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Seasonal Associate
Seasonal Associate | Heike Geissler
4 posts | 2 read | 9 to read
How the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt: a writer's account of her experience working in an Amazon fulfillment center. No longer able to live on the proceeds of her freelance writing and translating income, German novelist Heike Geissler takes a seasonal job at Amazon Order Fulfillment in Leipzig. But the job, intended as a stopgap measure, quickly becomes a descent into humiliation, and Geissler soon begins to internalize the dynamics and nature of the post-capitalist labor market and precarious work. Driven to work at Amazon by financial necessity rather than journalistic ambition, Heike Geissler has nonetheless written the first and only literary account of corporate flex-time employment that offers freedom to workers who have become an expendable resource. Shifting between the first and the second person, Seasonal Associate is a nuanced expose of the psychic damage that is an essential working condition with mega-corporations. Geissler has written a twenty-first-century account of how the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt.
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blurb
nikirtehsuxlol
Seasonal Associate | Heike Geissler
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Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

blurb
Readaholics
Seasonal Associate | Heike Geissler
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I read about this book in NYT Book Review and I just had to order it. I can‘t wait to dig into this. A German‘s POV working for Amazon. From the first page, Heike is honest and raw. “From now on, that which kills us is our constant companion; that much I can say.” This is gonna be a crazy read.

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Taylor
Seasonal Associate | Heike Geissler
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Pickpick

A depressing and stifling account of a woman who ends up working in one of the dreaded Amazon warehouses. It‘s quite readable but experimental in form, the perfect blend for me. Read it because it‘s important to read translations. And read it for a very intellectual—and triggering even—take on consumerism, capitalism, exploitation, dehumanization... Hey I said it was depressing.

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quote
shutupsmalls
Seasonal Associate | Heike Geissler
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Is all this a matter of life and death? I‘ll say no for the moment and come back to the question later. At that point, I‘ll say: not directly, but in a way yes. It‘s a matter of how far death is allowed into our lives. Or the fatal, that which kills us. To be precise: compared with that which kills us, death is nothing but an innocent waif. Or: death, compared to that which kills us, is a gentleman with good manners and a shy look in his eye.