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.

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

 

[Ahriman]

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.

Ginger NPC and the pieces of flair on her vest, looks straight out of "Office Space".

 

[frozenrunner]

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.

We have those at my work you just get a card that bills some random line item in accounting.

Some workplaces use "vending machines" to keep track of who has gotten what supplies, too. You have an allotment per month or something. Don't have to pay someone to do inventory.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

How long until the suicide booths?

Not long enough

 

[Non-breath oblige]

Calm
Fitter
Healthier
And more productive

A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics

 

[CoolSixtyNiner]

And it has at least five cameras so don't you dare jerk off or draw a gamer cross.

Someone is going to jerk it for sure with or without cameras. Imagine that convo with the floor manager.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

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.

"Well, nobody wants my supple 20-something ass!"

Seriously speaking, the trap of student debt aside, nobody should be intending to work in an Amazon warehouse for years on end without taking any kind of step towards upwards social mobility so they can make more money that makes their objectives (e.g. buy a house, pay down their student loans) easier to attain. I don't even think Amazon will let you work for them that long anywhere in the non-executive portion of their ladder without trying to run you out-- at least, that's what they (allegedly) do to software engineers within four years to keep them from gaining the ability to hold stock or whatever.

 

[DamnWolves!]

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."

Trying not to power level, but I try hard to stay connected to what I call "the front line workers" where I'm at.

You have to remember, these people have no particular ambition beyond a 2.5% cost of living increase every year. You--an intellectual--may be able to put up with the bullshit at work because you hope it will pay off in the near-term. You are on a career path, which means you see your working life as a means of improving your status in life. These people see work completely differently. They want to show up, do the exact same shit every day and talk to their friends at work. For them, work is means to an end--to pay for weed and groceries. They will never be promoted. This may be corporate, but they're still in a dead end job.

But here's the thing: when those people are unhappy, they will make your life a living hell. Have you changed something ever so slightly? Well, these people probably interact with the process you fucked with hundreds or thousands of times a day, which means you just fucked their whole day up and now they hate you. I think it's because of that attitude that most managers lose sight of the fact that these are still people of roughly average intelligence (true wagie jobs excluded) and they can still be insulted by your patronizing bullshit. I had to stop our HR department from trying to give out $10 giftcards to them and calling that a "Christmas Bonus", because doing so is really insulting--I genuinely had to have the "how would you feel if you got a $10 giftcard and the company called it a bonus?" talk with them before they understood. Unsurprisingly, HR mostly knows these people from seeing their names on the payroll.

There's a chain of command at most companies and once you get two or more levels up from the bottom, you basically stop interacting with these front line people; the people that make your business actually work. They may be unambitious, whiny little shits who all act like they're in Kindergarten, but they also know their one particular task really really well, and there's a surprising amount of insight to be gleaned from them when it comes to making strategic decisions at higher levels. IMO, everyone in the C-Suite should do like an "undercover boss" thing, just to see what's working and what isn't at the lowest levels of operations.

 

[Stoneheart]

Ginger NPC and the pieces of flair on her vest, looks straight out of "Office Space".

wow Aniston was hot in that and not some ginger mongo...

EXPRESS YOURSELF!

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Guarantee that Amazon corporate found out that their warehouse people were building forts to take their breaks in (as you do in warehousing) and implemented these pieces of shit as a poor substitute.

You have to remember, these people have no particular ambition beyond a 2.5% cost of living increase every year. You--an intellectual--may be able to put up with the bullshit at work because you hope it will pay off in the near-term. You are on a career path, which means you see your working life as a means of improving your status in life. These people see work completely differently. They want to show up, do the exact same shit every day and talk to their friends at work. For them, work is means to an end--to pay for weed and groceries. They will never be promoted. This may be corporate, but they're still in a dead end job.

It's only a dead end if you make it that way. Lots of people only see a job as a paycheck rather than a way to get paid to learn lots of shit. Get all your certs and licenses then drop their asses to work as a specialist contractor.

I think it's because of that attitude that most managers lose sight of the fact that these are still people of roughly average intelligence (true wagie jobs excluded) and they can still be insulted by your patronizing bullshit.

Every single one of those line people would take a small change in sales or booking or inventory procedures or whatever, that costs nothing, over some "we appreciate you" token corporate gesture.

Fact is, the worker bees don't have a seat at the table. Nobody listens to the folks who actually do the work and would rather implement some bit of "technology" sold to them by some scummy 3rd party the office drones have a boner over rather than, I dunno, moving the dumpster next to Bay 3 so that the hostlers can get 53' fleet trailers in there. After a while the workers just stop trying to fix shit. Corporate wants this shit all fucked up and will not to listen to the little people who actually know better.

 

[Corette]

Suicide booths from Futurama are real now I see.

Amazon booths don't give the sweet, sweet release of death.

 

[Kane Lives]

Amazon booths don't give the sweet, sweet release of death.

Not yet, anyway.

 

[DamnWolves!]

Fact is, the worker bees don't have a seat at the table.

I am the farthest thing from a communist, but when market balance between supply and demand for labor gets fucked up--perhaps due to millions of third world immigrants being imported by your incompetent government to make sure Boomers can constantly refinance their $2 million homes they bought for $185k--the whole thing gets pretty dystopian pretty quickly. Public companies are focused primarily on in-quarter profits and when the CEO is also the majority shareholder, chances are good that the board is full of his buddies. Their mission is to maximize profits, which means that things like technical debt or appropriate staffing levels are often recognized and then purposefully ignored, because these activities are not directly revenue-generating. This tends to be worse in mono- or oligopolistic corporations. When it's a buyer's market for labor, it means that your worker bees can be easily replaced. If they've been there for a while, it usually means you get to save anywhere from 10-40% of their salary by firing them and hiring someone new. Companies are much more concerned about employee happiness when it takes time and money to replace someone who is just going through the motions.

Corporate wants this shit all fucked up and will not to listen to the little people who actually know better.

That being said, there are also a lot of dynamics at work that your worker bees don't have insight to. For example, they may be working in a department that management has simply decided to "run for margin", because management knows that part of the business won't be viable long term (often happens in an M&A situation, where Corp A buys Corp B, but some business activity Corp B does is outside the scope of Corp A's market/product strategy). With the anonymity of the internet, modern businesses can't always afford to tell everyone what's going on all of the time, because that's how you get leaks and then the SEC comes busting down your doors. Other times, the change you're suggesting may seem obvious to you, but can have knock-on effects on other jobs and departments (categorizing products "properly", for example--it may be proper to you, but Finance has standards they have to meet and perhaps your proposal will fuck them up).

Every single one of those line people would take a small change in sales or booking or inventory procedures or whatever, that costs nothing, over some "we appreciate you" token corporate gesture.

They cost time and, more importantly, risk. Corporate America's motto is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Regardless of where they sit on the corporate ladder, most people aren't very good at their jobs; new processes take an enormous amount of time, are usually screwed up the first time, and are almost always guaranteed to upset some of those worker bees. Gestures of appreciation for going above and beyond are hard to express right now, but I am of the opinion that if you aren't paying overtime (extremely common in white collar work, even for the "worker bees"; another problem with the fucked up balance between supply/demand, but you have to be realistic because your competitors are all doing the same thing), you can at least try to make the reward commensurate with the amount of extra effort required. You do have to be extremely careful that your actions are still seen as exceptional and not to be "expected", but you can only say "thank you for staying late to get this done" so many times before you actually have to show your thanks instead of just telling them. Failure to do so is how employees get cynical and toxic. This is the state HR is trying to avoid with their wagie cagies and $10 gift cards, but HR is basically where terminally mediocre people go to make a living if they can't be public school teachers (usually their first choice). They have a professional ecosystem where they learn "techniques", all taught by people just as mediocre as they are--is it any wonder they fail at it so often?

 

[RodgerDodger]

It keeps working or else it goes in the box again

 

[AnotherPleb]

It keeps working or else it goes in the box again

Unions are feared by globohomo for a reason.

 

[RodgerDodger]

Where do you think chicken tendies come from? It's why they taste like failure

 

[pedoguyguykrai]

I wonder if work is gonna go up for me, then again I am after all just a gore janny, who can take vacations when ever I damn well please and not be confined to a wage cage. Amazon you have my blessing to druve your workers to suicide it just means more business for me.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

They cost time and, more importantly, risk. Corporate America's motto is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Regardless of where they sit on the corporate ladder, most people aren't very good at their jobs; new processes take an enormous amount of time, are usually screwed up the first time, and are almost always guaranteed to upset some of those worker bees.

No, they are generally incompetent. They are totally isolated from the reality on the ground and do not incorporate a way for feedback to move the other way. It is a top down command structure. That is the problem.

Like, where I work they could change one number in their computer system. Just one default value that is used in sales and registration as a calculation for shipping to one that isn't a million years old. Change it to a more accurate modern one reflective of the way new stuff ships and it would solve all of these operations issues as having the size and scope of what you are shipping off by 16% from what it was booked as is a huge problem.

One number. A default value in the registration menu that nobody but the people in operations know or even care about. But holy oh fuck did they just get through pumping millions into IT for third party software so that operations people can look at this flawed sales information on their smartphones. Yay!

 

[RandomTwitterGuy]

just extreme bondage, google House of Gord, mr. Gord is a connoisseur

This is not my fetish in any way, but i am impressed.

 

[The Final Troondown]

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.

Yerh man that sucks
I’m gonna order them some flowers off Amazon to cheer them up

 

[murdered meat bag]

Same here fuck Amazon and their bullshit. Bezos should pay his fair share and stop treating his workers like disposable drones. Too many stories of slipped disks and people being sent to hospital for heat exhaustion and lax safety standards.

on the other hand, theres a growing class of stupid dopeheads who cant do basic math or unfuck a rats nest of cabling and-

Niggers get jobs as hair dressers and fast food workers because that's all they can get hired for.

-I don't want to pay more taxes for NEET welfare or give to people who can earn their keep but opt not to because of charity.

So the amazon wage cage is the best way forward. we're going to brazilianize, might as well get a head start.