Culture Amazon Introduces Tiny ‘ZenBooths’ for Stressed-Out Warehouse Workers - The AmaZen meditation booth is a small room where employees can watch company videos about mindfulness while a small fan moves the air around

Amazon Introduces Tiny ‘ZenBooths’ for Stressed-Out Warehouse Workers

The AmaZen meditation booth is a small room where employees can watch company videos about mindfulness while a small fan moves the air around.

www.vice.com

In one of its most dystopian moves yet, Amazon is introducing tiny booths where its overworked warehouse employees can momentarily escape a job so grueling, many employees say they don't feel like they have enough time to even use the bathroom.

The "ZenBooth'' or "Mindful Practice Room," as it's called, is part of the WorkingWell program Amazon announced on May 17. According to an Amazon press release, WorkingWell is a mix of "physical and mental activities, wellness exercises, and healthy eating support” meant to “help them recharge and reenergize." One of the WorkingWell initiatives is AmaZen, which “guides employees through mindfulness practices in individual interactive kiosks at buildings,” according to a press release.

What this looks like in reality is a coffin-sized booth in the middle of an Amazon warehouse where workers can use a computer to view "mental health and mindful practices."

Based on a video released on an Amazon Twitter account, plants sit on a shelf and a fan runs to cool down the employee. The skylight on top is tinted blue. Pamphlets and signs adorn the walls. A computer waits for the employee to load up a guided meditation video.

“With AmaZen I wanted to create a space that’s quiet, that people could go and focus on their mental and emotional well-being,” Leila Brown, the Amazon employee who invented the booth said in the video. “The ZenBooth is an interactive kiosk where you can navigate through a library of mental health and mindful practices to recharge the internal battery.”

Brown is giving away the game by using the language of machines. A worker is not a robot with a battery that needs to be charged. A worker is a human who needs things Amazon simply does not provide its workers. Amazon drivers piss in bottles and shit in bags. Amazon drivers sued for being paid less than minimum wage and fought against an initiative to install surveillance cameras in their cars.

Facing increased pressure from within and without due to its horrifying working conditions, Amazon has tried to clean up its image in the past year. It rebranded its brutal 10-and-a-half hour “megacycle” shift to “single cycle” after workers protested. AmaZen, like much of what Amazon is doing, is putting a new coat of paint on the same old shitty system.

Motherboard reached out to Amazon to find out when, exactly, its overworked staff is supposed to use the AmaZen booth. Is it during their notoriously short breaks? Should they break off five minutes of their lunch to stare at another Amazon computer screen?

Amazon did not immediately respond to Motherboard's request for comment.

---

Bruh. You know you dun goofed when Vice, of all media outlets (if you could call them that) are roasting your shitty idea.

 

[Don't Tread on Me]

This is all for show. Amazon 'fulfilment centres' aka warehouses, don't let their pickers and staff go to the toilet without putting them on a clock. If you go to the toilet too many times in one shift, you're fired.

So, how are they going to handle people saying "I'm stressed, i'm off to play candy crush in the zenbooth for an hour" ?

Yes, its awful but at the same time, it's to satisfy the overwhelming demand by their customers. If people didnt order off Amazon so fucking often, they wouldn't need to run themselves ragged from dawn til dusk.

 

[Wargarbl]

"Hey wagie, you look depressed. Come out of your work cagie and sit in this zen cagie for 10 minutes. Also, we'll be docking 10 minutes from your paycheck and giving you a written warning for non-performance."



Now if only I could figure out if Amazon is abysmal at optics, or is shunning optics as a fuck-you power move.

 

[Milkis]

"Hey wagie, you look depressed. Come out of your work cagie and sit in this zen cagie for 10 minutes. Also, we'll be docking 10 minutes from your paycheck and giving you a written warning for non-performance."



Now if only I could figure out if Amazon is abysmal at optics, or is shunning optics as a fuck-you power move.

If you buy the premise that the average HN poster is representative of the average Amazon engineer, they're just clueless. Totally unmoored. They argue straightfaced about $150k a year with bonusses being "embarrassing" and impoverished. A lot of them have come from rich families and have no idea how the poor think, but also have come via an Ivy League CS degree, which they think enables them to reason about any fucking subject via "first principles" and their own superior intellect. e.g. the ex-Googlers' "bodega box"


What do poor people like? Uh, I don't know, bodegas and meditation

 

[cactus]

I don't know, if the Ginger comes along with the booth I'm sure we could work out a better way to deal with work related stress. I'm more shocked by the Fastenal vending machine. Does Amazon make you pay for screws and such if something like that is necessary for your job? I don't even think that the Robber Barons of the 1800s were that fucking bad. Worst Cyberpunk Dystopia ever, would not run its shadows.

No, they don't make you pay for it, you scan your badge and get it for free. Usually they start limiting how much you can get out of it a weekender a few months though.

 

[Troonos]

I have a better solution.

Fire all of these negroids and methheads and hire robots to run the entire warehouse.

 

[Crazedking]

idk why dont they just let them go to the fucking bathroom? It does the same thing. They are alone and confined for a 5-10 min. They can pee, play or check up on things on their phone or cry/yell about their shitty job and they aint filmed because you arent allowed to film ppl in bathroom.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

idk why dont they just let them go to the fucking bathroom? It does the same thing. They are alone and confined for a 5-10 min. They can pee, play or check up on things on their phone or cry/yell about their shitty job and they aint filmed because you arent allowed to film ppl in bathroom.

You can't legally film people in the bathroom (or at least show that footage afterwards in public)

 

[TaimuRadiu]

Amazon continues to innovate, from robots ensuring you work more, the wage cage making sure you can't stop working, to the scream boxes where you can let off steam.

 

[TowinKarz]

What do poor people like? Uh, I don't know, but I like bodegas and meditation

THAT"s where the mistake happens:

Not only do they not know what poor people think, they don't care to learn....they think they know it all, or at least know better, and thus throw out these horribly out-of-touch ideas, and when they flop, they disregard the poors as "incomprehensible Neandertals who are ungrateful for all we did" - from there, the dehumanization and guilt-free disenfranchisement begins. And you end up with them unironically cheering "Wagie, wagie, meditate in cagie!" and don't see a single thing wrong with it. Assuming they don't skip that part and go right to "They shouldn't even be able to vote, they shouldn't even EXIST, they hold us back."

 

[Corpun]

Just go outside for fuck sake...

Go outside? At Amazon? You must be joking.

Now if only I could figure out if Amazon is abysmal at optics, or is shunning optics as a fuck-you power move.

I think they just don't give a shit about optics since they're another massive corporate empire you can't simply boycott without cutting off loads of shit like every either corporate monster.

 

[SeniorFuckFace]

Go outside? At Amazon? You must be joking.

No.

 

[the clap]

I'm just surprised they haven't implemented 'motivational' electric shocks for slow workers. . . yet.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

I'm just surprised they haven't implemented 'motivational' electric shocks for slow workers. . . yet.

If they wanted that, they'd just outsource to the chinese.

 

[Dan Abrams]

So do you get one allotted cry-session per month?

 

[knobslobbin]

This is pointless, those warehouses will be fully automated within 10 years and the drones currently doing the job will have been purged by various depopulation "vaccines" by then. The plan covers all goy.

 

[Billy Beer]

Yes, its awful but at the same time, it's to satisfy the overwhelming demand by their customers. If people didnt order off Amazon so fucking often, they wouldn't need to run themselves ragged from dawn til dusk.

I agree, but bezos isn't paying people to keep people in jobs, he's doing it because 5000 people picking in a warehouse is cheaper (short term) than automation.

He and others, treat people like shit. like they're nothing. it's a disgusting mind set that cascades through the ranks to the shop floors. The middle and front line managers in those warehouses are faggots

 

[melcarba99]

How long until the suicide booths?

 

[Wesley Willis]

So Amazon just bought MGM, and Warner is merging with Discovery on the heels of Disney buying Fox. By the time Netflix, Amazon and WarnerMedia merge into one company, everything will be fully automated and we can sit around all day watching streaming entertainment or playing video games.

 

[Overly Serious]

You will never pay off your student loans making $15 an hour picking products from shelves like a human robot. You know what your budget is, and how much rent costs, and how much money you can realistically save every month, and by the time your student loans are paid off, you'll be 40 fucking years old and have about 25 years of useful working life in you to start saving for a down payment on a house. When you get the house and can finally start thinking of dating, marriage, children, and all the things that come with a house, you'll be 50 and wrinkly and no one will want your used-up ass.

You know all of these things, and yet, you are powerless to do anything about it. The system has you by the gonads. You should've gone to trade school and gotten a job as a plumber instead of majoring in Women's Studies and Interpretive Dance, but it's too late. You will never have children. You will die alone in your depressing little apartment, and then, the cleaning robots will come collect your decomposing corpse.

There is only one thing left to do. Enter the soundproofed screaming booth, and scream until you hemorrhage the capillaries in your lungs.

Ah, now. There are a couple of things you can do. Namely, give up or revolt. You may be about to say those things don't work and you'd be right. But when a whole population starts to feel that way...

Also, I have been boycotting Amazon for over half a year now. It's made a few things slightly more difficult but nothing overly difficult so far. And I've saved money. I don't intend to return to consoomerism now that the lockdowns are (I pray to God) ending. I'm going to continue getting enjoyment from books, hiking and occasional forum posting. Fuck Amazon.

 

[Corpun]

No.

Amazon has wage cages and pays people to be anti-union on Twitter, you think they have out door time?

So Amazon just bought MGM, and Warner is merging with Discovery on the heels of Disney buying Fox. By the time Netflix, Amazon and WarnerMedia merge into one company, everything will be fully automated and we can sit around all day watching streaming entertainment or playing video games.



Ver archivo adjunto 2213380

Then the technocratic elitist utopia will finally be achieved. To quote Terry Davis,

"So I have an ultimatum: Bill Gates and the Illuminati got a herd of nigger cattle. WOOOO WE GOTT A HERD OF NIGGER CATTLE WE GOT A HERD OF NIGGER CATTLE. They got a big herd of nigger cattle yippie ki yay we're nigger cattle herders we got a herd of nigger cattle, they are the most docile fucking nigger cattle we got 'em so docile we got this awesome big fucking herd of nigger cattle and they shit and they sit there and they watch TV and they shit ITS THE BEST FUCKING HERD OF NIGGER CATTLE. We took away all their guns now they just shit and we watch them and were rich. We are so fucking rich. We have so much fucking money. We got this herd of nigger cattle WOOOOO. We're milking the fucking nigger cattle it's the best thing ever. So that's what the Illuminati got and I got a space alien. So here is my ultimatum: you can live in hell with my nigger cattle OR you can put me in charge of the space alien temple, the third temple. OK? Have fun with your nigger cause I sure as hell ain't gonna fucking suck your jew nigger cock. Fuck yourself you think i'm gonna fucking enjoy nigger cattle after I had a fucking space alien are you fucking crazy? I got a fucking space alien of course I'm not gonna fuck, fuck with nigger cattle fuck yourself. You fucking think i... enjoy your FUCKING NIGGER CATTLE YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE GO GO GO GO YOU GOT THE NIGGER CATTLE. You got a fucking herd of nigger WOOOO we got 'em so docile they just shit all day aint that so great?"