Worker 3 worked as a driver for amazon for three years and a clerk for four years. He lives in the US. “Forever on the Clock” starts as a cautionary tale: a man wakes up one day and decides to quit his job at Amazon. He finds himself in prison, serving time for petty crimes. There, he notices that the work he’s been tasked with seems... oddly familiar.
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The huge wall clock kept moving, its steady beat lulling me into a sense of tranquility. I lay still, my heart beat matching the tempo of the passage of time, trying to relax, to forget, if only for a moment. Perhaps I had time to prepare, a small sliver of time in which I could buckle up against the bitter—
BLEET, BLEET, BLEET
The insistent blare of my alarm mocked my brief, thwarted attempt to steal one moment of relief from this slavery of a life. But in that moment, I somehow made peace with a choice. For the first time in what felt like a century of misery I would refuse to conform to the expectations of my rote and predictable schedule. For the first time, I got the courage to finally press that stop button. Today, I will get enough sleep. That word – enough – already made me a dissident, and it would cost me – my empty stomach was already roaring at me. Realistically, I would only get more hungry, cold, and desperate. But I rolled over anyway, pressing do not disturb on my phone and accepting the dare to live a more comfortable life, if only for a morning. I was frying my own life, of course, my own future, but it didn’t seem that terrible a loss, to be honest.
But even knowing all that, I couldn’t have imagined how much this moment of transgression would change my life.
My intention was to delay the start of my day by half an hour. I just wanted to experience the joy of sleeping through sunrise, of letting the chill of night give way to the warmth of the day. I’d never been able to enjoy the light of the day. I always left the house before dawn, returning only when the dusk began to settle. Every day. For this moment, I wanted to relish how the golden light made the dank room look almost cozy.
Bathed in that golden glow, I reluctantly rolled out of bed and stretched my arms over my head, feeling like a marathonist who had just broken a world record. I took my sweet time making breakfast – no dry toast as I dashed out of the house this morning! No, today my toast was buttered with the last of the company-issued margarine. Some powdered milk in my tea added that bit of sweetness, and the last of the sweet pepper almost made the egg substitute edible. I finished the feast with the single dried plum I had been saving for just such an occasion. I knew this was likely the last meal I would have for a while, and I couldn’t resist the chance to feel nourished as well as rested. I sat on my one chair at my tiny kitchen table and got lost in the sheer joy of the warm sun on my skin.
But reality has a way of seeping into even our most sublime moments. I had ignored my phone for too long. How could I forget to call in sick?
All I heard on the other end of the line was “you’re fired.”
Well, it was about time. Working for Amazon was frustrating and draining. One hour felt like five days in that hellhole. Around every corner was a new protocol, another expectation to boost efficiency and break my back. But I had managed to stay invisible there, as transparent as air itself. Nothing I said mattered or was even considered. Until that phone call. Now I had no choice but to change my life.
Change my life? Ha! That’s dreaming big for a person of color in a white land. But nonetheless, when I glanced at myself in the cracked mirror I found I was smiling. Smiling at the simple fact of being human, no longer just a disposable cog in their machine. I had a meeting with myself in that mirror, a reminder of how capable I am, of how I mattered. Born of a woman and man who made it through. And I could make it too. I stamped down the fear of failure, the fear that scratches at you as you stare into the unknown, and instead embraced the feeling of possibility.
My grin widened, my cheeks aching with the unfamiliar effort, and I was struck by the desire, no, the need, to share my joy. I picked up my phone and scrolled over to my WhatsApp, but my fingers froze, poised over the app. Who was I imagining I would text? I had no friends or close family anymore. I dropped heavily into the chair as the weight of that realization hit me. Not only had my work stolen my time, energy, and body but it had also stolen my friends and family. The truth was, I had forgotten what it felt like to love and be loved. I was lonely and miserable.
I had a journey to rebuild myself and a network. I didn’t know where to being, but the possibilities—
BAM, BAM, BAM
Reality came crashing in in my front door. I was still struggling to grasp what was happening when I found myself hauled out of the chair and slammed face-first on the table.
“Mark Anthony? You’re under arrest and anything you say or do will be used against you in the court of law.”
My mind reeled as a huge figure stepped up, blocking the golden rays that shone brightly through the window.
“You really have the audacity, you sniveling little vermin? You can’t quit while you still owe me.”
I blinked as comprehension set in. How powerful was Amazon? Barely a few hours had passed since I’d been sacked. How could news spread so fast? I stared miserably at the small ceramic deer that sat on my table, one of the few objects I had left from my parents, but it mocked me with its freedom. Why could something inanimate have the freedom to just exist but I could not?
I was handcuffed and taken to the police station. While I waited to be arraigned in court I was kept in a cold, dirty holding cell, surrounded by more tattoos and piercings than I had ever seen in my life. I glanced around briefly to get my bearings, but when a few people stared back at me with callous smirks, I immediately looked down again. I had never been arrested before, though it was common enough, and I was scared. My stay in the holding cell was brief, as was my appearance in court. The judge delivered a snap verdict.
Six years imprisonment.
I was taken from the court still in handcuffs and tossed bodily into a police bus for the short trip to the county holding facility for men. I had never seen the jail, of course, and I peered through the front window of the bus as we drove up to the two huge, heavily guarded gates, my breath catching at the sight of the massive electric perimeter fence.
BBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRR
The gates opened with a loud buzz and the bus moved through them, then stopped as the gates pulled closed behind us, another loud buzz indicating they were secured. The bus door opened and a prison guard climbed on, fully decked out in riot gear, a machine gun at the ready, and yelled at us to MOVE.
We were marched into a nearby building where our cuffs were removed and we were stripped naked, all of our belongings going into plastic containers with our names on them. We were then taken to a large washroom where we were forced to shower and scrub with cold water and broken pieces of soap before we were subjected to a full body cavity search. When that was done, we dressed in our prison uniforms, picked up a set of bedding, and were paraded through the halls of the prison as the other prisoners mocked and cat-called us.
I was pushed into a cell with a scary looking guy whose first words were, “Stay in your lane if you want to see the sun rise”.
I was smart enough to know that being a scared little mouse wasn’t going to win me any favors with this one, so I tried to keep my chin up as I slinked into the available bed.
RRRRRRRRRRRRINGGGGGGG
The sharp, school-bell ring announced dinnertime and our cell doors opened, allowing the prisoners to shuffle out of their cells and down the long, dark corridor to the dining hall. The queues were long and, if I wanted to eat, there was no option but to stand with the rest of the inmates. When I got to the front of the line, I watched the indeterminate brown sludge slop onto my tray and then moved towards the seating area. I scanned the room quickly, trying to find a safe place to land, but the crowd of faces stared at me with suspicion. I didn’t belong there and I wasn’t welcom. I held my chin high, but pulled it back down a notch, not too high, and found some space in a corner where I stood and took my meal in silence. As I walked back, some random guy punched me in the gut and I dropped my tray. A few others joined in, snarling, “welcome home, bastard.”
I gathered the fallen dishes quickly and deposited my tray, practically crawling back to my cell to nurse my wounds and regret.
I lay in my cot, thinking about my predicament, thinking about how harsh the world was, feeling the ache in every part of my body. Finally, blissfully, I found escape in sleep.
BZZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZ
I sat bolt upright, terrified by the sound, and looked around wildly. Where was I? What was…oh, right. I glanced up at the pale predawn that peaked from around the bars of the tiny window and knew that light. It’s 5 am. Was it only two days ago that I had dared to wait for the sun to peek over the horizon before I got out of bed?
I jumped, my reverie broken, as the locks clicked and the cell door popped open. The other inmates left their cells and started down the corridor, so I followed suit. But I stopped almost immediately, my jaw dropping to the floor, as my brain screamed at me to run, to fight, to do anything other than stand there, frozen like a deer in headlights, as I tried to comprehend what I was looking at.
The guards that marched up and down the corridor, prodding prisoners to move, weren’t human.
They. Weren’t. Human.
My cellie, disinterested in the extreme crisis I was experiencing, shoved me, pushing me across the corridor and into the steel bars of the cell opposite, then stomped down the corridor muttering about goddamn newbies.
I cowered further into the bars those … things (aliens? Like, from another planet? There are aliens on earth? Working as prison guards? What the serious f–). They spoke with a single loud voice that sounded like a machine:
DUTIES TIME. REPORT TO YOUR DUTY STATION. NEWBIES WILL REPORT TO THE DINING HALL TO BE ASSIGNED.
I watched in horrified awe as, without hesitation, without even a grumble of resistance, even the scariest of the men marched down the corridor. Their fear infected me, and I forced my body to join the flow of men, making my way to the dining hall.
I was assigned to packaging. I almost laughed. This was some kind of cruel joke, right? Packaging? The mindless, endless work I’d been doing for Amazon for almost as long as I could remember? I couldn’t contain it and the laughter erupted out of me. But even I could hear the insanity of that cackle and cut it off quickly.
We were led to the site and I found myself, once again, astonished. It was vast, stretching as far as the eye could see, and was clearly the grounds for some kind of large scale production. Heavy machinery filled the space and large, vaguely humanoid robots glided around them, doing stock confirmation and reporting to the aliens that stood guard. A glance around told me there was no room for questions here.
We moved past the enormous space and were led to the packaging rooms, a series of dark, dingy spaces that clearly ran on fear. We were put to work immediately.
There were no breaks, except a quick snack of bread and water that seemed only to come every several days. Time did not move at all, or maybe I just couldn’t tell the difference. Day blurred into night and then back into day again, and my head was filled with a steady stream of futile thoughts that did nothing to change my fate. I don’t know how long I worked in that room, how many days or weeks or months passed as I packaged. I was caught in a seemingly endless loop of misery as I waited for my term to be complete.
And then, one day (or maybe it had just been one hour?) I made a friend. I was in my packaging room, alone, and, finding my usual muttering insufficient, I cursed loudly. I cringed when the sound echoed back equally loudly and looked around quickly, afraid I’d draw the ire of our alien masters. Instead, I heard a voice. “Shut up” it said.
I spun toward the door, expecting to see a prison guard, but found nothing.
“Is anyone there?” I called tentatively, my voice squeaking unfortunately on the last word. When there was no reply, I shook my head. You’re lost now, I thought to myself. Gone over the deep end entirely. I sighed and picked up the next package, trying to lose myself in work.
“You must be a newbie here.”
I started, pulled from the deep trance I had fallen into. “Yes,” I replied, still convinced I was losing it.
“Yup. Newbie.” A sarcastic laugh echoed (not mine, right? I’m sure it wasn’t me).
“Well, making noises don’t work here” the voice said.
OK, we were going to do this thing. “How long you been here?” I asked.
“Lost count,” the voice replied.
And we just went from there. As we talked, I felt a sense of peace come over me. For the first time in a long while I felt like I had a friend. The work didn’t feel so burdensome and time passed more quickly. A small splash of sunlight had entered my world.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, after so long alone in this dark room, the door flew open and I looked up to see a human guard framed in the artificial light. He beckoned that it was time to head back to my cell, but I hesitated.
“Can I just say goodbye to my friend?” I asked.
The guard shrugged. “You sure you wanna do that?” he asked with a smirk.
I hesitated again, wondering why that sounded so threatening, but said yes before he could change his mind.
The guard strode over and pushed on the wall, opening a strange small door. I peered in, blinking at the light, and then pulled back in horror.
Standing in the doorway, shrouded in light, was what looked, on first glance, to be a dog. But this dog, standing on all fours and covered in fur, had the head of a human.
“Take care, my friend!” the human dog said.
I screamed.
The guard opened my cell and I stumbled inside, exhausted and beaten down. What kind of place was this?
“You’re lucky to be back,” my cellie said gruffly. I looked at him blankly. Why wouldn’t I be back?
“How long has it been,” I asked.
“Four days,” was his reply.
Four days? It felt like an eternity but I didn’t really expect it to have been four days. I dropped to my bunk, too overwhelmed to sleep. But it had been nice to have a friend.
“I’m Anthony,” I said to my cellie. He leveled a stare at me from his bunk. “Um, what’s your name?” I asked.
He grunted, “None of your damn business.”
“Sorry” I replied, but got nothing further in return. I finally fell into a restless sleep.
BZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZ
I awakened groggily. I remembered where I was this time, but that didn’t promise to make the day any better. After a tray of slop, which I stuffed in hungrily, I returned to my dark packaging room. I attacked my work with a little extra vigor, determined not to have my head removed and sewn onto a dog’s body. I avoided looking at the door I couldn’t see but that I knew was there. It filled me with horror. But there was also regret. It had been nice to have a friend.
But then the day came when I made another friend, a human friend, Alex. Unlike so many of the people here, Alex didn’t seem beaten down. He smiled and laughed easily, a real storyteller. I couldn’t understand how he kept his spirits up. I wondered where he worked in the prison. He didn’t seem like someone who was sent to solitary confinement for days on end to package…
Finally, one day, I got up the nerve to ask.
“Alex, where do you work that you have so much joy?” I asked.
“We pack the trucks,” he replied. I get to move around the prison freely… and I even get to go outside.”
My heart leapt. Outside? In the sun? “How,” I started to ask, but the word caught in my throat.
Outside.
Weeks passed, and my life was filled with the drudgery of packaging, Alex was the one spot of light in a field of darkness. One day, Alex asked me to follow him.
“Someone on our team was released,” he said. “A spot opened up, and it’s yours.”
For a couple of months, I collected packages inside, putting them into bins that I stacked inside the loading bay. The work wasn’t particularly exciting, but I got to move around freely within the prison. But the time came, eventually, when I was assigned to move the stacked bins into the secure parking area in the prison yard and load them onto the trucks. Outside. With the sun, the rain, the wind.
I stepped outside for the first time in months and breathed deeply, my eyes closed, sucking in the fresh air. It didn’t matter that the stench of garbage was strong here, the air was beautiful. I was filled with life for the first time in a long time.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP
I opened my eyes as the truck backed up, prepared to take on its new load. I looked around and saw a team loading the bins onto another truck. I watched them load, wanting to ensure I knew what to do. My eyes were drawn to the lettering on the side of the truck. I stared, dumbstruck. I must be hallucinating.
Amazon? But that doesn’t make any sense. What did Amazon have to do with prisons? Amazon has warehouses and workers. My team yelled for me and I came back to earth, heaving the bins up into the Amazon truck in front of us. How could it be? How? I had so many questions. But there were no answers.
That night I lay in my bunk, stewing. What was even happening here? There were aliens and mutilated dog people and Amazon… Did Amazon employ aliens and mutant dogs? Was I just doing the same goddamn work I’d been doing for Amazon before?
As I lay there, trying to make sense of it all, I grew angry. I curled my hands into fists, sucked in a big breath and yelled “FUCK AMAZON!”
In the other bunk, my cellie laughed and said, “Fuck yeah!” I jumped. We’d been sharing this cell for months and this was probably only the third thing he’d ever said to me.
“You worked there too,” he tossed casually across the room.
“Ye-yeah. Yeah, I did.” I replied. “It’s the reason I’m in here.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me, “Yeah, you and most everyone else here.”
“What? What do you mean?”
As he told his story, I could only stare at him. He’d also stayed home, refusing. They’d broken down his door, dragged him to prison…
My story. All of our stories.
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I was released five years later, a reformed citizen. Forever on the clock for Amazon.