Radiolab - Brown Box

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

You order some stuff on the Internet and it shows up three hours later. How could all the things that need to happen to make that happen happen so fast?   It used to be, when you ordered something on the Internet, you waited a week for it to show up. That was the deal: you didn’t have to get off the couch, but you had to wait. But in the last few years, that’s changed. Now, increasingly, the stuff we buy on the Internet shows up the next day or the same day, sometimes within hours. Free shipping included. Which got us wondering: How is this Internet voodoo possible? A fleet of robots? Vacuum tubes? Teleportation? Hardly. In this short, reporter Gabriel Mac travels into the belly of the beast that is the Internet retail system, and what he finds takes his breath away and makes him weak in the knees (in the worst way). Producer Pat Walters and Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store, a book about Amazon.com, assist. *****This podcast contains some language and subject matter that might not be appropriate for young listeners******  

Wait, you're listening to radio lab from WNYC. Okay, let me make sure this recording. You gonna tell me something? I think I'm gonna tell you about diapers. Okay. So we order from diapers.com all the time, you know, because we have these kids. That would be called diapers.com.

You guys know no diapers.com? That's an actual name of the website. My God, it's like such a part of our lives. I just figured it would be like, yeah. I mean, it's all the crap that you don't want to have to leave the house to get, you know, like paper towels. Okay. Oh God, I have to get on the street to get paper towels.

Well, you can get it from diapers.com. So we order it. Hey, this is Chad Radio Lab. Today, I want to play you an older story that we think is still totally relevant. Actually, maybe more so now than when we played it originally. There's been, as I'm sure you heard, a ton of stuff in the news over the last few years about the entire universe of companies and warehouses and people who work at these places behind the scenes

to fulfill all of this stuff that we so effortlessly buy online. All of these harrowing stories about working conditions and unionization efforts, But back in 2016, we had a very unique opportunity to crawl inside the day-to-day experience of these workers. And given how ubiquitous online ordering is now, we just found ourselves thinking back on that story. So we're going to play it for you. And if you stick around to the end, you'll hear kind of an amazing update

from the reporter on this story. And let's leave it at that for now. So back to the original conversation. Yeah, Shivers.com, so we were ordering. How would you get paper towels delivered promptly? I tell you, this is exactly what, this is exactly the crux of the story. It's a simple story,

and that we would order these giant boxes of shit from diapers.com, and they would appear second day, three days later. And then one day, Carla orders it, and it appears the same day. The same day. Yeah. And now, every time that we click submit on this thing, it shows up like three hours later, a huge box of stuff. You must be only blocks from the worldwide headquarters of diapers.com and thies and some taxis.

I guess like if someone asked me to pick up that stuff at the corner of Delhi, it would take me all day. Somehow, it shows up like just in a few hours. And I just, I began to be like, what the hell happens after you hit submit? It's like magic. It's so wonderful and that's the future, dammit. So what ended up happening is I was thinking about this in a sort of passive way and as often

happens, things sort of converged and I ended up reading this article by a writer or producer Pat ended up interviewing. Yes. His name is Gabriel Mack. It's totally badass, investigative reporter, brought it from WarZones and natural disasters all over the world. And several years ago, he wrote a story from Mother Jones magazine where he actually got himself

hired at one of these internet retailer warehouses. They're called third party logistics contractors or 3PLs, that's what they call them in the biz. And they basically handle all the goods that you order off the internet. So when you order something off the internet, you're actually probably dealing with a company that's not the company you think you're dealing with. And maybe you think there's robots that just make these items show up at your house

within a few hours of you ordering them. But as Gabriel come to find out, a lot of the time? That's not how it works. Not even close. And we'll start at the beginning. When you're sitting in your couch and you hit some bit, your order bounces off some servers and ultimately gets funneled to a warehouse.

Just a giant warehouse. If we were rounding, we would say it was a million square feet. So what is a million square feet? Like how many football fields could I fit in there? Or that would be a lot. About 17. So just imagine like a huge airplane hangar. 17 football fields long, filled with people.

There's thousands of us. And all I can put us regionally is west of the Mississippi, because we can't say for legal reasons where we were. Left half of the United States. Yes, I was hired as a picker. And picker's jobs are basically to run around This cabin is warehouse and find the crap that you ordered off the internet. So basically your day is you arrive at the warehouse You put all your stuff in the lunchroom because you can't take anything except for the clothes on your backs into the warehouse Soon today walk in all the pickers are handed little computers. We get our little scanners

You have a handheld scanner. And it's on the little screens of those scanners that the orders you make sitting on your couch Actually appear. It pops up like go to this section this region this shelf this unit find a Malibu Barbie. Go and it tells you how many seconds that you have to get there like 15 seconds 14 13 12 and it tells you how many seconds that you have to get there. Like 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12, and it counts down. It counts down? Like a little... Oh my gosh. And so it pops up 15 seconds, 14, 13, 12.

The banner that you used makes sounds. Fuck. I'm almost positive it did. Can you imitate it? Like what? Beep. Beep. Beep.

It's like that. In any case, it's standing in the middle of 17 football fields. It's got 15 seconds to find the region that has the shelf that has the bin, that has the barbie. And then scan it, put it in a little plastic tote and then the plastic totes get set on conveyor belts

and they get carried away into some other magical area where people put it in boxes and send it to your house. And as soon as he's done that, the next item will immediately pop up and it will say go to this section, this region, this unit, find a dildo, let's say, because there are lots and lots and lots and lots of people ordering dildos on the internet, apparently. And so you have 40 seconds, 39, 38, to make it to the bin with the dildos in it. It could be a football field away.

You go as fast as you can. Find the dildo. Scan your dildo, put it in the tote. Next item pops up, find an olive oil mister. Do you remember specific names of things? There were a lot of vitamins, male enhancement pills, lots of iPad things.

Really? Oh my God, there's so many things that you can put on and around an iPad, like an iPad, cover, carrying cases, protective cases, stand that you could put your iPad on so it worked like a computer screen, a handheld, like iPad, glove thing.

Dildos and iPad accessories are like the most popular items that I picked for sure. Did you ever find a dildo that goes around an iPhone? I would be like, this is a perfect internet thing. I'm sure it's in there though. You know, you don't really have time to even look at what you're doing. This is like a second where your brain is like,

why does this product exist? Why does this is like, why does this product exist? Why does this product exist? Why does this product exist? That's sort of like a whisper all the time in the background of the most part. It's kind of a blur. Video games, baby food, be diapers, paper towels,

who is ordering paper towels on the internet? Like who's the person who's doing this? And I was hired as a picker because of my youth and my fitness, which is to say that I'm not in my 70s Because there were a lot of people in the place who were in their 60s and their 70s Really that that all did. Oh, yeah, this is like old white ladies Gabriel says when he talks to people about this most of them assume the warehouse is full of like young Mexican people. But in fact, he says where he worked,

it was mostly white people, and most of them are older than him. I was 32 at the 31 at the time. Well. That's why they gave me a job where you run around a lot. Actually, on one of the consent forms, he had to sign before he was hired. It said that we were gonna walk 12 miles a day,

but going into it, I was like, yes, picker. I was actually really excited. You know, you get some exercise right now. My job, if I'm not out, like actively reporting, is to sit on my ass, right? And type and stuff. So I was like, score. Like, you know, I'm gonna do a good job.

And I didn't think it was gonna be my favorite thing in the world, but I thought it would be interesting and challenging. And I gonna do a good job. And I didn't think it was gonna be my favorite thing in the world, but I thought it would be interesting and challenging, and I would do a good job. And I was so wrong about all of those things. First of all, in this warehouse, and again, we can't say which one it is, nothing was organized the way you'd expect it to be. Like if you were looking for a dildo,

it might just be in some random box. This is like a bin full of crap. Thrown in with a bunch of other things. You know, so there's a bunch of batteries in there and an iPad, anti-glare cover, and then there's 10 CD, you know, whatever. Products seem haphazardly stored next to each other. And that's my design. According to this guy, Brad Stone, I'm the author of the Everything Store, which is a book that looks specifically at Amazon. There's actually some very sophisticated software that is governing Amazon fulfillment centers.

What happens is, say the warehouse gets a shipment of 17 dildos in. Instead of taking those dildos to like the dildos section, the computer will figure out how much shelf space or bin space those Dildos need and where in the warehouse those bins are. So it might say let me put four Dildos over here and three over there. The invisible hand that orchestrates the symphony that is Amazon's fulfillment center is called the mechanical sensei. The mechanical sensei. And it not only tracks, you know, where to put items, it tracks what the most efficient routes are for the pickers to go through these shelves in the shortest amount of time. Like imagine you sit down and order 14 products at one time. What the computer does is it will farm that order out to 14 different pickers in different

parts of the warehouse. And then we'll coordinate the timing so that each picker is grabbing the item, putting it on a conveyor belt in a certain order so that all the products arrive to the same box at the same moment. It'll make sure that box is just big enough but not too big. It figures out when to get those boxes on trucks and when those trucks should leave. And eventually if you believe Jeff Bezos, the Sensei will send out fleets of tiny helicopter drones that will deliver your packages to your doorstep at lightning speed, no humans involved.

So, yeah, for the moment, most of the time saving they're going to get is from making the human pickers pick faster. Because if you think about it, once the packages get on trucks, the truckers are still going to have to follow the speed limit. But there's no OSHA laws about how fast you can make people work inside the warehouse. And the way you make those people fast, at least in assume you're an idiot and you just aren't seeing it. You can't swear to the scanner that it's really not there. So you have to scan every item in the bin to prove that it's not there. So this is a very important thing to do.

So you have to scan every item in the bin to prove that it's not there. So you have to scan every item in the bin to prove that it's not there. So the one time this happened to me, I mean it happened to be a bunch of times, but one of the times it was like 30 individually wrapped batteries in this bin. And so I have to scan every single one. Before my scanner will let me go on, but I'm not given extra time to do that. And my scanner the whole time is like... 3, 2, 1, 0. Now it's counting the seconds that you're late.

3, 4. Does it go into the red or something? Yeah, so you know exactly how late you are. And you're trying to scan your stupid olive oil, mister. Gabriel says within the first few hours of his first shift, a supervisor walked up to him. Said, You're only making 48% of your goal

because you're supposed to be picking something like 170 items per hour. 170 things an hour. Yes. Wow. It was the first time in my life, because I'm an overachieving nerd from the Midwest. I went to Catholic school. You know, first time in my life, somebody came up to me and was like, you're doing a really

bad job. Yeah, you're right. I was like, me? But the third day, he says, he's doing a little better. It was like 50%, 50% of my goal. I asked my supervisor at one point, you know, can I pee just like in the middle of the day? And he was like, of course, this isn't China,

but it's gonna hurt your numbers. So we thought, screw it. You know what, I'm not gonna pee. I'm gonna hold it. Till lunch. The minimum shift is 10 and a half hours. And in that 10 and a half hours, you have 29 minutes and 59 seconds for lunch. If it's 30 minutes.

If it's 30 minutes. They told us that if it's 30 minute and one second, you get docked points. And if you get docked enough points, you get fired. Especially if you're new. They told me when I got hired at the temporary staffing agency, they had videos about it, they had people walking around telling you, you cannot miss any time or be one minute late at any point during your first week of orientation.

And so to sort of illustrate this point, he says that during his orientation, the lady leading our training says, you know, take Brian. Two points still got in the back of the room. Brian used to work here. And then his girlfriend had a baby. So he missed a day. And he was fired. Because it doesn't matter if you have doctors, notes or baby pictures or whatever it is. There are no exceptions to this rule. And so Brian had to go back to the temporary staffing agency. Go back through their application process, get hired by them, clear a new drug test, and go back through the training that he had mostly, you know, already done. And now he's sitting in this group with us and the

lady's like, welcome back Brian, you know, everybody don't end up like Brian. So Gabriel says, when you finally make it to lunch, you finally pee. You just shovel food into your face while you watch your watch and occasionally in between chewing. People talk. And everybody is asking each other, why are you here? Which is like, you know, in prison.

And we actually fact-check this because I was like, do people in prison really always ask each other what they're in for? Or is that just in movies? Yeah. And we fact-checked it and I asked this guy, he'd been in federal prison. People in prison really always ask each other what they're in for. Or is that just in movies. And we fact-checked it and I asked this guy who'd been in federal prison. He was like, it's the only conversation people are having. Gabor remembers the people at his table were like,

I got laid off, I used to be in a accountant, I used to be a store manager, I used to work in a restaurant. All over the place. Everybody was something else in another life. Gabor says, on one of his last days, he came back from work. Yeah, I came home from work. I took a bath trying to sort of soak out some of the soreness so that I would be prepared and ready to wake up again and do it all over and make my numbers which I was still failing to make. And I was diving with one of my friends

and he was like, how's it going? And I was like, can they fire this guy? Cause he had a baby. People are terrible. And yeah, I cried about it a little bit. I hadn't realized really how mean the system was. Not just that it was tiring

and not just that it hurt your body, but that it was mean in every way, at every turn that it possibly could be. It kind of punched me in the face a little bit. Coming up, I visit an Amazon warehouse. We'll be right back. Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.

Hey, welcome back. I'm Pat Walters. This is Radio Lab. So it used to be that when you order something off the internet, it would take like a week to show up. And obviously in the last few years, that's changed. Now you order something and it shows up the next day, or sometimes the very same day, even though the shipping is totally free. And before the break, we heard from a reporter named Gabriel Mac about the cost of that speed. Gabriel embedded in one of the warehouses that ships out the crap that we order on the internet.

And what he found there was pretty grim. Hello, hello, hello. Not too long after I talked to Gabriel, I went home for the holidays, Hello, hello, hello. Not too long after I talked to Gabriel, I went home for the holidays, which just happens to be near one of the biggest Amazon warehouses on the East Coast. Just outside of the island town Pennsylvania. And we should say again that Gabriel did not necessarily work at an Amazon warehouse. But talking to him, that got me curious.

This is a warehouse that in July of 2011 made some really big headlines, because the temperatures inside the warehouse had gotten so hot that people had started to collapse from heatstroke. And rather than put in air conditioning or send people home, the warehouse instead just had local paramedics wait outside and car people away. And once the news broke, Amazon did install air conditioners, but I was curious to see if things had changed. And based on the people that I met,

I think before I got kicked out. Yeah, I'm a reporter, I'm just a little bit more about. What do you do if you don't mind me asking? I'm a picker. Your picker? This woman who I met in the parking lot told me that she'd been working as a picker for about a month. You described what the work is like?

Well, it's easy for a beat. Everybody has the old opinion but I have lost a lot of weight. Like I like it. Yeah I like what I do. And when I went into the lobby of the building, I met this guy who told me he was the warehouse DJ. But during the holiday rush the company would move him around to different departments depending on like who needed motivation. Oh yeah. Like you DJ. These people take care of their people here. Yeah. I did karaoke shows. We did dance contest. Wait, like, like, while people were at work? Yeah. They're

dancing in place. You know, I do the Cupid Shuffle or do something crazy like the chicken dance if you want to do it. You know, I play everything from, you know, Christmas songs to punk from the 70s to Pachata and Metallica, Bollywood music. There's some old Indian women that were packing up boxes and stuff and then everything. Jamaican, reggae, tell me.

That sounds awesome. I mean, we did not have a DJ or a karaoke contest, which I would have won for the record. I mean, I like karaoke more than almost anyone, but that's not gonna fix the main issue, which is that they're working these people like draft horses. Although that woman I talked to seems to dig it. Well, not every person that I worked with hated it, I mean, there were a lot of people who made their numbers and they made their numbers every single day. And there were people who made over their numbers, and I don't even understand what was going

on with that, but they were very matter of fact about it. Or maybe I was thinking this is a talent. Like maybe if you try to become a lacrosse player and you're just not very speedy and you don't like physical contact, that that's not a great sport for you and you should play golf. I mean, I'm from the Midwest, you know,

I'm a hardy workstock. I was a mover for years and years and years. Like when you call people and they have to come to your house and put all your crap in boxes and then load all the boxes onto trucks and then move them to another place, that was my job for years. So I do... So do you order off the internet now? I mean after having done this, do you have you sworn off it?

I try not to order anything off of it. I don't actually buy that much stuff, but certainly I mean, no, I'm not ordering my paper towels off the internet if that's what you mean. I mean, it's just, yeah. No, I don't know who we do that. That's ridiculous. Ha-ha-ha.

Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Can you imagine that I thought that it was novel, that I was fulfilling an order for online paper towels at that time? Like, that's not the reaction you would have now.

And I was like, what? Jerk. Well, even when I was working in that warehouse, I was like, who is doing this? But of course, and I imagine this is partly why you guys are very angry with now, right? Like the only thing anybody does who doesn't have to go out into the world and work is at home and order things on the internet. Like I know. Now it's just like everybody orders everything and it just comes. I feel like we have tipped head long into the world that we were looking at in the story and now that is just the world, unfortunately.

Where else do paper towels even come from? People don't even know. No, I know. They just come from the internet. So this is Gabriel Mack and we brought him back into the studio for a bit of an update. So I mean, I talked to you seven years ago. And obviously I did a bunch of stuff in the intro but the last thing, like voice related thing that I did was, I was on the daily, you know, the New York Times podcast

in the 2017, which was about 15 seconds before I started transitioning. So, and that was it. So it's been three and a half years which was about 15 seconds before I started transitioning. And that was it. So it's been three and a half years and I've been sort of been like, feels like I've been in voice, hiding a little bit from being totally honest.

So. It's interesting because I was thinking about the, I mean, just what you were saying about, not just the story that we did, but like all of these stories you've made, like in books and awards, and now you're this new person with a new name and, uh, actually, can I stop you there? Yeah. The new, that's the thing that I find people say with some frequency, like, whole new person. Yeah, yeah.

That I'm an old person, that I'm the old person. You're the old person. Yeah. It's like becoming to me. I mean, I will always speak for myself here, although this is not in my experience a rare feeling about this. Transitioning isn't about becoming somebody new. It's about becoming somebody old like your old iteration that you just couldn't embody before. So. Okay, so that does, that does make sense. But I guess I'm wondering,

because you've done, you have all this work that you created before you transitioned. I mean, you won all these awards and you have these like amazing magazine features, but that all had a different name associated with them. So do you think about having to reclaim that work in some way because it was done under a different name? I mean, as this conversation totally proves,

like that work lives, like it still lives and it still breathes and it gets reissued or rediscovered all the time. So it's not like it's just sitting somewhere in a vault in which case I'd be like whatever, you know, but it doesn't, it's still live. And this, actually, this piece that we're talking about, this radio lab piece, is probably the one I think of the most often because of how I intro and I deed myself where in the first, whatever, 15 seconds of my talking,

I identify myself as a lady reporter, which I frequently did. Yeah. It just, yeah, it's a lot, but I think about it all the time. Actually, this interview specifically. Oh, yeah, we obviously cut that from the original, so it's not in there anymore. But what it was telling to me that when I was thinking back on this piece, I could kind of remember the beats of the piece.

But what I really remember for some reason was you ideing yourself as a lady reporter. Some reason that just sticks in my head. I was like, oh, well, that's... It's interesting to me that that sticks in my head and that means something. So let's talk about it. Maybe you have a trans-spidy sense

that you, like, somewhere deep in your subconscious that you're not even aware of. I'm serious, like maybe that's stuck with you as like something in the universe and in your body was just like flag that for later. Yes, like just noted. If I let away. Something's happening here. I don't know what it is, but in seven

years I'll figure out why something in my bones was like, hmm, I mean, it could be, I don't know. Yeah, I have remembered that always, always. I actually talk about the fact that I did it in the intro to my new book. Like, that's how, yeah, no, that's how much of a, because to me, that's like how clear it was that I was really grasping this identity. But it's a completely ridiculous answer perfectly straightforward question that somebody asked me. Who are you? Like, saying, calling yourself a lady doctor

is a commentary on the stupid patriarchy. It just is. In the shortest, most efficient way that you could possibly issue one, right? So there were layers of that happening. But I mean, you're right. Like, the gender of the person who reported this story is not particularly relevant to the late capitalist

internet third party logistics industrial complex dystopia that we live in. That is a true story. Well, let's go ahead and have your re-ID yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. It's going to take me a minute. I'm having a moment. You can't see me and have your re-id yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. It's going to take me a minute. It's a big, I'm having a moment. You can't see me because my camera doesn't work. Take your time. I'm going to say you're having a moment. Maybe I'm going to be the first person who cries through their ID. Maybe I'm going to be the first person who cries through their ID. Oh, yeah. I'm going to have fun for the show.

Would I be the first person? I think so. Yeah. I like that you have to think about it though. Oh. My name is Gabriel Mack. And I'm a writer and investigative reporter and a human person. Thank you to writer and reporter Gabriel Mack and producer Pat Walters. I'm Janepan Rod. This is Casey, calling from Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

Radio Lab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Hi, this is Jonathan Chan calling in from Singapore. Radio Lab was created by Jed Alperon route and is edited by Soren Wheeler Lulu Miller and Lutti Fnaster are our co hosts

So the lectinburg is our executive producer Dylan Keith is our director of sound design Our staff includes Simon Adler Jeremy Bloom Beckham Brestler Rachel Kusik David Gabel Matt, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwen, Saurakari, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molley Webster, with help from Shima Oliai, Sarah Sandback, and Karin Lyong. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly and Emily Krieger.