Amazon wants you to know it is not the exploitative employer it is often made out to be. It wants you to know you should not believe nasty reports that its workers are forced to pee in bottles because they are not allowed toilet breaks. It wants you to know it is much maligned. Indeed, the e-commerce behemoth is so eager to communicate all these points that it has taken the unusual step of paying staff to tweet nice statements about it.
You may be asking yourself: is this real life or a dystopian fantasy? I’m afraid it is very much real life. It recently came to the internet’s attention that a number of Amazon warehouse workers have been scouring Twitter for criticism of the company and replying to it with suspiciously cheerful counterpoints. Last week, for example, an account called @AmazonFCShaye responded to a tweet that said the company should pay its workers more: “Did you know that Amazon pays warehouse workers 30% more than other retailers? I feel proud to work for Amazon – they’ve taken good care of me.”
@AmazonFCShaye, it turns out, is one of several Amazon “FC ambassadors”. FC doesn’t stand for forced cheerfulness. Rather, as Amazon said last week: “FC ambassadors are employees who have experience working in our fulfilment centres and choose to take the role of being an FC ambassador, do this full-time and receive the same compensation and benefits.” In other words, the warehouse workers tweeting super-specific statistics about how much better Amazon is than other companies are doing so because they are being paid to proselytise about how fulfilled they are by their fulfilment centre jobs.
The fact that one of the world’s most valuable companies, run by Jeff Bezos, the richest person alive, has found it necessary to assemble a small army of Amazombies to defend its honour online is telling. On the most basic level, it demonstrates how the e-commerce company has become one of the most prominent symbols of inequality. Bernie Sanders recently singled out Amazon for criticism, tweeting: “While Jeff Bezos’ wealth has increased $260 million every day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees wages so low they’re forced to depend on taxpayer-funded programs … to survive.”
On a broader level, Amazon’s ambassador programme is indicative of how emotional exploitation has become the norm in today’s economy. It is not enough to go to work and collect a paycheque any more; you are increasingly expected to profess a passion for your job. You are increasingly expected to act as if your work makes you happy. Take, for example, Pret a Manger, which may be one of the most prominent case studies in corporate-enforced performative happiness. The sandwich chain doesn’t have an army of employees defending it on social media (as far as I know), but it is famous for mandating a culture in which everyone is aggressively agreeable. In 2013, the CEO of Pret, Clive Schlee, caused controversy when he told the Daily Telegraph his workers were subject to constant surveillance to ensure they were giving off the right “Pret buzz”, which involved acting happy and engaged.
Schlee’s comments caused a backlash, but he also gained fans. Bill Taylor, the co-founder of the business magazine Fast Company wrote a defence of Pret in the Harvard Business Review, in which he said: “I’m convinced that emotional labour will become a more important part of the job at companies that win big in the future – and that’s a development that makes me smile.” Amazon’s introduction of positivity ambassadors would seem to prove Taylor right. One has to wonder, however, how much these fulfilment centre workers are smiling.