AMAZON
First of all, an Amazon warehouse consists of floor after floor of items in closely packed bins.
Secondly, a worker has to run briskly (almost at a run) to each of these bins, load the items into a giant car, register them with a scanner, run the cart back down to a shipping area and unload and label the items.
Work enough.
But the unsettling part is the worker’s location is ‘tracked’ at all times.
His speed between orders is ‘tracked’ at all times.
His ‘time’ is ‘tracked’ at all times, and a disturbing alarm goes off in his input device if he is ‘falling behind.’
Imagine eight non-stop hours of this.
In other words, the typical Amazon employee is put to work under conditions of extreme duress...a condition created, maintained and supervised by technology.
TACO BELL
I was looking over the shoulder of the Taco Bell ‘server’ at the drive-through window and noticed there were four clocks running on a screen over his head.
Three of the clocks (which were counting down the SECONDS) were green, one was red.
I asked the worker if he was being timed and he said ‘yes.’
Further inquiry into this ‘timing’ of Taco Bell workers led to the discovery that they are being ‘tracked’ and ‘timed’ and all this information is being ‘stored.’
That’s right, each employee’s ‘record’ contains a list of his or her ‘time’ in completing customer orders.
This ‘record’ not only accompanies the employee throughout his ‘career’ (if you can call it that), but plays a prominent role in deciding who gets fired.
How’s that for stressful?
Time is money, right?
What ingenious “corporate manager” came up with all these human slave tracking and whipping ideas.
Technology is being used to slave drive the underpaid employee into the ground!
WHITE COLLAR WORLD
I was talking to some fellow white collar employees of various sorts, and was surprised to discover ‘tracking’ and ‘recording’ was also happening on their end of the economic sphere.
Believe it or not, cameras are now being installed inside work cubicles.
Computers track and record all employee activity, especially when it comes to ‘production.’
All phone conversations are recorded and filed.
Bosses are TIMING employee breaks to the coffee room and to the BATHROOM...all this being recored on the employee’s record, of course.
SLAVE TEACHERS
Meanwhile, a friend who is a teacher has now told me the ‘new’ classroom is run like production line.
There is a CAMERA in the classroom to which the principal apparently has real time access at any time.
Furthermore, this camera is not only records, but ‘files’ the activities of each day.
The poor teacher has not only to keep an eye on the camera, but on his watch because there is a certain thing he must be teaching at a certain time during each day.
He is told what to teach, when to teach it and how to teach it.
To make everything run smooth, there is a ‘commissar’ that busts in at random moments to make sure he is ‘on schedule.’
I am sure technology will soon replace this commissar with something even more real time and more ominous.
Cameras in the bathrooms?
Of course!
It helps cut down on vandalism.
Any sense of human privacy, human dignity or human rights seems to have apparently gone down the oblivion toilet.
Results! That’s what matters.
I can only speculate about all the damaged, mismanaged, lost items and orders created by this ‘time and whip’ system of hi-tech management.
The new ‘ingenious’ corporate corporate culture of timed pressure is, of course, a formula for error.
As to the teacher, it is obvious that reading from a timed script is a formula for a crud education
But of course...the road to hell is always paved with good intentions....and optimistic production quotas.
THE FUTURE
I don’t have to use much imagination to see that many of the ‘jobs’ now filled by hapless employees like those at Amazon, Taco Bell and corporate offices will soon be filled by robots.
And that in the meantime, the human employee will be run ragged into the ground by robotic technology.
To cope with this, the ‘human’ employee will require new types of electronic and medical intervention to help him or her deal with the new demanding environment.
Whether it be pills or some sort of electronic implants, these desperate, depressed, hopeless and underpaid creatures will JUMP at the chance of any enhancements (see previous article) which will help them accommodate themselves to the new standard.
CONCLUSION
We are being abused by technology.
In the process, we are being electronically ‘whipped’ and pressured like slaves to accomplish ever increasing quotas of inhuman production.
This is not normal.
The corporate masters need to get a grip...before the population takes things in its own hands...terminates illegal immigration...ends Chinese imports...cuts corporate subsidies...and starts assembling their own more logical and more humane concept of what an economy and a work environment should look like.
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