On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger

In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems, a robotics company specializing in automating the process of picking and packing in warehouses, for $775 million. SDF8, which opened in 2012, is “seventh generation.” The eighth-generation fulfillment centers that opened after 2014 integrate robot and human workers to make picking a stationary job. The robots are orange and kind of cute, like bigger, stronger Roombas balancing drawers on their heads. “The video I saw, they’re, like—shelves that move,” says Blair. “They move and dance about the warehouse and communicate with one another; they bring the shelf that has the right item to a human picker. They even face it the right way, so all you have to do is—BEEP!” She perfectly reproduces the noise of the scan gun we hear thousands of times a day.