Today in late-capitalism: Woman thanks Amazon Flex for “allowing” her to lose weight

By Joe Berkowitz

Every now and then a supposedly inspirational news story turns out to actually be kind of soul-crushing. For instance, it’s nice that these teachers pooled their collective sick days and donated them to a colleague battling cancer, but holy cow, what a nightmare that they had to do that!

At least today’s not-as-inspiring-as-it-thinks-it-is inspirational story has the benefit of being accidentally funny:

A Kansas City woman apparently lost 100 pounds in 18 months thanks to the largesse of her benefactor, Jeff Bezos. Jackie Crow’s weight loss strategy includes jogging while delivering packages for her job at Amazon, which she got as part of an initiative to be more active. I’m in no way knocking Jackie Crow’s accomplishment; massive weight-loss is extremely difficult, however it is achieved. The issue here is the way that the report centers on Amazon’s role in said achievement–and the fact that Amazon happily tweeted about it.

“Amazon Flex allows drivers like Crow the flexibility of picking their own work schedules,” the report reads, despairingly. “Crow said that flexibility helped her have time for family, exercise and helping with the family business, Wilson’s Pizza and Grille.”

Her work schedule helped her have time to do more work, and also work out while working! What are we even doing here? What is happening?

What saves this item from being a complete soul-smasher is how much Amazon’s tweet makes the company sound as though it’s offering the work-as-workout strategy from an episode of Nathan For You–something Nathan Fielder himself mentioned in a tweet this afternoon.

Have a look at the Nathan For You segment below–which inspired a book that became a bestseller on–where else?–Amazon.

 
 
 

 

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