Working at Amazon, Living with Disability
I expected an impersonal corporate hierarchy. Instead, I found community.
Any and all views expressed are mine, not Amazon’s
There’s one thing I don’t think people understand about being disabled: Most of the time, you forget how disabled you are. You wake up, brush your teeth, comb your hair. You do all the mundane things that make a life brilliantly ordinary. You accept your reality, because there’s no way not to.
But when I look at it from an outsider’s perspective, I begin to see my “ordinary” life as far from ordinary. I don’t think many would consider it “normal,” for example, to wake up and yell at your roommate to come drag you out of bed.
When a disabled person breaks out of the ordinary, they remember how disabled they really are. In my case, I’m considered “severely disabled,” which I find a little offensive. It’s as of someone looked at me and thought, “I’d say this one doesn’t work right. No wait, hang on. He, like, really doesn’t work right.”
Exactly fourteen months ago today, I started working at a little company you probably haven’t heard of. It’s called Amazon. Google it!
Day one was terrifying, but the terror had little to do with Amazon. See, Seattle is a rainy city. Very rainy…
