Six years ago, I learned first-hand just how obstinate people can be when confronted with facts inconvenient to their preferred political narratives. I had just become one of the first beneficiaries of Obamacare by signing up for health coverage through Covered California. At family gatherings, my wife’s conservative family would say things like, “Not a single person has been able to sign up for health care through the state exchanges.” And: “The cost is so high that nobody who needs Obamacare can possibly afford it.” And: “Just wait until you try to access your coverage. You’ll have to pay hundreds of dollars just to see a nurse.” None of this was true, of course, but they refused to accept it. I started carrying around a copy of my monthly Covered California bill so I could prove to these people that Obamacare was working for at least some people. “That’s Covered California,” they’d say dismissively. “Nowhere on that bill does it say anything about Obamacare.” Try as I might, I couldn’t make them believe that Covered California was Obamacare and that it only cost me a dollar a month.

I faced the same stubborn refusal to acknowledge complicating information after John Oliver’s Amazon report, only this time it was my progressive acquaintances who were resistant. I assured everyone at the Fourth of July barbecue that the sortation center where I work is not a miserable sweatshop, that I am treated well, and that I am relatively well remunerated for work I enjoy. But they would not listen. They just looked at me sadly and shook their heads as if to say, “He’s drunk the corporate Kool-Aid.”

I don’t object to journalists writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees. I only wish they would do so fairly. Just because a journalist has found an Amazon employee somewhere who got sprayed with bear repellant, that doesn’t mean Amazon employees spend their days in mortal fear of a chemical attack. In order for consumers to make informed purchasing choices, we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation. Not all work done for a global commercial juggernaut like Amazon (or Walmart, or McDonald’s, or Starbucks) is, by definition, harsh, cruel, and damn near inhumane, fit only to be described ominously as “Orwellian” and “draconian.”

To university-educated media professionals like Carole Cadwalladr, James Bloodworth, and John Oliver, an Amazon warehouse must seem like the Black Hole of Calcutta. But I’ve done low-paying manual labor for most of my working life, and rarely have I appreciated a job as much as my role as an Amazon associate. Oliver insists that Amazon should be spared no criticism just because it raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour. That may not sound like much to him, but it’s huge for people like me. Among US states, California (along with Washington and Massachusetts) has the highest minimum wage at $11 an hour (for companies with more than 25 employees, it’s $12). The $15 an hour I earn from Amazon is nearly 40 percent higher than the $11 an hour I earn from the bookstore. In fact, thanks to Jeff Bezos’s generosity, I may soon be able to give up my second job altogether.

I am writing this on July 15—Amazon Prime Day, one of the busiest days of the year on the Amazon calendar. I put in a six-hour shift this morning at the West Sacramento warehouse. The workday wasn’t brutal. The company treated us all to a pancake breakfast in the break room during our 10-minute break. Of course, you can’t eat a pancake breakfast healthily in 10 minutes, but no one in charge complained about the fact that most of us spent at least 20 minutes eating. Yes, we were all encouraged to chant Prime Day slogans during our morning stretch. And we were all given little “Amazon Prime 2019” lapel pins and other bits of “flair” to wear on our high-visibility safety vests. So what? A bit of company spirit is downright American. I don’t mind being a small cog in the machinery of American commerce. It keeps the bills paid and my stomach from growling. But if John Oliver and his ilk keep harping away at how inhumanely Amazon treats its workers, Bezos might decide to completely automate his operation and people like me will be out of a job. And that will not only ruin my Fourth of July, it will ruin every other day of the year as well.