She was able to excite me in a way I’d never felt with other girls. Our connection was so deep that I didn’t feel insecure when telling her that nothing got me hotter than being pulled from a crowded situation for a quickie. My complete trust in her allowed me to be vulnerable enough to expose my desires, resulting in the best sex of my life.
As she wiped her nose on her sleeve, I noticed just how beautiful she was.
“My flight leaves in a week,” she said.
“I’m going back to the bar.”
Something changed between us during those final four days. The tension was lifted. We actually talked about things other than TV shows and food. We sat on the carpet and divided up our CDs and books.
“You should keep all the Vonnegut,” I said. “You’re a much bigger fan than I am.”
“Thanks. You can keep the Bukowski.”
Then, one morning I woke and she was gone. While I worked that day I found myself looking around the apartment and noticed the lack of her presence. The bare spots on the bookshelf, her shoes that used to line the front hallway, and the photos missing from the wall that I told her to keep.
I moved to a cheaper apartment that had drafty windows and a slow-draining shower. I rarely cooked and sometimes went whole weeks where my only human interaction was an email exchange with Phitten about which hotels spelled hair dryer as one word and which ones broke it into two.
When I couldn’t sleep I listened to Elliot Smith and wrote reflective poetry with bad hourglass metaphors. Had Brian and I still been making chapbooks, I’d have put one together called Employed Adult. What the Fuck Am I Doing?
Three months after Ashley left, I turned thirty years old. It didn’t feel much different than any other day. I spent my lunch break slurping ramen noodles while scrolling through my Facebook feed, filled with new homes and babies. I was clicking an obligatory “like” on a photo of an old friend’s kid when I got a message.
Steve, I just want to say thank you for all your hard work over the past few years. You’ve been a great help. I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors. Feel free to put me down as a reference.
I responded immediately.
I’m not quite sure what this email means? Is there something I should know?
Haven’t you spoken with your agency? Friday is the last day of your contract. They should have told you.
It had been a year since I’d spoken with my agency, and I stopped paying attention to my contract expiration dates. I wasn’t given benefits and didn’t get paid time off like a full-time employee, but four years of service had caused me to stop thinking of myself as a temp. The work never slowed down, so why would they get rid of me?
I put in minimal effort my final two days by spending most of the time browsing job sites and looking into unemployment benefits. When I hit publish on my final hotel description, I closed the laptop and looked around my apartment. The bookshelf displayed the spines of authors I aspired to be like, and the photos on the wall were of people I admired, but had never met. Everything was mine. There was no evidence I’d spent the previous eight years of my life intertwined with a woman I hadn’t spoken to in months. Unemployment was something I would have to face alone. I worried how I was going to pay my rent, but was thankful I didn’t have a mortgage.
Temporary Madness
In my father’s capitalism, employees were nurtured by their company and encouraged to learn new skills. Today’s major corporations hire disposable temp workers to do the work of a full-time employee, without the obligation of providing benefits. Temp workers are familiar with dead ends—they are hired with a predetermined exit date. The moment they feel comfortable in a role, the contract expires, and it’s on to the next job.
After eight years of this, I badly wanted a change. I tried my hand at freelance writing, but after six months and only $950, I got a call from a job recruiter who told me I’d be “perfect for” a job at Amazon. She had found my LinkedIn profile and, because of my past experience temping twice at Amazon and twice at Expedia, thought I would be an excellent candidate for a job assisting Amazon Fulfillment Centers with mis-ships and lost inventory.
I don’t know how I feel about being “perfect” for the job of handling a customer return on a pair of pink Skechers. There was a one-in-a-million chance that my parents would meet and produce me. My time on Earth is precious. Making sure a woman in Topeka, Kansas, has the right pair of sneakers to wear to Zumba class doesn’t feel like the zenith of my time here on the planet. If I’m hit by a bus tomorrow, I doubt I will find any comfort knowing I spent valuable time helping people get the right exercise attire delivered to their front door in a timely and inexpensive manner. That said, I was desperate for the money. I accepted the position.
On Monday morning, I rode the elevator up nine stories while fantasizing about a Marxist uprising where temps took control of the means of production and held Jeff Bezos hostage until he conformed to a socialist belief system where temp workers are valued as more than just cogs in his world-dominating machine. When the doors opened I followed a train of other temps—dropping our sandwiches in the fridge, filling our mugs with coffee, then scattering to our desks to hunker down for the next eight hours.
I’m an adequate temp. I work hard enough that the higher-ups leave me alone, but not so hard that I can’t find twenty minutes a day to tinker with my fantasy football team. Knowing the job has no future makes it difficult for me to find the motivation to put on my best performance. And yet, somehow, Amazon keeps hiring me.
Amazon temps are brought on for a trial basis that lasts a maximum of eleven months. The temp must sink or swim. Those who tread water have their contract renewed, while those who can’t perform are left to drown. I can sympathize when I see a new hire looking lost and confused. The first week of a new contract consists of a brief introduction and a link to outdated SOPs and wikis, leaving the new employee to ask the people around him how to do his job. Once a new employee feels slightly comfortable, management will send an instant message with a list of common mistakes.
Some temps love it when the new hire needs to be trained. They assume the role of lead temp because they take pleasure in the feeling of importance that comes with pointing out someone else’s errors. I swear I can see a suppressed grin when a senior temp gets to say “Steven, I need to speak with you.”
One guy, who was enjoying his senior status a little too much, used the phrase “I need to see you in my office,” which was really his desk littered with half-empty bottles of peach iced tea and crammed into the corner of a room housing ten other temps. “Do you understand this?” he asked me. “I don’t want to see you make this mistake again.”
I was aware of the mistake but hadn’t cared enough to correct it. I had hoped no one would notice, or at least that by the time someone did notice, my contract would have expired and I’d be working my next temporary job.
“I’m going to have to pay more attention to your work,” he continued.
I felt sad for him that he cared so much. It was his first contract out of college, and there was hope in his eye. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shout, “Don’t you realize none of this matters? What do you think we’ve got left, thirty to forty years? Have you ever had a Washington peach? The season just started! They’re so juicy. Way better than that artificial stuff you drink. Let’s hitchhike to the country. We can pull peaches right off the branch and eat them watching the sunset. Let’s remind ourselves what is real.”
Instead I said, “Sure thing, guy.”
Some temps bought into his act and behaved as if he was their boss. It created a hierarchy like high school. The most senior temps were in charge and took ownership of the comfortable couch in the casual conference room during meetings. They stopped timing their lunch breaks and dipped out fifteen minutes early whenever management was too occupied crunching the numbers to notice. The temps who’d done six months were the juniors. They were still full of confidence that
they’d be that rare person who managed to transform his or her contract into a full-time job. They tried to buddy up with management by finding out what video games they played or the TV shows they watched, and they said things like “Bazinga” when they got coffee next to the manager who wore a Big Bang Theory T-shirt under his unzipped hoodie. The sophomores had been on contract for two months and were starting to feel comfortable. A few fell into a routine and knew where to get coffee and what day of the week the grilled cheese food truck showed up. They were still considered newbs by everyone else except the temps who just started.
I never bought into these roles. The hierarchy was meaningless. I just wanted to do my time and get out with as few beatings as possible. From the time I sat down at my desk until the time I left for the day, I wore my headphones. Even if nothing was playing, they acted as earplugs shutting out the office. The unfortunate result was that I spent all my time working. I was resolving more cases than was expected of such a new employee. I didn’t even take my government-mandated fifteen-minute breaks—not because I was trying to impress, but because I feared that any time I stood up from my chair I was opening myself up to conversation. I would be happy to make small talk about a recent ballgame, but all they ever wanted to talk about was work.
“Can you believe Apple has stopped calling the black iPod ‘black’ and replaced it with ‘space gray’? We’re going to have to make so many changes. You thinking about working this weekend?” My mind would wander whenever I found myself in one of these pointless conversations. I imagined climbing on the top of my desk, breaking my laptop over my knee, throwing the pieces in the air, and then yelling “life is more than a paycheck,” but I instead smiled and nodded and waited for the appropriate moment to put my headphones back on.
Unbeknownst to me, my antisocial work method was noticed. I went from freshman to sophomore in two weeks. I was told that I would be shadowed by a new employee. After two weeks of successfully speaking less than fifty words a day, I would have someone next to me for eight hours straight. It was my job to explain each step I took to resolve a case. I liked to jokingly refer to Bezos as the Serpent King, but the fact that I would spend two days in my own personal hell made me consider he might actually have a forked tongue behind his sinister smirk.
I had openly criticized him before. After completing my previous Amazon contract, I published an “Open Letter to Jeff Bezos.”
Dear Jeff Bezos,
In your position, I imagine that you rarely have an opportunity to receive feedback from one of your temporary-contract employees. I thought you should have some input. I hope you find this useful.
Having just completed my maximum of eleven months of contract work Amazon allows, I thought I would share my thoughts on your practice of hiring a staff that is made up of temporary-contract workers. Although it may seem like the company is saving money—because you don’t have to provide temporary workers with medical coverage or paid vacation time—the revolving door of new hires encourages low quality work, inconsistent productivity, and wastes useful resources on training.
I joined the X-Ray for TV and Movies development team in its infancy. The product hadn’t even launched yet. It was exciting to watch the product grow and have input on creating the best possible user experience.
My team leader was an experienced manager, with the ability to adapt to the ever-changing process, and gave the rest of the team confidence that we could go to him with questions or feedback, and he would give it careful consideration. It felt like we were all learning together. Our coding tool was constantly being updated based on worker feedback, and our guidelines were always subject to change. Each new development was covered in our weekly stand-up meeting. If something seemed to get missed or lost in translation, an impromptu meeting was called to get everyone on the same page, which proved to be an effective training method.
One day, that all changed. Our experienced team leader was transferred to a different department. A few of the temps, who had been on the project since X-Ray’s inception, applied for the now vacant position of project manager. I was convinced the position would be filled by one of two individuals who had trained me and acted as point people for questions and concerns when the manager was in a meeting. None of the temps who applied for the position got it, which most of us on the team found confusing because they were basically already doing the job.
An outsider was brought in who knew nothing about X-Ray. I was later told the new manger was hired based on management experience. She spent her first week being trained by one of the temps who had been deemed unqualified for the project manager position. After spending a week training the manager, and being her go-to person for the next three weeks whenever there was a problem, he was let go because he reached the maximum of eleven months on his contract. Since the new manager never completely grasped the program, she asked a select few of the oldest temps to train the newest temps. It seemed to me that these people were not chosen based on merit or capability, but more like she was putting together her own collection of “cool” kids. The best way to be put in a leadership role was be a pretty girl or a dude who used liberal amounts of Axe hair gel.
As experienced temps left and new ones rolled in, the breakdown began. Temps who had not paid attention in training were now training new temps. Different temps were teaching different techniques, and it wasn’t long before the quality of work suffered. As witness to the poor quality, I made a few attempts to express my concerns, but none of my suggestions were implemented. When one of the higher-ups checked our work and realized that mistakes were being overlooked, performance scorecards were implemented.
The oldest temps would grade the newest temps. If a temp made twenty mistakes in a week, they were let go. I agree that if someone makes that many mistakes they don’t deserve the job, but perhaps these mistakes were caused by a lack of proper training. Even though I performed excellent work, I was not deemed worthy of a full-time position, yet I held the fate of someone’s job in my hands. We were told the scorecards were an attempt to find out what mistakes were most often being made so they could be addressed. This was confusing since nearly everything I checked had the same mistakes, yet they were never addressed. Of the current X-Ray team, only about half know the guidelines and proper procedure.
By my final month, it was difficult to care. I did quality work. I was one of only a handful of employees who didn’t need their work checked before pushing it to live status, but as far as the rest of the team was concerned, I’d lost my enthusiasm for the project.
Why should anyone care if X-Ray succeeds or fails? If X-Ray becomes the biggest program on the planet and puts another several million dollars in your bank account, people in my position will still be sent packing at the end of eleven months. There will always be an endless supply of replacements, and they will be paid less since the pay rate of the team decreased with every new batch of hires. My replacement will probably work really hard for about six months and then realize that they are cruising toward a dead end. They might start caring a little less.
In this terrible economy, I am grateful for the work, and the fact that I have a bachelor’s degree and the ability to write a complete sentence means I will probably be back on the Amazon campus in a different department one day. It is likely many of the temps from the X-Ray team will be back as well, but know if they are wearing a green badge, you won’t be getting their full potential.
There’s a lot of talk about how Amazon is a great place to work. They have showers in the basement. You can get your bike serviced while you work. And there are food trucks!
But if you really want to create a positive work environment and generate productivity and employee loyalty, give your employees some job security.
Amazon is a large company and I know this experience is not unique to me. The company is at a disadvantage when the employees are not working to their full potential.
Sincerely,
Steven Barker
P
S: In my final team meeting, we were told that you watched Dumb & Dumber using X-Ray. I did the quality assurance on that film. I hope you appreciate my credit timing for Cam Neely in the bathroom scene. We spent an afternoon discussing that one.
The letter gained so much attention that Amazon had to release an official response: “no comment.” I figured that riff had destroyed any chance of being rehired, but the background check they performed on me must not have included a Google search, at least not one that went past the fifth page (the first five pages are dominated by Steven Barker the child murderer). It’s not until page six that you get to Steven Barker the disgruntled Amazon employee. For a brief moment I did consider maybe this had been part of Bezos’s plan to get even with me. Bezos, Beelzebub, they’re not far off.
My trainee turned out to be a decent guy, apart from a mild case of halitosis, and even though I was uncomfortable with the situation, I explained to him what I was doing as he looked on and took notes.
Occasionally he stopped me and asked, “Why did you do that?”
My most common response was “because that’s what they told me to do.” I think one of the reasons I have succeeded in the temp world, if there is such a thing as “success” in the temp world, is that I never look for logic. I simply do what is asked of me. I play the part of the tool they want me to be and let them use me up until it’s time to put me back in the drawer.
There were times when I knew I wasn’t teaching him correct procedure because I had forgotten the correct way and had figured out a way to solve the issue on my own that didn’t result in a lecture from management. As far as I was concerned, that was just as good.
When training was complete, the new guy was sent out on his own. I had helped him out as best as I could and watched him get better, and it wasn’t long before we were on the same playing field. Later, he would train someone the incorrect procedures I taught him and maybe add a few incorrect procedures of his own. Meanwhile, Amazon would continue to gain more control over every aspect of the consumer’s life while rotating in new temps every eleven months. Whether Amazon chooses to invest in its employees or not, it won’t be long before Amazon has a hand in every purchase made on Earth. But helping Bezos achieve that goal is meaningless to me, because I’d rather spend my time seeking out trees that produce delicious peaches.
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 6