Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

The reality was less polemic, more slapstick, like an updated version of Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times. Our trainers regaled us with tales of unruly robots. Kivas had gone AWOL, escaping through a gap in the fence. They had tried to drag a stepladder away from a station while a worker was still standing on it. On rare occasions, two Kivas collided—each carrying up to 750 pounds of merchandise—like drunken European soccer fans bumping chests. Sometimes the Kivas dropped items. Sometimes they ran those items over. In April, a can of “bear mace” (basically industrial-grade pepper spray) fell off one robot’s payload and got crushed by another. The warehouse had to be evacuated. Paramedics treated seven workers outside. Another was rushed to the hospital with respiratory problems.