Bald misrepresentations
A report has exposed Amazon’s robotic workforce for increasing the warehouse injury rate of its human peers.
The Center for Investigative Reporting says the data it obtained lays bare “a mounting injury crisis at Amazon warehouses, one that’s especially acute at robotic facilities, and during Prime week and the holiday peak”.
Understandably enraged by the findings and eager to hit Jeff Bezos where it hurts, the nonprofit news organisation pointedly deploys the phrase “bald misrepresentations” in regard to his grinning cardboard empire’s attempts to conceal its injury figures.
Horror stories of machines going too fast for their mortal colleagues to keep up are certainly absent from Amazon’s promotional videos. In these fantasy worlds, nymphlike workers flutter around fulfilment centres at their own pace, tenderly taping up boxes to the paradisiacal sound of that song from True Romance.
Might we interpret this as a cry for help? Has the Center for Investigative Reporting cast itself as Christian Slater in Tony Scott’s timeless romantic thriller, bursting in on Gary Oldman’s Jeff Bezos and saving his staff from a life of gruelling labour from which he takes almost all the profit? Probably not, but it does call him a baldy, and for that, it’s so cool, it’s so cool, it’s so cool.
The pandemic’s e-commerce boom
The pandemic appears to have solidified e-commerce's ascendancy against the highstreet. Coronavirus has accelerated technology adoption in many sectors, and people have been forced to stay at home, increasing their online shopping habits in a bid to avoid visiting shops.