preferred to be informed that Rick had perished and that the attending emergency responders were waiting for the arrival of a coroner, rather than finding out after my shift.
@mano, 10 -- I can see you don’t want to be drawn on how bad Amazon’s behaviour would have to get before you would consider allowing it to impact on your income, so I’ll leave it there.
Boycotts are a valid, popular and proven effective form of protest. It’s reasonable to ask why, if you’re criticising a company, you’re still giving them your money. It’s even more valid to ask why you’re TAKING MONEY FROM THEM. Politicians who take money from constituents are looked askance with good reason, even if they say they disapprove of the constituents’ behaviour. Talk, as they say, is cheap.
If I were a member of the management, I’d have cordoned off the area and informed anyone coming to work that there’d been an incident and that area X was off limits until further notice. I’d have elaborated no further until emergency responders and the coroner had concluded their business and the family had been informed of ALL relevant information. Then, when all the information was available -- perhaps the next day -- made an all hands announcement. THAT is the humanly decent thing to do, not trumpet “Rick’s dead, there’s biscuits in the canteen if you’re upset” as soon as something happens.
Apart from anything else, I’m not qualified to say he’s dead. It’s a fact of first aid training that once you start CPR, you have to continue until a doctor tells you to stop, because you’re not qualified to make the decision to give up, and if you do, you could be sued. I’ve been told that multiple times on multiple courses over the years, and I don’t even live in lawyer heaven aka the USA, thank goodness.
If co-workers want to set up a benevolent fund, nothing the management did stopped them, unless they were in an unseemly hurry to do so.
Jesus wept. I’ve come across more than enough self-righteous arseholes in my time, but sonofrojblake is well up among the medal-winners.
Capitalism has brainwashed the humanity right out of some people, it seems.
John Morales: SCOTUS has ruled that a corporation is a person in the US.
Back when I was still a pup, I worked in an open pit mine for 6 years. During that time, there were 3 fatal accidents and one near-fatal. In each instance, operations stopped in the vicinity of the accident until after medics and rescue people had done their jobs, the accident victims had gone off in the ambulance, and the employees had had some time to give over to their feelings.
In one of the instances, the pit shift boss reassigned workers before calling the ambulance and mine rescue which resulted in a 3 day wobble as the union membership wanted him fired. We didn’t get that, but we did get him demoted.. I reckon that the relative humanity of the corporation with respect to Amazon has a lot to do with the union, or lack thereof.
@KG, 29: Well, I certainly have nothing I can offer to rebut your comprehensive and well argued point. Well done.
(small point on #29, not really a rebuttal as such, but… you don’t really get what “self-righteous” means, do you? Googling the phrase yields “having or characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior”. And yet I undermined any possibility of my having any moral superiority by stating upfront that I give money to AND take money from Amazon. Go on, have another go, there must be some ad hominem attack you can think of that isn’t so easily demonstrably factually inaccurate.)
Our esteemed Prof has patiently responded to the direct questions. I have appreciated my time working in organisations or teams, like Mano describes, made of people who have humanity.
I’ve been in workplaces like this where accidents happened and the response was similar. What did everyone do? Get rushed back to work by management where they immediately stopped to gossip about what had happened. Nothing is gained by trying to hide an accident because people will talk anyway.
My dad worked for I think close to 15 years at a factory that used heavy equipment. He was a maintenance man and at least twice that I remember he came home feeling really awful because of an accident at work. Sometimes these were serious but those two times in particular one of his coworkers fell or was pulled into a machine. He had to clear their remains from the machine. From what I understand the factory shut down in these cases and they let everyone go home.
My dad hated some parts of working there but his complaints that were relevant to those incidents were all about wishing they would upgrade to newer, safer (and expensive) machinery. From what I could tell he still thought the company cared about safety. Just maybe not enough.
When you act like Amazon or these lousy rinkiedink operations I’ve worked for you better hope the worst workplace injury you have to deal with is a stubbed toe or stomach flu. Because acting like that sends a strong message that even if someone dies they just think of them like a cog in the machine. Replace the bad part and move on. Frankly, not too many people are going to watch that happen repeatedly before they decide the bad cog that needs replacing is the corporation. Once that happens the extra efficiency and profits management hopes to gain by treating workers as if they aren’t people goes flying off never to return.
I was at first a little baffled by the reaction to this, but then I had to remember that most people don’t work in particularly dangerous jobs. Nobody who reports to me has ever died at work, but people have died in my workplace. Certainly if the death is work related -- exposure to something toxic or contact with moving parts -- everything stops, and everyone goes home apart from the people tasked with investigating. The stoppage might be hours, days, or even permanent depending on the outcome of the investigation. But let’s be clear -- per all the available information, this absolutely was not that.
This was a person dying of natural causes while at work, just like my grandfather did. It’s also worth remembering that Amazon is a big, horrible, faceless corporation that pays no tax, but this chap’s manager, and that person’s manager -- the people who, right there in the moment and on that location -- are human beings too, people who may very well never had seen a dead body. People who went to work that day not expecting to have to deal with a death on their watch. There’s probably a corporate procedure somewhere for what to do in the event of someone keeling over at work, but it’s unlikely they’ve read it since the week they’ve started, and it’s unlikely it says much more than “call the emergency services, cordon off the area, say nothing to anyone until next of kin have been informed and say nothing at all to the media”.
There’s a reason they cordon off the area and keep information to a minimum, and that reason is the other employees. Of course, when they find out most of those people will be upset and concerned and all those good things -- but if you think about it even for a second you know that ONE of the people in that warehouse is the sort of person who would, if they were allowed, walk past that dead body and snap a photo on their phone and tweet it out or put it on Facebook or something. They’d gossip online about it, and that could be how the next of kin find out their father is dead.
Consider that before you criticise the actions of the people who had to deal with it in the moment. I can’t see that they did anything wrong.
…He had to clear their remains from the machine. From what I understand the factory shut down in these cases and they let everyone go home.
So why couldn’t Amazon have done the same?
@Raging Bee, 36:
Can you really not understand the difference between someone being gruesomely killed by the very machinery that constitutes the workplace, and someone dying from natural causes in a room with no possible connected hazards?
I mean, don’t get me wrong, Amazon absolutely could have immediately shut down the warehouse and let everyone go home, I just can’t understand why anyone would think that that was an appropriate reaction to what is after all an event which, while tragic, is absolutely not their fault and completely out of their control.
Hazardous workplaces shut down when someone is killed because the first priority is always safety, i.e. to make sure nobody ELSE is killed, and find out asap what the hell happened, how to stop it happening again, and to implement whatever changes are necessary so a repeat is avoided.
But that can’t happen here. There’s nothing Amazon could do, even in principle, to prevent another employee dropping down dead in the exact same location tomorrow, or next week, or next year. I can’t, therefore, see how there’s anything to be gained from doing it, other than allowing the rumour mill to spin up.
As I said, my grandad died in very similar circumstances -- but it would never have occurred to me or any of his family to question why the didn’t shut the factory down. It was tragic, but the tragedy was ours -- nobody else’s.
There’s plenty of things to kick Amazon for, but this is really not a good example.