“Seriously, though, am I missing something about Power Hours?” I ask. “The prizes seem terrible.” There’s general agreement that Power Hours are indeed fucking stupid.

“You increase their productivity by 30 percent and you get a fucking soda,” scoffs Zeb.

“You know how it says ‘work hard, have fun, make history’ everywhere?” says Matthias. “I have a theory that the ‘make history’ part is about how Amazon is a sociological experiment on how far a corporation can push people. Like, How much can we get away with mistreating human beings for one single fucking dollar?”