All your jobs are belong to us... Amazon is hiring 75,000 people but if you want US home groceries, tough luck Sure, the planet may be in the sort of crisis not seen in over a century, but it is a great time to be Amazon. The internet's retail goliath is looking to hire 75,000 new people amid soaring demand for delivery services as much of the world remains on lockdown from coronavirus. You too can get the chance to piss in bottles to …
Being a bit longer in the tooth, I knew nothing about this meme until a few weeks ago. I now understand that the subject of this sentence should be in the singular and therefore should commence "All your job are belong to us...".
Social isolation suits my personality.
Being a bit longer in the tooth, I knew nothing about this meme until a few weeks ago.
I don't really get the fascination with memes, but this one I've been aware of for a very long time. As far as I'm aware it may even be the first meme. If its not, its probably something to do with the great Chuck Norris.
WalMart does delivery and pickup of groceries and will require you to provide a time when you'll be available to either take delivery or drive by the store to get your stuff.
Its not really a new idea. Back when I were a lad the local SPAR was about the size of a single car garage so the proprietor had the idea of doing delivery. You'd drop off the shopping list (no Internet -- you gave him the list written on a piece of paper), the groceries would turn up in a box a day later and you'd drop off a cheque. A handy setup for everyone, saved traipsing around the local town centre every Saturday morning.
Our local stores (this is now in California) are reasonably well organized and stocked and have set up queuing systems to keep everyone more or less socially distanced. Stock is reasonable to good -- I even scored a bunch of toilet paper last Saturday -- so I'll think I'll pass on the home delivery for now.
@whoseyourdaddy
Reminds me of an American Civil War quote from "The People's Almanac" - True Last Words Section - many years ago.
A Union General leaped onto the trench parapet and walked up and down exhorting his men to yet greater efforts.
"General Sir", called his adjutant - "please get down - the enemy are firing at you!"
"Firing at me are they - Well damn them, let them fire - They couldn't hit a barn door from th___"
"Virus be d.....??? perhaps?
Sounds very much like a quote from the then Earl of Airlie, who during the Boer War decreed he wasn't afraid of any Boer Farmer and then was hit and killed by a Mauser shot from said farmers, which from the account I was told, one of his grandson's told his father than Grandpa had been a damned fool and gotten himself killed through arrogance
Love them or hate them, their business model remains in ballistic growth territory, so they've never sought to pay a dividend. Given that somehow we've got ourselves into a situation where businesses that are doing perfectly well commercially are having to cancel dividends from previous successful years, it calls into question the whole idea of growth through reinvesting dividends.
Despite a PE of around 80, my thinking is if its going to be "socially unacceptable" to pay dividends, then investors will pile onto whatever stock has the best current implementation of the new universal business model. Which is probably Amazon. The obvious concern for those that don't like Amazons business practices, is that other companies follow suit and adopt the entire operating model.
The other option is going to be rampant house price inflation as people store their excess incomes in their home by buying the next wrung up the ladder - which will just increase the price of each band for everyone.
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Try and buy anything electronic, and if you check the company name, it might look friendly, like Zoeview, but the address will be something like shenzhen
guangdong in China. Amazon don't seem to be regulating any of this. At least the groceries business will be local, unless you order live bats.
If you ordered anything that isn't 100% standard from Apple (for instance, a MacBook with extra memory) you will find in the UPS manifest that it's being shipped straight from their Shanghai factory too.
What gets me more annoyed is that Amazon stil allows vendors to rig their sorting with prices of £0.01 and the actual cost hidden in the shipping fees, and their ^%#$$ sponsored articles ignore sorting completely.
.. who will keep their mouth shut about the circumstances they have to work in.
As far as I can tell, Amazon only improved matters after it leaked, and they had sacked those who organised staff after being at first ignored. That's not a good idea to keep the business operating IMHO, they can do better - and should.
Interesting comment.
On the east side of the pond, we enjoy labour-related laws that require a process and a reason before making someone redundant.
However, in the U.S., I believe (happy to be corrected if I am wrong here) some states allow firing 'without cause', whereas some states require a valid reason for termination of employmentand are known as 'with cause' states.
I should think that most buisinesses in the US operating in 'without cause' areas take full advantage of that when necessary.
Anyone done a study of Amazon's staff retention or turnover in 'with cause' states against 'without cause' states?
The primary grocery delivery company in my neck of the woods is Peapod, run locally by Giant Foods. I think they MAY be owned now by Safeway, though, which is a huge conglomerate of grocery chains. I've used Peapod for well over 10 years, and they've been wonderful. Until now.
A delivery slot cannot be had for fun, love, money, chalk, or marbles. They are booked SOLID two weeks out. Pickup times aren't quite as sparse, but frankly, a time to trundle by so some ape can put bags in my boot isn't all that useful. So the partner goes to the supermarket catch as catch can, and picks up what's available that we can use. I assist by finding other foods and useful household stuff online and having it delivered. I've managed to score a fair bit of ground beef from a local Amish farm co-op that has instituted overnight delivery in insulated boxes. It's good meat, but being grass-fed and honestly pastured, it has a far different flavor and texture than supermarket beef, which makes it great for stuff like chilli, spaghetti, and SOS (s**t on a shingle), but not so much for your general hamburger patty. It makes fantastic chilli, though, and I make a MEAN pot of Texas Red (no beans, thankyewverymuch).
I hope supply chains can open up soon, and things can slowly get back to normal (or quickly, I'm not really picky so long as it happens), because while I could manage to get Atkins bars and Easy Mac from Amazon last night, paper towels were not to be had that I could find. At least, not the kind you'd want to put against your skin. I could get the kind that you scrub with, but not the kind you might wash your face with. (I don't use washcloths unless I have to, as I am prone to rosacea, and using a cloth over and over exacerbates it, and having to run it through the washer every time I wash my face, or have a cupboard full of 'em, is a bit of a pain.)
I feel for everyone who has lost a job or worse, lost a loved one, and hope things can get back to a semblance of normalcy relatively soon, and without leaving the entire world a rat's nest of bread lines and Hoovervilles.
I guess the real question is what will this ongoing coronavirus situation impact class relations going forward.
The salaried PMCs (professional, managerial classes) are the least affected: they're still getting paid and they can afford to order everything from Amazon.
However, the people who are paid poorly have just had their noses shoved into the fact that even their crappy jobs aren't reliable for the little money they do get.
The ones who have work: grocery, food delivery, etc get the bonus of playing the coronavirus lottery.
The many who don't...
In related news, I put in an order for in-stock, fulfilled-by-Amazon items on March 28. They haven't shipped yet, but Amazon assures me (both times I've asked why they haven't shipped) that it'll be here by the Amazon-selected arrival date of April 25. Apparently "super-saver shipping" is defined by Amazon as "5-7 business days after shipping". Or I could pay an extra $12 and have it arrive Friday...
Amazon will be one of the few companies that comes out of this better off. Because they are delivery only and everything that happens is out of public sight or not their problem Amazon will continue to grow, destroying any form of competition.
They may be cheap now, they may have good delivery etc but once everyone is conditioned to using them and competition has been ruthlessly obliterated because they simply cannot afford all the tax mitigation and other scams that they do, we will all suffer.
Amazon are no better than the Victorian mill owners, paying workers a pittance whilst milking the system for everything possible. It just happens to be on a bigger scale and the general public's quest for "cheap" and bugger the consequences is providing an increasing revenue stream.
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