Except for giving up Amazon, nah, that's easy. Because although they purport to be a worthy, well-intentioned company, they are not. Let's have a look at some of their claims.
Amazon is a great place to work
You've seen the advert. Employees enthuse about flexible working hours, the career opportunities, the camaraderie of cakes every Friday. Sure there are targets, but everyone has targets, don't they?
The Amazon website explains the advantages of working four ten hours shifts with three days off every week: 'fast delivery for our customers' and 'another day for free time and social activities.'
When journalist James Bloodworth worked undercover at Amazon, he discovered that no-one he met managed to achieve the nine months' employment threshold to gain permanent status. Most were 'released' due to black marks allocated because of taking time off, or declining overtime, or being late back from lunch, or just not meeting targets.
Bloodworth was employed as a picker: walking round the Amazon fulfilment centre, the size of four football pitches, he would clock up ten to fourteen miles a day No wonder that home at last, he would try to rest his 'heavy legs supporting suppurating feet which over the course of the day had puffed up half a size bigger.'
A modern version of the Robert Frost poem might read:
The aisles are endless, dark and deep
But I have targets to meet
And miles to walk before I sleep
And miles to walk before I sleep.
Amazon uses its money to do great things
Jez Bezos is the richest person in the world. He has recently donated $98.5 million to organisations that support homeless families in the USA, amounts which range from $1.25 million to $5 million. The day the new gifts were announced, Bezos stated an intention to donate 56,702 shares of Amazon stock, worth just under $99 million to non profits.
I'm guessing that means the amount he donated was non-taxable. Amazon's record for paying tax is heinous. And as Jeremy Corbyn tweeted at the time, $98.5 million is just 0.09% of his net worth. Not so great, then.
Amazon is a great way to research a product
The consumer group Which? found 97% of its members used Amazon reviews when buying a product. They also found 30% of them were disappointed by the end result, despite the good reviews. Which? recommends a sceptical approach: if a product receives numerous 5* rave reviews, using the same glowing phrases, all posted on the same day, there's just a chance they are false.
Amazon also buries 1* reviews in bundles of better reviews: the TV adaptation of Dirty Dancing (1* on Rotten Tomatoes) combined with the film version garnered 4.5* revews from over 1000 Amazon customers. Reviews for authors with the same name are lumped together because after all, 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' are more or less the same book...
Amazon offer you great choice
It is very hard to make a purchase online without using Amazon. Search for a book online and you have to wade through lists of links to Amazon. Hunt for a CD on an independent music website and you will be directed to.. Amazon. Join in a jolly Secret Santa at work, click on our wish list and it takes you to... Amazon.
You may think you are an autonomous being when you follow a whim and elect to buy the latest gadget. You're not. Amazon know you bought one just like it in the last three years. The gadget is waiting for you, waiting for you to make that click.
Amazon is so convenient
Remember how Amazon justified those ten hour shifts: they ensure 'fast delivery for our customers. 'Every one of us who want a product next day, in two hours, this afternoon , who cancels an order because it takes two days to get to you, is complicit in those long hours and demanding working conditions.
Our desire to have things in the 'here and now' has far-reaching consequences. While the latest game may have made its way from half way across the world to a UK warehouse, the last mile to your house is the trickiest. Did you know that an average package is dropped 17 times before it reaches its purchasers? Parcels in half empty vans skid around or are crushed under the weight of other gods. No surprise that electronic device you ordered doesn't work so well. This explains the excessive use of cardboard and plastic packing (which by the way is not recyclable), all of which adds to Amazon's overall carbon footprint, equivalent to 44.4 m tons of carbon dioxide.
It make no commercial sense to transport a small number of parcels, so drivers have to deliver 200 a day in vans, packed to the rafters. They park in cycle lanes or on double lines, or double park to load and unload the contents. The infrastructure of cities cannot cope with this army of delivery vans and we look on helpless, stuck in traffic jams, or worse breathe in the fumes. One solution to this problem is 'beds and sheds' complexes with their own delivery systems and underground rail links shunting hundreds of packages every hour: one of these exists already. Dystopian.
So essentially, Amazon saves time and money
Does it? To recommend you now go and buy your Christmas presents for family and friends and Secret Santa gifts for colleagues at your local makers' market (especially ours!) might seem a bit hopeful..
And yet and yet, the twelve minutes saved by clicking online can be channelled into walking to the shops, saying hello to neighbours you meet on the way, browsing a few stalls, having a cup of tea, browsing a few more stalls, buying something that catches your eye. It might take longer than 12 minutes but it sounds like time well spent to me.
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