Adventures in Webland
"The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly
unprofitable to most people."
— E. B. White, One Man's Meat
"Things are entirely what they appear to be — and behind them. There is
nothing."
— Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea
21 Dog Years, Doing Time at Amazon.com is a convoluted dot-com generation version of A Separate Peace The classic literary themes -- rebellion vs. conformity, innocence vs. age, and, conscience and guilt -- woven into the coming-of-age tale of Mike Daisey, a slacker, a dilettante. But unlike the narrative of Gene Forester's experiences, Daisey's adventures make you laugh out loud. This book is funny as hell.
It will undoubtedly be deemed a classic for the slacker crowd, a how-to manual for the slothful and easily amused.
Like Gene Forester and his friend Phineas, Mike Daisey and his fellow
Amazonians were children of "careless peace". Only, instead of being "set
apart from adults by their lack of knowledge of war and their utter abandon
to their own happy worlds," their bliss stemmed from their lack of
knowledge of successful business models so apparent by the dot com grab and
go frenzy of the late '90s.
While Forester revisits the school after 15 years and considers the way he
is and the way he was, Daisey doesn't go back. But he does evaluate how the
experience changed him. In the book he compares his pre-Amazon days to his
cubicle years with the company.
Daisey, a dilettante, with a very un-marketable degree in aesthetics, gets
a call from a temp agency. Amazon.com is hiring and they're looking for
freaks. Daisey's name jumped out of the database. "My first meeting with
the recruiter was a revelation. She was a polite and talkative lady with
thick glasses and an overbite. Her favorite maneuver was to breathe in
through her mouth, flare her nostrils, and then blast the air back out her
nose -- a human air conditioner . Years later I found out that the staffing
company had a bin for the Amazon applications separate from all other
assignments. The receptionist saw that the bin was labeled F. P. and asked
what it stood for. 'Oh, that's for Freak Parade,' she was told. 'You know,
the Amazonians.'"
After spending a few years as a slacker in Seattle, Daisey becomes
obsessed with dental hygiene and takes the job at Amazon because he
must have dental insurance. This is one of those books that begs to
be excerpted, quoted to truly give a taste of what's in store for the
reader. Three different people picked up the book off my coffee table and
each one began reading and laughing out loud. These were people who don't
normally read anything except Linux journals or C++ training manuals.
Daisey describes the informal session for prospective Amazon recruits:
And my God, those people! The four Amazonians who came to speak
with us had the clearest, cleanest skin that I'd ever seen. Two men, two
women -- they said they worked in customer service, which they referred to
as "CS." Two of the four wore REI fleece vests and all four had some slight
variation of the same khaki Dockers pants. And that hygiene. These folks
must have an amazing medical plan that includes plastic surgery or genetic
reprogramming, I thought. I was encouraged in my quest to prevent tooth
decay.
The book reads like an evening conversation among friends. Daisey's style is laid back and easy. He's telling you a story. A slacker's tale. Settling back in your chair, you relax and let him talk, not wanting to interrupt the flow. He's not mean-spirited, many of the jokes are "on him". He seems to genuinely admire Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos. And Daisey told me he doesn't particularly care what Amazon thinks of his book, despite his admission that he faked reports and gave away books.
Life at Amazon.com becomes Daisey's "Devon," not a private boarding school
but a private club of believers. And the president of the club is Jeff Bezos. Daisey describes Bezos as a "bright and studious elf -- Santa's second lieutenant." Even after leaving Amazon, Daisey's admiration for Bezos is unfailing. "He is gentle, a rare trait in humans, particularly CEOs. You would trust him with your children; when you got home he would have taught them how to sequence DNA and how the kitchen sink disposal
really works. I have never had a kinder more human employer before or since -- Jeff is amazingly dedicated to connecting with everyone in his company." One does wonder if Daisey isn't vying for some affection, a pat on the head, from Bezos.
While working at Amazon, Daisey writes off-the-wall emails to Bezos. The messages are sycophantic, fawning and strange. He doesn't send them. After reading the book, I wrote off-the-wall emails to Daisey. I sent them.
To: Mike Daisey@whereverheis.com
From: Bookseditor@popmatters.com
Subject: Books, Words, and Dreams
MacEwan: I'm really not meaning to intrude but I have to ask: Are you
making a lot of money now that you've become a terrific author? Do you feel
as if your aesthetic life has become concrete?
Daisey: In a word, no. I do feel like I have a stronger idea of what I'm
doing here on earth, and I seem to be able to make a living writing and
performing, but it isn't a rock star lifestyle -- it's pretty moderate, and
after Amazon I've realized that's all I really wanted.
***
MacEwan: There's nothing wrong with it, you know, this feeling of
satisfaction from a job well done, the feeling you must have since your
book has been so well received. You made us laugh and you made us think.
Last night, my dog had a dream. He was running in place and barking with
his eyes closed. I imagined he thought he was at Amazon, running through
the warehouse, trying to fill all the orders. He is only seven dog years
old but I know he feels the stress of being a Jack Russell terrier.
Daisey: They say dogs only have two dreams: the good dream and the bad
dream. I like to believe that's true, and I think it might also be true in
our own lives -- workers have either the good or bad dream, and in a lot of
cases the only real difference is what perspective you have on what you're
living through.
* * * *
MacEwan: So what are you going to do with all that money? You're a geek
wanna'be and we all totally respect that. My friends are open-source advocates,
can't get enough of Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. He is their Bezos Prime.
Daisey: Should the book really break out, or a film version starring
Russell Crowe is made, I plan to take all my unbelievable amounts of money
and open a small theater that is also a Macintosh repair shop, and there I
will while away my hours, soldering motherboards and performing shows.
This is vanishingly unlikely.
***
MacEwan: Question, then: Is Torvalds the anti-thesis of Bezos?
Daisey: That's a good one. There's some truth in that, as Bezos would just
look at him and wonder why he doesn't get undepressed and JUST DO IT. I
doubt Jeff knows the reference, though--he's very smart, but generally
linearly focused.
***
MacEwan: Question, another: How hard was it to get an agent and get a
publishing contract for your book? Do you think the "timeliness" of the
subject matter increased your chances for success? I think, well, actually,
anyone who reads the book would think, that your writing style and your wit
would sell the book in a nanosecond, but you got to wonder if it being
about Bezo didn't tickle their fancy.
Daisey: Definitely the topicality helped. I have been dilettanting it all
over the place for years, so if the topicality and attention hadn't focused
in and made me get on the stick about landing a contract, I doubt I ever
would have written my first book. I would have thought about it, fucked
around and never done a damn thing. So I never dreamed of making Amazon the
focus of my first writing effort, but it's a good subject, I like the
larger issues and it helped me get my foot in the door. Now they're going
to have to cut that foot off is they ever expect me to leave.
***
MacEwan: Question, the last one: Have you had any comments from Amazon
about the book?
Daisey: Nope. They just say, "We haven't read the book, but we hear it is
very funny, and we wish Mike all the best." No one seems to be reviewing it
from Amazon, so I guess they can maintain that stance.
***
MacEwan: Oh, wait, one more: How nerve splitting is it to go on Letterman?
[Daisey appeared on David Letterman on June 11th.]
Daisey: Pretty bad. I'm actually rather relaxed about it--I mean, I've seen
the guy my whole life, so it is easy to imagine what it will be like. But
there are media handlers and discussions and topic breakdowns . . . you feel
like you are participating in a shuttle launch.
***
MacEwan: And, I completely understand your trip to Spain. It's like a lump
sum in a divorce settlement. Spend it and get rid of it, or it will haunt
you.
Daisey: Agreed.
***
MacEwan: The book is awesome, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I laughed out loud,
I've been on the crap-end of the dot.com stock "promise of wealth" and I am
so glad you wrote this book.
Daisey: Thank you so much . . . I hope others find it both funny and
releasing, like a very humorous enema, or a comedy diuretic of some kind.
***
And now for something completely different, PopMatters reviewer John Biggs comments on 21 Dog Days:
Mike,
Just finished reading your book 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @
Amazon.com and have to admit I'm a little bit angry. You entered the
world of business like a British colonial. You didn't understand the
native language of the Choctaw and the Iroquois or whoever, but they had
maize, you had none, so you made do. You wandered the halls of Amazon
looking for things to write back to Mother England about, your every
move bent on gaining fodder for your harsh little look at the dark
continent that was the dot-com boom.
Ok, so I enjoyed your little emails to Jeff Bezos. You sounded like
a novice praying to be a bride of Christ. If old Jeff had only laid one
hand the deformed hump of a liberal arts education you still carry with
you like a goiter, you would have been saved. But I got to tell you,
Mike. It wouldn't have helped.
See, Mike, I worked at a computer company as well. The company I
worked for wasn't nearly as sexy as Amazon.com, but I assure you the
heirarchy of the business were the same: programmers high on the hill,
management trying its damnedest to stay above water, and the peons like
you (and me) caught at the bottom of the pyramid with the fattest
cheerleader on our backs.
But it was guys like you, Mike, who made that damn cheerleader even
heavier. You should have stuck to acting (and it's good to see that
you've returned to it in your eponymous off-Broadway
Spaulding-Grey-A-Thon) and loafing around. At least you wouldn't have
sucked so hard on Amazon's teat and made guys like me and the rest of
your co-workers pick up the slack. And you actually progressed, Mike.
You got pretty far in up the ladder, all the way to BizDev.
But you were kind of sly about it. The difference was I knew what I
was doing. I went to school for IT, and came out as fresh-faced as you.
But I had a skill-set. All you could do was bullshit.
Perhaps Amazon shouldn't have hired you? Who knows? Who cares?
Now you pulled a lot of stunts over at Amazon. You faked a report
that got you promoted. You gamed the system to get better response times
and you worked around problems like a pro by hemming, hawing, and
muttering something about "P2P commerce for pets." But you made a
mistake: you said that your experience was definitively Amazonian, the
epitome of what was wrong with the dot-com world. It wasn't. Any busboy
worth his salt knows how to get more tips through wheedling and
cajoling. College kids, and even some professors, around the world know
all about faking data to get a desired result. Your book wasn't a
dot-com book, it was a slacker book.
Listen, Mike, you could have written a great book about the dot-com
bust if you had actually paid attention. You were on the inside. You
could have built a nice tome of reportage instead of a sophomoric romp
through Seattle and then Spain, where you discovered that drinking was a
panacea that drew you away from the Dark Side of BizDev onto the Shining
Path of aesthetics, drama, and coffeehouses. I know I'm mixing
metaphors, but I'm fuming. You said Amazon drained you and made you a
Republican. That's cause you wanted the mad money the MBAs were getting.
Case closed.
Anyway, dude, keep at it. I can tell you this much: I'll tell my
slacker friends about your book because its clear they'll identify with
you. But this boom, the boom you rode so hard on, has left a lot of
people unhappy. You have a job, Mike, telling your shaggy dog story to
the world. What about the gurus up on the hill who are rewording their
resumes so they don't sound so qualified for entry-level tech positions?
What about your over-worked colleagues who, because of gun-shy
management, are doing the Customer Service of twelve stout men? You got
out before the pop, Mike, and you cashed in your options on a story. But
stay out of the next tech boom. Stick with being a liberal arts
dilettante and not a techie dilettante. I'll be watching you.
Your Humble Admirer,
John Biggs
— 19 June 2002
