This is a quotation that is over a year old, but worth reading because it paints a true picture of our lives:
“According to a recent, much-commented-on article in The New York Times, ‘Amazon employees are expected to put in crushing hours, answer emails at midnight and devote weekends, holidays and vacations to company projects’. Yet this news should hardly come as a shock. Given that the company has made it its mission to satisfy our every consumerist urge, almost before we’ve had it, it was always likely to be a demanding employer. Besides, in a manner of speaking, ‘we all work for Amazon now’. Americans are putting in longer hours than ever. They are becoming slaves to their laptops. And, in order to cope with these relentless new pressures, what do we do? We ‘outsource’ more and more quotidian tasks to the internet. We have to buy groceries online, we tell ourselves, because our time is too valuable to queue in a shop. And so the cycle goes on. The harder we work, the harder the Amazon deliveryman works. Yet no matter how hard he works, he is destined to be replaced by drones, which, we’ve been told, will deliver Amazon orders to customers’ doorsteps within 30 minutes. ‘By then, standing in line at a supermarket may feel like a vacation.'” (Meghan Daum, Los Angeles Times)
Almost weekly my wife and I find ourselves returning to the same topic: why don’t we get any downtime? Why are we constantly on the go? Why do I personally feel stressed? Are we being too conscientious? And so on. Clearly, here is an advocate of Epicureanism having a very real struggle to “enjoy retirement”, to find peace, ataraxia.
Well, the tax people have come up with figures that bear no relationship to your own, but you can’t talk to anyone anymore. You want a deal on internet access but you have three different costs from the same company, and no one will put anything in writing. You have ordered an item, but the delivery man didn’t ring the bell (you were at home), took it away and it is in now in a post office, no one knows where. You have to phone around, but staff has been cut etc…. “We are experiencing a high volume of calls. Please hang on”. Twenty minutes?? I could go on. All this bad management and lack of training puts the onus on the final customer, eats up his finite life. Meanwhile, the inaccessible CEO is on his yacht…….
We have all this dreadfully wrong.
Its tempting to blame an overworking labour force on corporate greed. But the evidence would suggest that excessive working hours are more of an American cultural problem than an inherent feature of free market capitalism. The country’s tradition of Protestant work ethic has contributed to the view of work as an innate moral good. While this view may seem harmless, the US has taken it to its logical conclusion: the more work is achieved, the more more a citizenry will be. On paper, this should increase worker productivity. But in practice, the longer the average working hours are, the lower the productivity per hour worked, because the workforce becomes more stressed, less focused, and less motivated. Conversely, Europe has largely developed a healthy work-life balance, in which shorter hours are largely compensated for by greater productivity per hour. The European teleological view of work as a necessary part of the real world has resulted in greater workplace satisfaction, because that view has widespread support amongst the public. Most Americans are not Puritans; the country would be wise to abandon its Puritanical view of work.
In terms of public policy, I’m all in favour of America joining the rest of the industrialised world in guaranteeing paid leave, and in particular, paid maternity and paternity leave. What I think would be a mistake would be to treat companies as an enemy to be defeated. As you quite rightly point out, Amazon is a business trying to satisfy consumer demands. The root of the problem is an unsustainable consumer culture. Punishing Amazon for trying to capitalise on a widespread desire will only damage the economy and America’s reputation as a good place to do business. What needs to change are people’s habits and behaviour, which Amazon will adjust to. As I may have commented before, its important not to alienate people, even if they are wealthy and few in number.