Do More Than Say It Ain’t So, Jeff

When I wrote Shopportunity! several years ago, I came down pretty hard on Walmart. The chain’s focus on having products available and cheap at any cost — whether that meant horrible off-shore manufacturing conditions or insisting that it couldn’t paying staff a living wage — fueled my belief that the company was the epicenter of what is wrong with our consumer culture. I also accused Walmart of having a role in the growing obesity rates (all that cheap, bad food), the rise in storage facilities (all those good deals we don’t need), and the increase in landfill waste (all that packaging). And don’t get me started on the role it played in the demise of Mom & Pop stores and community character.

Much as I’d like to take credit for Walmart becoming a more responsible global citizen and raising worker wages, mine was one small voice in a vast din of criticism. While the recent news that the company missed its expected profit this quarter following the raise may seem worrisome, it’s actually a great sign. Good citizenship comes at a price, and our society will benefit from Walmart’s changes when its staff members no longer need public assistance to forge a living wage.

While I can breathe a sigh of relief over Walmart, a new company has me worried: Amazon. Amazon was once my poster child for retailing’s bright and charming future. This was due to its refusal to work solely for quarterly profit and the company’s support of Mom & Pop stores through letting them sell their wares on the site. The radical convenience of Amazon Prime is magic with or without a Tide dash button in the laundry room, and their Fire Stick is an enchanted wand, serving up hours of effortless entertainment. I was a devotee for sure.

Then came Sunday’s piece in The New York Times, exposing Amazon’s toxic work environment. Does the fact that Amazon employees are white-collar workers make it okay to demand 80-hour weeks, discourage vacations, and enable workers to bring career-ending complaints to a colleague’s boss? The working conditions described in the piece are definitely not the management practices typically ascribed to Silicon Valley wunderkinds.

The Times piece has drawn back the curtain on what reminds me of the purges honed in Leninist Russia. In Amazon’s case, a purge is brought on if an Amazonian is deemed “insufficiently self-critical,” or accused of any other infraction of the Bezos Business Manifesto.

If the firestorm the article unleashed (5000 comments within 48 hours) is any indication, however, today’s vigilant consumers will shop beyond mere value — or unprecedented convenience. That’s my hope, at least; that information gained about corporate culture is used as a powerful predictor of where we will and won’t shop.

With Amazon’s disappointing culture uncovered, I like to think that there’s a start-up out there building itself on a different set of entrepreneurial rules. I’m imagining a woman, perhaps, looking for a way to reinvent retail and have a great time doing it, all the while understanding that “the reinventor of retail” isn’t what she wants on her tombstone. This fantasy entrepreneur of mine is contemplating a big, beautiful brand that cares about its people being great members of the communities they serve. She’s starting a company whose staff has time to raise families, support their colleagues, and wander along beaches pondering new adventures. A business that thrives because it understands that real, productive, meaningful lives need to be lived in the big messy world, not in tear-stained cubicles.

But right now, without that company, I am left to consider the best use of my shopping dollars today. If I would not enter a Walmart on principle — which wasn’t much of a sacrifice, considering I live in NYC where there are none — must I now unplug myself from Prime?

I’m pretty sure I must. Color me bummed, but color me hopeful for an improved future of retail as well.