I’d expected the pain. I’d expected the monotony. I hadn’t expected so many people to regard this as a decent job.

Because Amazon does pay better than comparable jobs in the area. And I’d known, academically, that 80 percent of low-wage workers in the private sector don’t get any paid time off. I hadn’t really understood it, though. Unpaid time off still sounded like a laughable benefit to me, but tons of my coworkers were grateful for it, saying it really did give them more flexibility than most other jobs. White and blue badges alike say they’d take the worst job here over the best job in fast food, a sector discussed with a universal shudder. And if you hustle enough to get that blue badge, the health insurance is good, and there’s even the possibility of earning paid time off.

I went in expecting to find that Amazon’s system was uniquely strict. But if you don’t have a college degree, special skills, or a pristine criminal record, most jobs you can get will use the same kinds of productivity-managing equipment and techniques as Amazon does, though maybe a little less efficiently. It’s normal to have your thirty-minute lunch timed down to the second. It’s normal to work through pain and illness. It’s normal to have time to lean, time to clean enforced by constant monitoring and beeping.