Amazon appears to have carved a new canyon in the commercial disruption landscape this week by cheekily announcing its long-anticipated decision on a city to locate its second headquarters will actually include a third HQ location as well.
Critics immediately sounded the alarm, saying the maneuver was calculated to get pit cities against one another in an effort to get as much tax benefit for itself as possible, while also gathering vast swaths of government data to use in future development plans.
One fear being business choice as we know it — Malls and what department stores remain there — will follow the Mom and Pop bookstores into Amazon’s dustbin. Leaving an untenable choice between high-tech indentured servitude and say a warehouse job in one of the many sprawling complexes that are quietly popping up around the globe. The shadow of Amazon looms large.
Not that I have any skin in this game. Nor am I in any position to stand in the way of progress. But I can't say I'm all that excited about drones choking the sky, raining down shoe-box sized packages onto our porches or into the state of the art delivery chimneys they must be developing to minimize theft from finding.
Did I tell you about the time my husband ordered tool sets from the online megastore, and what they delivered included one-third of a stripper pole, its installation instructions and a pallet of frosted eye makeup?
Another time maybe.
I’m not sure why but Amazon’s news has me thinking about my mother, and how she might have hated the company but taken some of her “mad money” and invested in its IPO anyway. She was all about offers you couldn't refuse. Not that she wouldn't likely continue the shared family history of buying most of her books from bookstores and housewares from hardware stores.
From the percolators to toasters, it seemed almost every gadget in the kitchen one could plug into a wall socket she had procured from the same place my dad would buy penny nails and washers for drippy faucets.
There wasn't a widget you needed that our local mercantile didn't stock somewhere, even if the clerk had to dust it off to read the price tag.
I think I bought my first (and only) hand mixer at the very shop my mother bought her last and final whistle topped kettle.
I’ve mixed mashed potatoes and whipped cream (separately of course) with that $12 mixer for the past twenty-five thanksgivings, slowly at first and then giving my thumb a cramp trying to keep the lever at just the right location between speeds 3 and 4, because its motor had somehow slipped somewhere around the Thanksgiving Ought 2.
Why are you looking at me like that? It wasn't like Amazon offered a steady stream of gadgets until somewhat recently, whereas bookstores will probably seem like they existed in the good old days by the time we reach this new millennium's mid-century.
Everything is disposable these days.
I mean … that new iPhone you got in Rose Gold last year will be almost obsolete and entirely passe when the old apple tree introduces Sunshine Yell-O next year.
“I don't need a phone,” I say as I scroll through pictures in this meandering virtual catalogue.
I don't really need a new hand mixer, either, mine still works just as well (read terribly) as it did on Turkey Day Number Three. It could get through another.
But I put a pretty mixer of a trendy blue Easter egg color in my virtual cart anyway, and take a deep breath … before I abandon it.
If I don't get a 20 percent off coupon code in tomorrow’s spam, I'm going to the hardware store, where it turns out I can get a just as dicey a replacement for $10 on sale.
Critics immediately sounded the alarm, saying the maneuver was calculated to get pit cities against one another in an effort to get as much tax benefit for itself as possible, while also gathering vast swaths of government data to use in future development plans.
One fear being business choice as we know it — Malls and what department stores remain there — will follow the Mom and Pop bookstores into Amazon’s dustbin. Leaving an untenable choice between high-tech indentured servitude and say a warehouse job in one of the many sprawling complexes that are quietly popping up around the globe. The shadow of Amazon looms large.
Not that I have any skin in this game. Nor am I in any position to stand in the way of progress. But I can't say I'm all that excited about drones choking the sky, raining down shoe-box sized packages onto our porches or into the state of the art delivery chimneys they must be developing to minimize theft from finding.
Did I tell you about the time my husband ordered tool sets from the online megastore, and what they delivered included one-third of a stripper pole, its installation instructions and a pallet of frosted eye makeup?
Another time maybe.
I’m not sure why but Amazon’s news has me thinking about my mother, and how she might have hated the company but taken some of her “mad money” and invested in its IPO anyway. She was all about offers you couldn't refuse. Not that she wouldn't likely continue the shared family history of buying most of her books from bookstores and housewares from hardware stores.
From the percolators to toasters, it seemed almost every gadget in the kitchen one could plug into a wall socket she had procured from the same place my dad would buy penny nails and washers for drippy faucets.
There wasn't a widget you needed that our local mercantile didn't stock somewhere, even if the clerk had to dust it off to read the price tag.
I think I bought my first (and only) hand mixer at the very shop my mother bought her last and final whistle topped kettle.
I’ve mixed mashed potatoes and whipped cream (separately of course) with that $12 mixer for the past twenty-five thanksgivings, slowly at first and then giving my thumb a cramp trying to keep the lever at just the right location between speeds 3 and 4, because its motor had somehow slipped somewhere around the Thanksgiving Ought 2.
Why are you looking at me like that? It wasn't like Amazon offered a steady stream of gadgets until somewhat recently, whereas bookstores will probably seem like they existed in the good old days by the time we reach this new millennium's mid-century.
Everything is disposable these days.
I mean … that new iPhone you got in Rose Gold last year will be almost obsolete and entirely passe when the old apple tree introduces Sunshine Yell-O next year.
“I don't need a phone,” I say as I scroll through pictures in this meandering virtual catalogue.
I don't really need a new hand mixer, either, mine still works just as well (read terribly) as it did on Turkey Day Number Three. It could get through another.
But I put a pretty mixer of a trendy blue Easter egg color in my virtual cart anyway, and take a deep breath … before I abandon it.
If I don't get a 20 percent off coupon code in tomorrow’s spam, I'm going to the hardware store, where it turns out I can get a just as dicey a replacement for $10 on sale.
I think my mother would approve.
No comments:
Post a Comment