Please take my commentary as seriously as if John Cleese was giving it while he wore a wig.
Imagine, if you will, that Amazon is a witch. They have used magic to make it so your cow’s milk is actually carbonated duran juice. Now, no one in the market will buy from you. Your livelihood is suffering, which stinks because this inexplicable buckle on your hat is getting rusty and you can’t afford to replace it. You rightfully call out Amazon as a witch in public. A few other people step forward and agree with you–they heard from a friend of a friend that Amazon tried to sleep with your cow and your cow refused to cooperate, and jilted, Amazon is pouting in the witchiest way it can. (Keep in mind, Amazon doesn’t usually come to town on this day, and in fact, has specifically slept in on weekends in the past, like that time they made all your gay chickens disappear from the barnyard.) You rally together, storm Amazon’s house, and lynch them. Their hangover might be what prevented them from speaking up for themselves, but they also might just have had no excuses to give. Good thing that friend-of-a-friend knew what was going on, so you didn’t have to depend on Amazon. Good old…well, you don’t know her name, but good thing she was there to explain things.
I have seen the same anonymous source cited repeatedly, and fifty snazillion pissed off authors and readers in an uproar over the disappeared books. They’re right to be pissed off, and I am not disputing that Amazon is a witch. However, because neither megacorporation has commented, we don’t know that Macmillan didn’t decide to quit selling through Amazon!
If we were accused of something so juvenile and petty, wouldn’t we want people to let us come back to work on Monday and tell our carefully crafted and yet transparent lies, not let some anonymous, unauthorized source speak for us? This “source” could be the janitor. Please don’t let the guy who files urinal cakes tell you why I make my decisions. I should get to lie to your face myself! I don’t think we’re exempt from the Golden Rule because we’re talking about a corporation–after all, instead of one person, that’s thousands of people.
Nothing new at BoingBoing, however. The comments section ALWAYS looks like this.
Once again, I’m not saying Amazon is innocent (it’s highly effing unlikely), or even that they deserve to be defended. And this public discussion about e-book prices is necessary and vital, regardless of the validity of the catalyst. Still, I feel like Twitter is being used as a time machine to bring us all back to 1692. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss the tweets about the boring-ass bagel you had for breakfast, since you actually know that happened. (;
Please, mark your speculation as speculation. (Props to Cherie Priest, for doing that very thing.) Call/e-mail Amazon and demand they explain the disappearing titles, and urge that others do so. The faster we have some corporate bullshit answer, the faster I’ll feel it’s morally warranted to decry their new soulless ways (in addition to the heap of other soulless ways). You can contact them using the e-mail form on their website (I think you must be logged in, though), or you can call them at 1-866-216-1072.
Update: This is closer to being evidence. They’ve done it before.
Update #2: Thanks, John Scalzi, for tweeting a link to the official Macmillan letter. And now I have at least half of a story straight from the horse’s mouth, I am willing to say that yes, Amazon is definitely a witch. Pitchfork is ready.
…And in case you don’t know what I’m talking about:
BoingBoing
BusinessInsider
NYTimes
Whatever
I’ve never been trained as management. I’m learning by watching my boss. Who has ALSO never been trained as management. You’d think this was a recipe for disaster, but for some reason our store has the lowest turnover rate in the company. (Knock on wood!) Most of our employees have been here for four years or more, at a retail position where we routinely field more sexual harassment than a really hot prison guard. When and if our employees leave, they do so reluctantly, because they have to move or they’ve finished their degree.
While I’ve never been taught how to hire for a job, I was taught how to apply for a job while I was in high school. I learned that:
Your resumé should be as concise as possible. Managers are physically incapable of turning pages because they have giant, curved claws instead of fingers like normal humans.
You write in blue or black ink. Graphite will smudge on the manager’s wings and prevent it from lifting into the air properly.
You fill out every field. A manager’s CPU is confused by blank spaces in a query string.
You should dress slightly nicer than you would at the job. Managers should see you as a potential mate, but not a potential rival. Once you’re hired, you can dissuade them with the same bottled fox urine that gardeners use to keep away rabbits.
You never run from the interview. Managers will always pounce on a moving object and disembowel it with their powerful hind legs, even if it’s a Volkswagen or a tornado.
My manager Nicole is not a highly educated woman. She says things like, “volumptuous” and “would of,” and I tease her about it with all the ceaseless enery of a younger brother who found a juicy diary hidden under her mattress. But while Nicole isn’t highly educated, and that might cause some people not to take her seriously, she is by far one of the most competent human beings I’ve ever met.
When she hired a guy who filled out the application in pencil and wore blue jeans to his first and second interviews, I was understandably apprehensive, but he turned out to be great with customers, and just as good with the employees. He’s the kind of man who will drop what he’s doing to cover a shift or who brings coffee or little presents to the people sharing his shift. He even engages in low-stakes prank wars with me. (If you don’t know me well: pranks are my favorite social activity.)
Nicole wast taught in school just like I was, but I guess because she isn’t an evil, winged, predatory robot who has a deathly fear of fox urine, she has a different way of doing things. She recognizes that not everyone had the same opportunities in school. If they grew up in an area with poorly paid, poorly trained teachers, they might not have been properly warned about managers the way our more privileged applicants were. That doesn’t mean they’re less intelligent or less able to be personable and knowledgeable.
While I was weeding through the applications for really bad ones, my co-worker came up and pointed at how the applicant had included their references. “You’re not supposed to do that,” she said. “You’re supposed to say they’re available upon request.” She’s a very literal person, and it’s not surprising that she paid attention to what she was taught in school. But if she was doing the hiring, I wouldn’t be there. I wasn’t taught in school that managers are threatened by the proof that people respect you.
If you’re ever responsible for hiring someone, don’t let your CPU be confused by someone else’s search parameters. You’ll have less claws and disembowelings. And I’m sure you’ll find you can still fly.