https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-destroys-destroy-items-returned-week-brand-new-itv-2021-6
21st century version of that paragraph from the Grapes of Wrath about destroying the piles of oranges in front of hungry people.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
one of the funniest (worst) analyses ive read of grapes of wrath was that despite it being extraordinary anti-capitalist, pro labor union, pro working class...this one analysis writer thought that a scene where someone chokes a baby turtle is a metaphor for "communism's chokehold". yeah good job genius. why would it not represent the chokehold of capitalism????????
I've never read the whole thing myself (I know, I know), but I do know it was banned in multiple parts of the country for being "communist propaganda", so it's probably worth reading.
Here's another good quote from the book:
The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on. The tractors which throw men out of work, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a principal – three hundred thousand – if they ever move under a leader – the end. Three hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won’t stop them.
The movie was protested by the Catholic Church, if you ever have a chance to watch it, do so. It doesn't have nearly the same level of misery as the book, but seeing it depicted on film in black and white by actors who all like lived through that time period is its own level of immersion.
I've realized in retrospect that my English teacher was a comrade. The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle, and a bunch of other stuff. He even said on the first day of class that he wanted us to "focus on the idea of the American Dream". Possibly the only thing we read that year that wasn't critical of capitalism was The Scarlet Letter.
fuck I just love capitalism so much. I love how efficient this system is. thank fuck we don't have some economic system where goods are given to those who need them, and instead we destroy things en masse to preserve the idea of an artificially created 'value'
there was a famous thing in Brazil in the 30s where to maintain the price of coffee, the government bought 80 million sacks of coffee and just burned them. or all the food the EU buys off failing farms to let rot
We basically do that right now, except it's before we grow the corn we just pay people to not-grow corn.
Pay ME to not-grow corn, motherfuckers, I'm real good at that.
CRP is mostly gone, tragically. the idea of limiting supply to support prices for grains was blown up during Nixon and replaced with direct payments to plant as much corn as you can, wherever you can, including highly erodible areas that should not be ripped up every year.
this allowed us to really start using our food production as a weapon of empire and give our grain processors and CAFOs access to grain for prices far below the cost of production.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
Nothing has changed in 100 years in America
fug, I just noticed another poster put this quote here already. I’ll leave it anyway
I have a habit of reading collections of short stories and then losing track of individual stories. Only to be frustrated when I remember a bit of a story and cannot find the story to reread it...
This reminds me of a story I read that was some futuristic human society where capitalism was king and consumerism was pretty much the religion. There was a big event where all the people would bring appliances, throw them into a big pile, and smash them to pieces as a mob. Then they were expected to go out and replace their old stuff with new stuff. It was a way to keep the economy functioning and people employed.
BUT.... there were a small group of dissidents that thought all of this was bullshit. One dissident group made a device that would pull some Akira type shit on a pile of mangled appliances and turn it into a giant monster that was supposed to go on a rampage...
At least this is what I think I remember of the story. One day, when I'm not so tired, I'll have to try to see if I can dig this story up again to figure out how far off the mark my memories are.
destroying unused laptops probably doesn't help the chip shortage...
Lmao from that twitter video
ITV: "The rest was tracked to landfill site"
Amazon statement: "No items are sent to landfill in the UK"
Fucking liars.
I wonder if this is also some tax or insurance bullshit where they make more money somehow destroying items they can't sell but claim they're defective??? Idk it's always some bullshit like that I'd imagine
In some cases it’s probably cheaper to destroy the items than reshelf or donate them, but for MacBooks? Those things hold their value ,even when heavily used, for years. Honestly that part is making me a tad skeptical of the story.
Like people probably return a lot of Amazon items and they probably need to be certified before resold, and I can see that leading to a lot of destroyed BluRays and stuff. But for stuff that even in poor quality have a high resale price it doesn't make sense.
Oh I can easily see this happening. Even if it were company policy to check items like Macbooks carefully, there is no incentive for the employee to be thorough, or even do checks at all.
I mean, what incentive do you have as a warehouse worker to check each item properly, even if policy says you should? Am I getting paid for that, or for getting the pile of packages to be smaller? Is my porductivity going to get measured in me being able to check a Macbook over for 30 minutes, or in the pile of other shit I didn't do in that time? And even if I am supposed to be checking each high-value item, am I being double-checked? Will I be in trouble if the thing I said is good to sell actually isn't?
So don't bother. Just say it's broken, save yourself some time to check the other 129.999 items that came in this week. Not like my boss will be likely to double check me in this scenario. The way they pay warehouse workers is not condusive to them going the extra mile.
I expect the only check that happens is if the customer actually sent the item back or not. Just open the package and check if the thing is really in there, then put it away.
I also dearly hope whoever is in charge of disposal steals a shit ton of stuff, bribing whoever is supposed to keep an eye out to look the other way.
Amazon internal theft is definitely pretty high but lots of cameras and on site LPAs.
They probably get to write off the whole sticker price from their taxable earnings. I work in a factory that makes complex doodads. These things could go through a dozen individual operations on various different machines before being complete. Hours of machine and labor time per part by the time it goes through the full production process. Say something sells at $100 per piece and the client orders 10,000 of them. If one of them gets scrapped, even on the very first operation, it gets written off for the full price, despite (usually) only costing a pittance in raw materials. If 5% get scrapped, that's a $50,000 write-off.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA IM SO FUCKING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
:jon-yell:
To be fair, we also did this at UPS, whenever something was badly packaged
Which location are you working at? Whenever we come across something badly packaged in the sort, we just tape it up.
It was an attempt at a joke about UPS smashing shit, but it got muddled because (also having been a sorter) I couldn't commit to the bit. For anyone reading who's not in the know: in reality the actual humans working at hubs are very gentle considering how fast the workflow is (ngl I still threw boxes, but carefully), they do repackage whatever they can, and any damage that happens can pretty much always be chalked up to the 3000 miles of road, flight, and especially conveyor belt that the box goes through rather than the 5 feet of being carried.
Its still funny to pretend we just dropkick it from one end of the building to the other because union rules say no bending over
At Amazon every box we touched we threw not gently. When you flagged a package as damaged you could choose unsalvageable or salvageable (which let's u choose donate or destroy) but wed only mark tape jobs as salvageable.
