December 10, 1997, 7:05 PM

Shout

Today's knowledge worker is overworked, underpaid, and as badly beaten with carrots as with sticks.

I've just finished a grueling phone shift at Amazon.com, where I've been working at one of two tables in a "quad"—a cubicle in a windowless room carved up by partitions. I share my quad with three other "Customer Service Tier 1 E-Mail Representatives." We sit two to a table, with our backs to the backs of the other two at their table, and talk constantly on the telephone in a voice that is supposed to be loud enough for the customer to hear us and quiet enough to keep from distracting our quadmates. I've been doing this for the past three and a half weeks, spending fully half of my daily shift in one of Amazon's telephone "queues," dealing with an endless stream of holiday-frazzled shoppers and would-be shoppers. Not that we ever sink to the status of lowly order-takers, mind you. We're more like guides: "I'm sorry, ma'am, we're not set up to take orders over the phone—only through our Web site . . . yes, it's really quite simple . . . yes, it's perfectly safe to enter your credit card number online; just be sure to click on 'Secure Server' . . . It's not working? One moment while I transfer you to an order specialist. . . ." And so on, ad nauseam. You manage to survive by telling yourself that every goal has its price. And if you're an idealistic, young college grad with one of those ubiquitous liberal-arts degrees and a dream of moving up the ladder in a hot, technology-based Seattle start-up, the price you pay in this case is an entry-level job worthy of the Electronic Sweatshop Seal of Approval. And the price they pay you for your services is a breathtaking $10 an hour, made marginally palatable by the constantly whispered mantra of "stock options." I have time to take no more than three deep breaths to unwind from the stress of talking nonstop for four straight hours when I see my supervisor walking determinedly my way. Normally this woman, whom I'll call Lisa, has her jaw worked into an almost perpetual horsey grin, even when she's offering a critique of my performance—which usually has to do with my failure to conform my phone or e-mail responses tightly enough to the surprisingly rigid format prescribed by management. I say "surprisingly" because the superficial atmosphere around the headquarters of "Earth's Biggest Bookstore" is one of alternative-minded, almost New Agey liberalism. Capitalism with a kinder, gentler face. Everyone here seems as earnest and personable as the workday is long (and the workdays feel really long), and there's not a shade of cynicism anywhere. No wonder I feel out of place around here. It doesn't help that I'm well over a decade older than the average Amazon.com employee. The company makes a conscious effort to hire intelligent and overwhelmingly youthful just-out-of-college types because these are precisely the worker bees most likely to buy into the hallowed Start-up Dream: Toss them a little "win-win" free-enterprise prattle and the promise of a promotion to a salaried position somewhere down the line and they'll launch a Children's Crusade for you. (That salaried position, like the stock options package, turns out to be sleight of hand . . . but more on that later.) Lisa walks right up to me and asks if I've got time to talk. She is straining to keep her voice neutral. Not having to contend, for once, with the smile-borne glare of her thoroughbred teeth, I notice her other features for the first time. Her eyes appear a bit dull and tired; there's a furrow between her brows. I reply that I really don't, that if I miss my bus, which arrives in about seven minutes, I'll have to wait until almost eight for the next one. I pause for a moment, then ask if it's urgent or something. She seems not to know how to answer at first, then says that it is but that she could always talk with me first thing in the morning. I tell her no way—now that she's sounded her alarm bells, she can't honestly expect me to wait until tomorrow to let her drop her little bombshell, whatever it is. As if I couldn't guess. I can't deny that I've felt like an alien in this curiously insular environment ever since I first set foot in it; couple that with the temp-worker wages—for a remarkably complex and demanding job, when all is said and done—and I knew straightaway I was just going to be biding my time here. Still, given the horse-shit pay, I never really dreamed they'd have the audacity to actually care about how well you met their idiosyncratic notions of attributes like "competence," "team skills," or "the right attitude." But care they do. Lisa tells me I've been fired.

I should have known from the beginning that this wouldn't be a fit. At the temp agency, after all, I had been warned by my recruiter—who'd mentioned that the job involved a lot of rote memorization of cryptic UNIX minutiae—that you could expect to do at least six months of hard labor in the phone and e-mail "queues" before having any chance of a promotion, and that promotions tended to be to supervisory positions within Customer Service rather than Editorial, where I wanted to be. No matter how unglamorous she made the job sound, though, it still seemed to offer all the superficial elements I was seeking: writing, technology, online commerce, stock options. . . . I was even inclined to put a positive spin on Amazon.com's requirement that all prospective hires provide three letters of reference, two writing samples, SAT scores, and college transcripts: The implied aura of rigorous selectivity convinced me that quick promotions and raises would be a matter of course.