Okay, Now This Is Just Bizarre

On December 14th, the London Times did an exposé on working conditions at Amazon’s warehouse in Bedfordshire by sending a reporter undercover to work as a temp during the Holiday rush.

I thought they stretched to make some of their points so did not bother reporting on it. As an example:

Managers warned employees that surveillance cameras monitored their every move, and even though most came from eastern European countries, they were told to speak to each other only in English if anyone else was nearby.

These days, most companies have surveillance cameras and, to me, it is discourteous to speak in a foreign language if one of your group does not speak the language. [shrug]

Anyway, if you want to read the article, go here.

The truly bizarre part of the story was reported in yesterday’s Publishers Weekly.

The Sunday Times claims that Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s CEO) reportedly decided that it would be great if the employees working at that warehouse did a joint photo in which they dropped their pants and did a mass mooning.

According to the Times:

“They were sending the supervisors to try to persuade people on a one-to-one basis. It’s ludicrous and a lot of the staff are upset about it.” More than 200 staff were eventually photographed – but waving to the camera instead of mooning.”

The follow-up article is here.