21 Dog Years, doing time at Amazon.com
by Mike Daisey
Free Press
– June 2002, 224 pgs, $23.00 (US)
Adventures in Webland
“The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.” – E. B. White, One Man’s Meat
“Things are entirely what they appear to be – and behind them … there is nothing.” – Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea
Mike Daisey’s 21 Dog Years is A Separate Peace for the dot com generation. It contains the same major literary themes well-meaning English teachers forced us to list in those halcyon high school days. Reality vs. memory, rebellion vs. conformity, innocence vs. age, conscience and guilt – and don’t forget to throw in the always popular – appearance vs. reality and you’ve got it. It’s just that, with the high school required reading, I don’t remember laughing out loud. 21 Dog Years is funny as hell. Like Gene Forester and his friend Phineas, Mike Daisey and his fellow Amazonians were children of “careless peace”. Only, instead of being “set apart from adults by their lack of knowledge of war and their utter abandon to their own happy worlds", their bliss stemmed from their lack of knowledge of successful business models so apparent by the dot com grab and go frenzy of the late 90s.
While Forester revisits the school after 15 years and considers the way he is and the way he was, Daisey doesn’t go back. But he does evaluate how the experience changed him. In the book he compares his pre-Amazon days to his cubicle years with the company. Daisey, a dilettante, with a very un-marketable degree in aesthetics, gets a call from a temp agency. Amazon.com is hiring and they’re looking for freaks. Daisey’s name jumped out of the database. “My first meeting with the recruiter was a revelation. She was a polite and talkative lady with thick glasses and an overbite. Her favorite maneuver was to breathe in through her mouth, flare her nostrils, and then blast the air back out her nose – a human air conditioner … Years later I found out that the staffing company had a bin for the Amazon applications separate from all other assignments. The receptionist saw that the bin was labeled F. P. and asked what it stood for. ‘Oh, that’s for Freak Parade,’ she was told. ‘You know, the Amazonians.’”
After spending a few years as a slackard in Seattle, Daisey becomes obsessed with dental hygiene and takes the job at Amazon because he must have dental insurance. This is one of those books that begs to be excerpted, quoted to truly give a taste of what’s in store for the reader. Three different people picked up the book off my coffee table and each one began reading and laughing out loud. These were people who don’t normally read anything except Linux journals or C++ training manuals. Daisey describes the informal session for prospective Amazon recruits: And my God, those people! The four Amazonians who came to speak with us had the clearest, cleanest skin that I’d ever seen. Two men, two women – they said they worked in customer service, which they referred to as “CS.” Two of the four wore REI fleece vests and all four had some slight variation of the same khaki Dockers pants. And that hygiene. These folks must have an amazing medical plan that includes plastic surgery or genetic reprogramming, I thought. I was encouraged in my quest to prevent tooth decay. The book reads like an evening conversation among friends. Daisey’s style is laid back and easy. He’s telling you a story of something that happened to him. Settling back in your chair, you relax and let him talk, not wanting to interrupt the flow. He’s not mean-spirited, many of the jokes are “on him”. He genuinely admires Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, but doesn’t pander to him.
And Daisey told me he doesn’t particularly care what Amazon thinks of his book. Life at Amazon.com becomes Daisey’s “Devon", not a private boarding school but a private club of believers. And the president of the club is Jeff Bezos. Daisey describes Bezos as a “bright and studious elf – Santa’s second lieutenant”. Even after leaving Amazon, Daisey’s admiration for Bezos is unfailing. “He is gentle, a rare trait in humans, particularly CEOs. You would trust him with your children; when you got home he would have taught them how to sequence DNA and how the kitchen sink disposal really works. I have never had a kinder more human employer before or since – Jeff is amazingly dedicated to connecting with everyone in his company”.
While working at Amazon, Daisey writes off-the-wall emails to Bezos. He doesn’t send them. After reading the book, I wrote off-the-wall emails to Daisey. I sent them.
To: Mike Daisey@whereverheis.com
From: Bookseditor@popmatters.com
Subject: Books, Words, and Dreams
MacEwan: I’m really not meaning to intrude but I have to ask: Are you making a lot of money now that you’ve become a terrific author? Do you feel as if your aesthetic life has become concrete?
Daisey: In a word, no. I do feel like I have a stronger idea of what I’m doing here on earth, and I seem to be able to make a living writing and performing, but it isn’t a rock star lifestyle–it’s pretty moderate, and after Amazon I’ve realized that’s all I really wanted.
***
MacEwan: There’s nothing wrong with it, you know, this feeling of satisfaction from a job well done, the feeling you must have since your book has been so well received. You made us laugh and you made us think. Last night, my dog had a dream. He was running in place and barking with his eyes closed. I imagined he thought he was at Amazon, running through the warehouse, trying to fill all the orders. He is only seven dog years old but I know he feels the stress of being a Jack Russell terrier.
Daisey: They say dogs only have two dreams: the good dream and the bad dream. I like to believe that’s true, and I think it might also be true in our own lives–workers have either the good or bad dream, and in a lot of cases the only real difference is what perspective you have on what you’re living through.
*** MacEwan: So what are you going to do with all that money? You’re a geek wanna’be and we all totally respect that. My friends are open-source gurus, can’t get enough of that Linus Torvalds. He is their Bezos Prime. I’m a poser, know enough code to appear “not stupid” but not enough knowledge to converse in person (I can look shit up and then make a stab at decent email geekspeak, no off the cuff stuff, so I know from whence you are coming.)
Daisey: Should the book really break out, or a film version starring Russell Crowe is made, I plan to take all my unbelievable amounts of money and open a small theater that is also a Macintosh repair shop, and there I will while away my hours, soldering motherboards and performing shows. This is vanishingly unlikely.
*** MacEwan: Question, then: Is Torvalds the anti-thesis of Bezos?
Daisey: That’s a good one. There’s some truth in that, as Bezos would just look at him and wonder why he doesn’t get undepressed and JUST DO IT. I doubt Jeff knows the reference, though–he’s very smart, but generally linearly focused.
*** MacEwan: Question, another: How hard was it to get an agent and get a publishing contract for your book? Do you think the “timeliness” of the subject matter increased your chances for success? I think, well, actually, anyone who reads the book would think, that your writing style and your wit would sell the book in a nanosecond, but you got to wonder if it being about Bezo didn’t tickle their fancy.
Daisey: Definitely the topicality helped. I have been dilettanting it all over the place for years, so if the topicality and attention hadn’t focused in and made me get on the stick about landing a contract, I doubt I ever would have written my first book. I would have thought about it, fucked around and never done a damn thing. So I never dreamed of making Amazon the focus of my first writing effort, but it’s a good subject, I like the larger issues and it helped me get my foot in the door. Now they’re going to have to cut that foot off is they ever expect me to leave.
*** MacEwan: Question, the last one: Have you had any comments from Amazon about the book?
Daisey: Nope. They just say, “We haven’t read the book, but we hear it is very funny, and we wish Mike all the best.” No one seems to be reviewing it from Amazon, so I guess they can maintain that stance.
*** MacEwan: Oh, wait, one more: How nerve splitting is it to go on Letterman? [Daisey appeared on David Letterman on June 11th.]
Daisey: Pretty bad. I’m actually rather relaxed about it–I mean, I’ve seen the guy my whole life, so it is easy to imagine what it will be like. But there are media handlers and discussions and topic breakdowns … you feel like you are participating in a shuttle launch.
*** MacEwan: And, I completely understand your trip to Spain. It’s like a lump sum in a divorce settlement. Spend it and get rid of it, or it will haunt you.
Daisey: Agreed.
*** MacEwan: The book is awesome, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I laughed out loud, I’ve been on the crap-end of the dot.com stock “promise of wealth” and I am so glad you wrote this book.
Daisey: Thank you so much … I hope others find it both funny and releasing, like a very humorous enema, or a comedy diuretic of some kind.