Saturday, October 22, 2005
Happy Amazonersary to Me!
On October 22, 1997, I woke up on a mattress on my friend's living room floor, grabbed a cup of coffee at an espresso stand on Seattle's Broadway Avenue, and caught the 7 bus (or maybe the 34) downtown. Autumn in Seattle is a very special time; ragged gold clouds hover over the Olympic Mountains in the morning, and dead leaves lie in the gutters, waiting for the day's inevitable shower to wash them into the Sound. The city smells clean, even at the bus stops.
Once downtown I made a connection for a bus that took me south, into Seattle's industrial district, past the Kingdome and the site where two new stadiums would rise, past the West Seattle Bridge, past gloomy warehouses and grimy storefronts, to the intersection of 1st and Dawson. The bus was full of people who looked nothing like me, most of whom got off at the same stop. We walked as a group to the front door of the large warehouse. Once inside, a guy with dreadlocks looked up our names on a clipboard and sent us off to report to various corners, tables, or more likely, groups of metal carts.
Amazon.com was indeed the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, but only in the technical sense. There was no fiction section; no row of Tom Robbins selections. Rather, on any given (though labeled) spot on a shelf, there would be hundreds of copies of the same book. My first job, as a temp, was to pick books: you grabbed a library cart, signed out a sheaf of packing slips (the same slips you received with your order) with titles and bin numbers, and away you went.
We all looked like freaks. Seattle in 1997 was Goth heaven. If you weren't Goth, you were punk – what the blues are to Chicago, punk is to Seattle. But the freakishness belied the unbelievable niceness of the city and its various subcultures. And everyone, absolutely everyone, smoked.
I was even a freak for being normal by most standards. But that was part of Amazon's secret – the informal motto was that no one cared what you looked like, as long as you worked hard. It was the closest thing to a genuine meritocracy I've ever seen. Some of my punk friends had barely graduated from high school, yet were assistant managers making important decisions every day. Jeff Bezos stopped by the warehouse many times, as often as not with a group of gawking suits. He really is a funny guy, and he really is a genius. He really did deserve Time's Man of the Year award in 1999.
Eventually I was hired on fulltime, one of two temps from our group of 37 to get offered a position. A few months later I moved on to the Customer Service department downtown, a shorter bus ride and more often than not, an ass-kicking bike ride up Pine Street after work. I worked my way up in CS, becoming a trainer and loving it, and taking a position as a salaried Training Manager in West Virginia because I thought I needed more of a challenge. By then it was 2000, our stock was about to plunge, and we started hearing rumors of dress codes for CS. I moved to Lexington as a low-level salaried manager in a warehouse. Two years later, sick of spreadsheets, Six Sigma, and the unrelenting pushiness of MBAs (we old-schoolers called them "Management By Ass") and new-to-the-company upper echelon managers, I quit.
Happy Amazonersary, Teacherdudie. Glad I did it. Wouldn't go back for the world. ¶ 10:27 AM
Once downtown I made a connection for a bus that took me south, into Seattle's industrial district, past the Kingdome and the site where two new stadiums would rise, past the West Seattle Bridge, past gloomy warehouses and grimy storefronts, to the intersection of 1st and Dawson. The bus was full of people who looked nothing like me, most of whom got off at the same stop. We walked as a group to the front door of the large warehouse. Once inside, a guy with dreadlocks looked up our names on a clipboard and sent us off to report to various corners, tables, or more likely, groups of metal carts.
Amazon.com was indeed the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, but only in the technical sense. There was no fiction section; no row of Tom Robbins selections. Rather, on any given (though labeled) spot on a shelf, there would be hundreds of copies of the same book. My first job, as a temp, was to pick books: you grabbed a library cart, signed out a sheaf of packing slips (the same slips you received with your order) with titles and bin numbers, and away you went.
We all looked like freaks. Seattle in 1997 was Goth heaven. If you weren't Goth, you were punk – what the blues are to Chicago, punk is to Seattle. But the freakishness belied the unbelievable niceness of the city and its various subcultures. And everyone, absolutely everyone, smoked.
I was even a freak for being normal by most standards. But that was part of Amazon's secret – the informal motto was that no one cared what you looked like, as long as you worked hard. It was the closest thing to a genuine meritocracy I've ever seen. Some of my punk friends had barely graduated from high school, yet were assistant managers making important decisions every day. Jeff Bezos stopped by the warehouse many times, as often as not with a group of gawking suits. He really is a funny guy, and he really is a genius. He really did deserve Time's Man of the Year award in 1999.
Eventually I was hired on fulltime, one of two temps from our group of 37 to get offered a position. A few months later I moved on to the Customer Service department downtown, a shorter bus ride and more often than not, an ass-kicking bike ride up Pine Street after work. I worked my way up in CS, becoming a trainer and loving it, and taking a position as a salaried Training Manager in West Virginia because I thought I needed more of a challenge. By then it was 2000, our stock was about to plunge, and we started hearing rumors of dress codes for CS. I moved to Lexington as a low-level salaried manager in a warehouse. Two years later, sick of spreadsheets, Six Sigma, and the unrelenting pushiness of MBAs (we old-schoolers called them "Management By Ass") and new-to-the-company upper echelon managers, I quit.
Happy Amazonersary, Teacherdudie. Glad I did it. Wouldn't go back for the world. ¶ 10:27 AM
