Something that I found unique to Amazon was that the delivery stations had engagement items and games inside of the break rooms. Some sites had card games, like UNO; one DS had a regulation pool table; and a couple of them even had a mini basketball setup—similar to the kind you’d see inside of Chuck E. Cheese. At DHO5, we had a foosball table; people would stop for a quick game during breaks or lunchtime. I’m a card-carrying germaphobe, and I needed all of my break time to decompress from the things I regularly heard and saw during Sort, so I didn’t use any of the games. I did get a kick out of watching other people play, especially when there was an all-out competition going on between a couple associates.
One day, I was sitting in a chair in the locker area of the break room when three of my site’s Front Half Process Assistants walked past me. As they passed the foosball table, the tallest one, a woman named Brittney*, pointed out that the game was damaged or broken. She told the other two PA’s, “Can’t have shit for niggers.” She shook her head disgustedly and she and the other PA’s continued on their way.
If you aren’t familiar with the expression ”Can’t have shit for niggers,” it’s a fairly common, race-specific version of the oft-memed “This is why we can’t have nice things.” Loosely translated, it basically means that if you have anything nice around Black people, or niggers, they will inevitably destroy it. The expression could be used for tangible things (like a foosball table) but also for intangible things like concepts or ideas that one feels Black people might get in the way of or ruin (think hour-long breaks or free parking).
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, I instinctively held my head down, just because I was so embarrassed. Even though I hadn’t broken the tabl—even though I never used it—I still felt partly accountable as part of the group—the niggers—that she was referring to. I just felt icky and generally responsible. Aside from that, it was jarring to hear a supervisor group a whole race of people according to the actions of what was probably just one or two associates—I mean, how many people does it realistically take to break a foosball table? I can’t speak for the rest of my team or for any other Black people (or associates of any race) that I worked with, but I treated everything that belonged to Amazon with extreme care. The electronic devices and Standard Work items that I used in my role? I always handled them carefully and returned them to charging stations or drop-off areas promptly at the end of my shift. So, I didn’t want to be lumped into her categorization simply because I shared race in common with the suspected offender.
I wished that, in that moment, Brittney had refrained from the using the racial slur “nigger.” She could have simply referred to the “Blacks” who she felt had broken the table. Process Assistants are not a part of Leadership—they’re hourly employees, not salaried like the managers or “Red Vests” inside of the DS—but they are supervisors. They make decisions about staffing and other key components of shift operations inside the station. So, while the openness of her comment can’t be directly attributed to Leadership at DHO5, to me, it said a lot about the building culture under that roof. Managers—Leaders—stood by at the dock and worked side by side with Black employees like me while playing music that denigrated Blacks as “niggers.” This happened on a daily basis on Sort; it wasn’t an occasional issue. And just like Brittney’s assessment of having nice things with “niggers” around, I couldn’t even imagine substituting any other racial group or ethnicity into her statement, and Amazon being okay with what she said. “Niggers,” on the other hand, seemed to be an acceptable group to slander as a whole, to paint with the broad brush of being destructive.
I had never found Brittney to be particularly nice to be around—she was prone to shouting at AA’s when she was frustrated or when the dock fell behind. I already tried to steer clear of her, but after that “Can’t have shit for niggers” incident I often asked to work on whatever part of Sort she was running: If she ran the dock, I’d ask to be placed on the floor. If she was in charge of the floor for the day, I would try to get into a role at the dock. Through the rest of our time working together, I found it bizarre that the Leaders who Brittney worked under, didn’t seem to take issue with a supervisor making a broad racial judgment like that. In the break room, of all places—where dozens of AA's who worked under her could hear her.
Individual incidents like this one would build over time to create an outline of the culture at Amazon—I just didn’t know it yet.
*Name has been changed. I do not support doxxing any of the associates, managers, or witnesses involved in these incidents. Other than changing the names of people involved, no other details of the incidents on Big F*cking Smile are changed or redacted.
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