Abandoning Amazon

I’m not an Amazon fan. Why not?

The company engages in illegal union busting shit:

Amazon has been accused of illegally firing workers in Chicago, New York and Ohio, calling the police on workers in Kentucky and New York, and retaliating against workers in New York and Pennsylvania, in what workers say is an escalation of long-running union-busting activities by the company. (source)

The warehouses are NOT safe places to work.

Fry attributes the frequency of injuries at Amazon to the breakneck speed required of employees. At Amazon, he saw coworkers get broken feet from packages falling on them and wrist and arm injuries from fast, repetitive motions. While he said Amazon implemented basic safety measures, the speed of work required made injuries inevitable. 

“They give us safety shoes, which is good,” Fry said. “They give us gloves, which is good. They try to teach us how to lift, which is good. But fundamentally, none of these safety measures are going to decrease the amount of injuries if they keep making people work so fast.” (source)

My chonky Cake is NOT amused.

Workers have to pee in old water bottles instead of taking bathroom breaks.

The allegation that Amazon workers are sometimes forced by the pace of their jobs to forego restroom breaks and relieve themselves in bottles isn't a new one. Those allegations surfaced in 2018 in a book by British author James Bloodworth, who went undercover as an Amazon worker in the U.K. (source)

An Ethical Consumer boycott cited what it calls “outrageous tax avoidance.”


Did I mention? The warehouses are NOT safe AND Amazon’s On-Site Emergency Care (Amcare) aren’t overly concerned about worker’s health.

Earlier this year, a falling object struck a worker’s head at an Amazon fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey. The worker visited Amcare, the company’s on-site medical unit, and told the emergency medical technicians on staff there that they had a headache and blurred vision — classic symptoms of a concussion. According to company protocol, Amazon’s medical staff should have sent the worker to a hospital or doctor’s office for further evaluation, or at least called a physician for advice. They did neither. (source)

What’s this all mean for me? I own an Amazon Kindle e-reader. It’s made a HUGE difference in my book consuming experience. Since a wonderful friend bought one for me (during my surgery-a-thon of 2020-’21), I no longer need to read while balancing a book under a magnifying glass. Yes, I use over-the-counter reading glasses but, with paperbacks and hardcovers I need more—the text is just too damn small. With an e-reader, I can increase the font size as needed. Also, using the Libby app, I can borrow library e-books without leaving the house. Goodbye COVID and flu risk!

My goal is to find a non-Amazon e-reader. Did you know? With a Kindle, I can only read books in the following formats: .azw, .azw1, .txt, .mobi, and .prc. The most popular format for ebooks though is .epub, a format supported by most e-readers.

I’ve found a well reviewed alternative—Kobo which is made by Rakuten Kobo Inc., they sell ebooks, audiobooks, and e-readers. I totally dread making the switch. I’m NOT as technically adept as I once was. I’m nowhere near as patient with computers and such now. Can’t someone set up all this shit for me so I don’t have to read tech manuals? And how do I get Libby to download library books to my Kobo instead of the Kindle?

I’ll wade through the instructions and tech shit though. My Amazon footprint is wicked small but I no longer want to add even a penny to Bezos’s insane wealth. He can pay his own damn superyacht’s operating expenses and port fees without any help from me.