Give her around of applause. [applause]. Nick nicoludis would also like to recognize jennifer who will join emily. If its like this help us stay here and lets say changing neighborhoods like dumbo. I encourage everyone to buy a book if you dont have one after an emily will be happy to sign them later. So tonight were going to hear a little reading from a book conversations some q a, then i guess some job reading. What you are excited for. Before i bring them up, the memory do something here. So emily, worked at Philadelphia City paper, Philadelphia Weekly and the Philadelphia Daily News and has contributed to Washington Post and others. Jessica is the author of nomad land and awardwinning journalist whose work focuses on subcultures in the dark corners with the economy. She has written for harpers magazine the New York Times the Washington Post and she also teaches at columbia schools for journalism. Give them a round of applause. I know theres a couple of people because they heard dan is here to talk. He still has my name wrong in the podcast. So do not feel bad about that. Thank you for putting up with the broken ac. I appreciate you here sweating with us. So this one is from amazon. How many people of actually read this book or know what its about . Most people create good eye making sure. When my alarm goes off for my second full day, it is the worst my body has felt in my entire life. Im not unfamiliar with pain. As a kid, i went through years of corrective surgery on my legs and nasty therapy. I get migraines, playing rugby in college, i was once match up with a woman named rod in the tank. This is worse. It feels like ive been hit by a garbage chart. Everything hurts. My feet are the worst. My back shoulders and arms and neck feel terrible too. My hips knees and thighs takes. My right wrist hand and fingers ache from operating the skin again. My rate elbow aches from opening hundreds of roads. Emily guendelsberger ive grown weak from swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I forced myself to the shower. Even before i make copies, i swallowed a double dose of advil. Where i work, i popped advil like candy all day. Not even bothering to check on my last dose was. I dont talk to anybody a break or lunch because im too tired. I had pounds. By the end of my shift, i am almost staggering from the stabbing paint in my feet. The next morning, i wake up feeling even worse. The day again goes by and full of pain and exhaustion. I do remember checking my cell counter. It only recorded about 7 miles. This time, i am positive that the step counter is wrong. Maybe its not swinging back and forth because my hands are pushing the cart. Whatever who cares. I fell asleep in my clothes again. The next morning, i somehow wake up feeling even force. I make it through lunch come but an hour later, the stabbing pain in my feet has spread after my legs and hips. Every time the scanner has me squat down to get something lowered drawer is a little harder to force myself back up to standing. Finally you do a full squat i, i stand up i order my legs. They hung up on my brain. Stand up, you idiot my brain screams. I toppled backwards into a sitting position. Its just not happening. I sigh. I might as well rub my feet while im down here. I start to take off my shoes and i am slightly horrified to find my feet are so swollen that they are straining mice shoot license. Untying them feels so good. Reaching above my head to drop this horrible thing of mccartt. I tried to rub some life back into my feet. How many minutes of this can i get away with this before some time off task algorithm called the manager, can take 15 minutes to get to the bathroom and back. Maybe if i can keep it in her 15 minutes, well just look like a bathroom break. I realize and in retrospect that the scan can when it give me away. I am somehow down to my last two of advil. How did that happen. I can take one and save one for later. But if i cared about future emily, i wouldnt worry about how many pills i took. I release my shoes as tightly as i can. I haul myself to my knees and feet. I proceed as a zombielike shamble. Of course my advil wears off, the stabbing pain again. Eventually i have to get something from the bottom shelf. Again, i cant get back out. This time i almost nod off. Get up you idiot, i yell at myself. Doted enough like brian. The thought of getting fired and giving up. Its awful. Trying to start this project all over again next year is awful. The thought about three more hours without anything for the pain is awful. I sat on the floor and i cried. Crying on the job for amazon workers is common. Again i so wish i had all of the stories that ive heard. This was a 24 hour gift. Three farmworkers in at least two 223 people in place, crying and nothing out of the norm. What are you doing. I desperately tried to pull it together but the for the shame of crying in public only makes it worse. Nobody walks by though. Thats one upside of the isolation. Nobody will catch you crying on the floor. Its pretty clear that whatever algorithm gets pastor of the warehouse is brilliantly engineered to messily complicated and kept people from speaking to each other because of the distance. Its a very lonely place. I catch glimpses of people off in the distance but i really get not too far from people. The alley is between the shelves are very narrow. It also eliminates the opportunity for inefficient workplace chatter. I am convinced is a goal rather than a side effect. When i sent over to learn packing one day, the workstations are also set up category from each other to make it is possible to talk. Im undeniably much more protective than ive been in of the jobs. Is it not as a genesee there. No other job is been near this isolating. The agony in my feet have been kept my mind occupied from being bored. This is going to be a big problem. We was i thinking about again. I jerked away. I said to myself beginning to panic. Im out of advil. What am i going to do. Then i remember the painkiller vending machines. Supposedly these are free with a slice of your id badge which is good because were not allowed to bring our wallets inside. The only machine i am positive i can find is backed by an area which is five minutes away. Get up get up get up i yell at myself. You cannot lose this job. I drag myself to my feet. When i finally arrived at the vending machine, it doesnt recognize my badge. I plunked my forehead against the glass. So close. So far. A woman notices me being pathetic and comes over. My guess, its your first week she says patty and her kentucky drawer. She slightly middleage with a blue badge of a fulltime amazonian in an era management. I tell her its my third day of training. She grants. Well second day is worse than the first and the third is worse in the second. But i promise is as bad as it gets. If you can make it through the first two weeks, gets easier. It really does. She looks genuinely sympathetic. Is the machine not working with your badge, it should. She takes my id and try swiping at herself in the same result. She tried a few more times various speeds. I asked about the vending machines which are apparently new. They put them in last year. Theres been problems with ibuprofen zombies like me. Because nearly all of them just wanted over counter pain pills management installed them. No more traffic jams and free drugs is a short walk away. Winwin. The woman gives up and has me back my badge. Rolling her eyes. Go see about them care about your badge and they will fix it for you. In the meantime, what you want. Slapping her own badge for her. I select ibuprofen and think a woman from the depths of my soul. She smiled and pass the badge on her chest. Everyone with a blue badge is right where you are now. As i threw back my head and rice all of the pills. It gets better you just have to get used to it. Be careful about overusing tho those. I have to take four to get the effect now. If this were a completely accurate representation of my month there. The next 40 pages would be entirely complaints about work, waking up at 4 00 a. M. Walking almost 16 miles a day being tiled too tired to walk, never seeing the sun and passing out the minute i get home from work. Im so exhausted that my husband leaves an entire weeks of increasingly concerns voicemail before i can call them back. The only time i can talk is after work so i feel bad about it, i lacked the energy to hide the fact that calling him feels like another task. Thats pretty nice of them i guess. My husband is a very logical thinker and is not wrong exactly, i appreciated the hello those advil he is wrong. The reason we dont fight a lot about dumb stuff like this is because were good about talking about angst before we get to fight territory. But today i am too exhausted to locate the misunderstanding. I just resent that he wont take my word that it is messed up. If i had the energy, it because. Since i dont, i just get swollen. Later on a day off, after ive had a rough. I apologize and oppose the situation to him as a multiplechoice question. Question your warehouse workers worked 11 and half hour shifts. In order to make great, a significant number of them need to take painkillers multiple times. Do you a clearly they are at their physical limits, makeshift shorter or increase the number of breaks, increase staffing at the nurses office, install vending machines to dispense painkillers more efficiently. Seriously, what kind of sociopath goes with e. That is how amazon is its all about about outside of the box. The whole point is that there are two definitions but theres not that much overlap between the definitions. What is your primary definition so i went undercover at dfw we i still have little foil packets i dont think i brought any with me tonight. I cant believe i didnt is just my memorial of the id badge which i prize which i really thought i had take some of those home. So i know the intro of the book is called in the weeds and i love the way you use it that in my own experience it is the time i got fleas as a child because i spent so much time in the weeds i literally got fleas or when i am being a writer and then my editor needs to get me back on track. To make how many have that definition collects so the definition that i learned first that is my primary definition and being an i. C. E. Cream scoop or so to be get out of my way im in the weeds when it comes to service work in the industry you are slammed with too much work to do and cannot keep up with it and youre just trying to keep your head above water. How many know that definition . I was surprised that many did no one definition over the other but when i transitioned from the resort to journalism and i was in the weeds but then to do such an amazing job to demonstrate the way those individual grains of sand are hard to complain about on their own but can build up she made me feel that rather than showing statistics but not just to deal with statistics and thats how we pass on information to tell each other stories of those pawprints that look like this or stuff like that. Where as statistics i found in the 15 years i have just given up to try to do that and thats why i do this in such a weird and experiential way plus people dont read things that are not fun. And thats not their fault. Who was to read something thats not fun to read . Nobody. I encounter this also when i came out with no mans land people said why arent they singing and storming the barricades . Why are we not asked to join the crusade . Because they are tired. They are in the weeds. But basically a lot of people are also doing whatever they could psychologically to cope theres another book called bright about the side effects of positive psychology in a culture have you read the life of brian . Or the movie where everything is awesome . But did you encounter at all . That she psychology truly does play into the hands of a lot of companies that are able to say i should be grateful for this job and im not a complainer and i will focus on the positive. Yes. Definitely. I see that sort of stuff like this recent trend of mindfulness and the antidepressants that people are on and to be positive. I kind of see that as the equivalent of the ibuprofen vending machines. They are assigned that what we are doing is kind of making us crazy and is not satisfying. And this is what we can do. This is the way we have to change ourselves to adapt to what is being asked of us instead of questioning what is asked of being what is asked of us i guess. Certainly with amazon there were banners all over the place trying to get people into the amazon spirit and there were a lot of people that they all said work hard and have fun and make history. I found them very post apocalyptic. Very weird and strange. But a lot of people did not. When it comes to the thing about work ethic and how that differs from generation to generatio generation, probably older people certainly true of my dad who has a very solid work ethic, i also had to watch him go through ten years of crippling depression which i do attribute to all the crappy jobs he had and part of why i wrote the book is i am furious about what that did to him. And the away that ideology is implanted in your mind that doesnt make any sense anymore because of the way things work differently now. It drives people crazy and makes them feel terrible about themselves. I really do think that is morally wrong and very bad for the country in general are probably the world in general its not just here but look at the yellowjackets or whats going on in first world countries that they are all symptoms of the same thing which is to realize this isnt working anymore. Now i have to build a new way of thinking out of nothing and that is terrifying. It is a scary way to go about delays that makes you feel out of control you dont know where the rules are you dont know what you have to do. On the narrative that i am part of building something but i will do it. It is complicated because you dont want to deny a People Agency to do whatever they need to do to get out of bed but by the same token it is pretty corrosive. Another thing we were talking about earlier is that ubiquitous scanner. We were talking a little bit the automation or the treatment of a warehouse and the logistics operation in the same way basically ford treated the factories. Can you talk about your experience with that i did a lot of reading to the history of management which is not very interesting most of the time. Which is why i assume its not in the history books. But some of the really interesting things i read where Frederick Taylor from philadelphia. He was one of the first people who really started to try to apply objective standards to otherwise what had been subjective work. The famous example is that he did a lot of work in the steel mills in his early days like in the 18 nineties. Right after the industrial revolution. That was the era when before that in the pin factory as they describe a demonstration of how productive for labor have one guy do one thing and one guy do another and do the same thing all day and produce hundreds more than they could otherwise. But there was no way to tell if they were working as fast as they could because time is wispy until about the 18 nineties because that is when you start to get a stopwatch that were affordable enough to be used in industrial timing. So using stopwatches that was in advance of technology and started to pay everybody to pay the best workers to go for one hour at the absolute top speed and follow their emotions in time everything and put together the one best way to do everything then hold people to that. It wasnt go as fast as you can as the best workers do and never break but he did it very arbitrarily he called it Scientific Management but having reviewed them it seems like he made up a lot of stuff left it was silly and just had a lot of numbers but that is relatable to the modern era. Then ford moved into the Assembly Line and so with both of these guys they were both freaks and weirdos and ford in a very bad way getting metals from the nazis but taylor was just a weird guy. He actually had his wife doing scientifically manage tasks at their home it was just very strange. But these guys are all of these people put objective standards onto subjective stuff and those are the ones that have been encoded into those systems that run everything today. So even when ford and taylor were equally clear to see the lowlevel workers who were tightening the same screw every day, something that i think most people would find deplorable doing the same thing tightening the screw 1000 times a day or more and that is it for eight hours of work when before a skilled worker could help to assemble a car. Assembly of stuff building things is satisfying. I have done that sort of thing and it makes you feel good. A lot of people that i talk to i have just been in the habit of asking people their best jobs and they talk about their best jobs tend to be when they were making something or building something to leave something behind rather than shipping to amazon customers but doing something with there is no satisfaction. So also the management that has gone before is very profitable to strip all of the satisfaction and autonomy out of jobs you can make a lot of money doing that but it makes the workers miserable. And that isnt an assumption on my part. You can tell from the turnover rate at the factories that ford when he brought out the Assembly Line, it was like 600 percent turnover rate which is insane. They would stay a week and say this is miserable i hate this. I will go somewhere else. So now the problem so with the Assembly Line now all these other factories that workers could go to bed now a lot of the computer businesses are widespread everywhere theres no way to escape. There is no way for the free market capitalism idea that there is a balance between the workers that we all behave in our selfinterest if you treat your workers bad and they will go where its better but there is nowhere that is better for unskilled workers now. They are all pretty bad for can we have gotten into this monotony that the people who buy peoples labor have all the power and its interesting to look at people like the wall street journal or people who are very into the idea of freemarket capitalism to be the savior of the world they dont think that monotony is possible. But again, that just shows how out of touch people are writing jobs for the New York Times or other places a lot of them do not know anybody who works in the amazon where 41 warehouse. But they are not friends with them or go out to dinner with them and talk about what they did at work that day. Or they dont see them trying to crowd fund. But the way that we interact now makes those difficulties invisible to those who have the power to change. Lets open the floor for questions and then we can get to your party game. What was the reporting process like for you . With all the messed up stuff that is going on. And a typical experience not constantly pushing the envelope. And then to be suspended with those temptations and objectives. So like several hundred people but a few hundred and i do that in general and to get the gist of how people feel about it. Not just those that are complaining so that will swing one way but what i really wanted to do in the first place and i talked to a lot of people to share my view. I had an interesting experience a couple hours ago. And those that are obsessed with amazon. And for that weird but like in the uk. And firstperson not specifically my book but a couple of british ones and then to be much stronger in the uk. To tweet that and got a lot of flak for it. I actually got in touch with the guy. And as i said in the book and just wrote me back this afternoon and it was interesting and he only works 25 hours a week. And to make it clear that the general take was that those journalists and its not that bad. So if anybody is not pulling themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps that they are just a complainer. But not to be amplified but to be cast into this to speak up to say this is fine. There were plenty of people that i talk to that said this is fine. But most have not been there very long people dont stay there very long because the raises are bad from what i gathered. Maybe its different now with that 60 an hour thing but its not designed to be a longterm job so i dont know if theyve only been there six months or one year, i dont know but it was just so interesting but it was just our work ethic or idea if it was too much to ask of a person to be very different and i lost my train of thought. He said he liked the book that because i have had surgery not that i shouldnt have taken the job but i should have known it would be that painful. I will write him back but it was the work. Not my knees not like im handicapped. Who made an impact on you you wanted to include that you couldnt quick. I really wish i could have included the kids in the amazon chapter. I dont know they were very funny and selfaware of their situation in the workforce they were the actual embodiment of how somebody would be in the ideal freemarket capitalism worker to be aware of what the deal was they eventually started to take a third break every day and they did that because they knew amazon needed them too much in the last couple of weeks of peak to fire them enacted in their own selfinterest. So we regard that as immoral in the way we do not regard that as immoral for companies to act in their best interest. And i think that whenever you get your rationality it tends to create bubbles of arbitrage. Defined the irrationality in the market and you suck everything out and you have a lot of money essentially. People start to recognize very smart people the American Work ethic is irrational and it doesnt make sense it does not encourage you to act in your selfinterest but to sacrifice a lot of your life because you think it is the right thing to do the work ethic deep inside of us that is virtuous and a good thing people have been extremely good to take all sorts of strides all over the place and honestly everything is so crazy right now they receive the finite amount of the work ethic that exist and once that is all dried up people already do realize it is irrational why would i work against my own selfinterest so when i was in mcdonalds i write about the time i was going out on break and a homeless guy was scaring the customers making it big mess by pulling stuff out of the trash to throw it on the ground. There is a huge pile but he got in the face of a very sweet lady once tipped me a dollar for an i. C. E. Cream cone. I would have done anything for that woman. I was on my break, i was not getting paid i was sacrificing my own break the only thing i would get, to try to get this homeless man to stop making a mess for the janitor to clean up and stop scaring the customers. And i did it and he screamed in my face and probably gave me the flu but i did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. Because again, my dad raised me with a very american and work ethic to start realizing that makes me very depressed because it is hard to succeed in this economy without constantly hustling. We are not meant to do that as a species generally for most of our history this british idea of what prehistory was like. But the modern idea of anthropology of what it was actually like was five or six hours a day to put together through the next day and then the rest of the time you run around to have fun and take care of the kids it was a hard life but not chronically stressful. Because we are a fun loving species, shall we get to your party game cracks . I feel a lot of places that you worked people are pro businesses that say the future of the lower echelon is automation lets not worry about how hellish it is or lets not worry about the constant pressure on the wages of the bluebird drivers because they will be self driving cars. Did you talk about the people about automation . Was there ever a moment what work word look like for them or was the focus on a shorter timeline quick. Definitely shorter. I get way more into this in the book but basically it makes you focus on the short term when you are chronically stressed. So i think people knew they would do that but they thought it was further often did not expect to have a longterm i dont think most people today expect to have their job for more than a few years. So there is also this misunderstanding of automation work or how many jobs will be made up for to make up for the automation so essentially when i pick the book a few years ago with automation in it i dont buy this there has been enough jobs made by these technologies to make up for those lost. Like people sitting in the tollbooth all day or whatever. But the thing is with technology there is a thing called moores law which is what you could put on a Circuit Board every year and a half or two years. So that means Technology Grows at the exponential threat to make the job to make up for that. So right now were in a very weird. It looks like a flat line and it has been, but we are about to go straight up. And i dont think that is well recognized but this is a misconception and we need to come to terms with that and also andrew yang expresses that. [laughter] there are some interesting people that i do think his approach is dumb maybe not dumb but heartless and a bad way to go about it but it is something that we will really have to think about regardless of how dumb i think people who are into it i dont mean to insult anybody in here. Im sure you are great. Going door to door to raise the money for the power plant i had to raise from those donations received they were begging strangers to pletter ff i have heard so many Horror Stories i honestly think thats one of the reasons just like people who are very into it. Like the Call Center Operator . Who is that. Dishwasher bus girl professional mouse killer for science. Plumbers assistant to be a credit person for Simon Schuster call small struggling independent bookstores for money. [laughter] wedding cake delivery home nurse for the 89 yearold she left early the day prepping for a colonoscopy literal wave of shit in the bedroom and i cleaned it alone. Back room banking with those deposit envelopes so they all face the right way for the higher paid data entry person. Delivery at a greek diner and a short order cook and asked if i knew where to get crack. [laughter] short but sweet that seems on the most miserable jobs video logger at mtv that day. [laughter] i have heard that a lot actually that after church the er medical provider you have to make life or death decisions and then theyre asked to rate my performance if they dont think i should have done based on a Google Search i get a bad review even though youre still alive. [laughter] i like the check flipper lets vote. Eightynine yearold colonoscopy prep. We have a new champion. I know who that was. [applause] congratulations and thank you for coming out to. Come talk to her at the signing table. Thank you even though its very sweaty in here. [inaudible conversations] in a very short period of time most americans moved from getting their news from social media and did not recognize how easy it was to manipulate. So they took things that they have been doing for 100 years and has been in their doctrine for 100 years by using the internet. We still not have established regulations for social media so facebook and google and others complain there is no auditing of what they are doing and frankly we know the russians are still doing it and spreading hatred on both sides of every issue. Why is the russian government pretending to be americans with vaccinations on both sides of the issue . That is on every issue causing us to hate each other and focus inward. Not just on the election but every day and congress not doing its job. So no federal regulatory agency. In the past if you have a big new problem like this somebody in the white house to be in charge of that and with those resources that she needs who is that person on Election Security . No one. You have dhs trying to do some good work for some people stay in cybercommand. So with that strategy there is no special funding of the effort but in addition through social media, also because of the russian activity through the system itself. Thirtyfive states are 39 states the fbi is really slow to explain the extent of the hacks if you want to extend the electoral system look at campaigns and parties and candidates with secret Service Protection to candidates but not cyberprotection. So that data registration who was on the roles because there are ways to change the outcome and then you have to worry about the reporting up. You can say its the responsibility of the states. Do you think they have the cybersecurity skills of the county election board . Allowed the people of my county election board. But they dont have the skills or the resources to protect against the russian military. Son my corporations have to defend themselves they have to say this is a federal election and federal resources to say that they can all decide on their standards they have to come up with the money and that is crazy they say that the states shall do it but there is a word that is but congress may pass laws to do that. So they can preempt the states in the counties why dont we . The answer is Mitch Mcconnell why does he not want that to happen why does he want federal standards . He realizes the people that are doing this manipulation are supporting his side. Now on the tv we will introduce you to an author has not appeared with us before besides being an author what you do for a living quick. I am into Clinical Psychology i consult and train folks people who work for volunteer organizations that need to persuade large numbers of people of new ideas so the marketing and branding of ideas. 11 walk us through one of the times you have done this and with who