The Amazon Empire

From shoes to sushi cushions, there’s only one place you could buy it all, amazon.com. But it wasn’t always a retail rainforest. It started as an online bookstore. After getting $130,000 from his parents and first investors, Bezos began his new endeavor. To his surprise, it was a success, but not everyone was happy. Because Amazon had made an online bookstore with cheaper books, the brick and mortar bookstores were soon tossed out of the picture. Bezos was not ready to stop there, he decided to start creating his own tablets that would allow people to read on the go, now known as the Kindle.

Fast forward 10 years, Amazon has devoured Whole Foods, Zappos, The Washington Post, and many more companies. It has brought its stock price from just $18 to $1,495, making CEO Bezos, the richest man on the planet. So how has a loss of 3 billion kept this company running? It boils down to the investors. Investors are convinced in Amazon with hopes that someday it’ll make a bigger profit. As a result of them pooling their money in, its share price continues to rise. This might all sound great, but internally Amazon isn’t so great.

Amazon had provided many jobs ranging everywhere from South Africa to Ireland. In California, most employees are working in software and engineering, while in more rural areas, employees work at shipping and handling in warehouses and call centers. These may seem completely unrelated, but there are common shadows lurking behind the company. The long, unforgiving hours, and overall horrible work environment. Many employees say that the work environment of Amazon is even inhumane. To the point where people don’t have time to go to the bathroom and are timed while walking from aisle to aisle picking up items. So why would anyone still work there? For Amazon employees, they’re hooked for the shares and stock prices. There’s another reason why employees also find it hard to leave. It’s called “The Hunger Game Review Process”. To simplify it means that if an employee isn’t able to meet the standards, such as shipping 200 boxes an hour or pick an item 35 aisles away in less than five minutes, someone else will be more than willing to take their spot.

The terrible work ethic doesn’t end there, while Amazon’s share prices rise, business partners don’t get their fair share. Amazon allows for small businesses to sell on their website for 15% of their profit. But that isn’t enough for them, as soon as they see a 3rd party’s product doing well, they begin to manufacture and sell it for cheaper transferring all the transaction to them. This results in small businesses losing money and eventually going bankrupt. Does insane growth at the cost of monopolistic work ethics, ferocious work environment, and an exaggerated share value amount to success? Will covinience and consumerism allow Amazon to take over? The answer lies in what humanity considers prime.