- The Guardian
Wednesday 24 July 2019
A
black box fl oats beneath our
feet , containing a barrel of whey
protein, 24 cans of Monster
Energy and a Winnie the Pooh
toy. It disappears through metal
grates to be sorted, packed
and sent off for next-day delivery. At 700,000
square feet, Amazon’s warehouse in Rugeley,
Staff ordshire, is the size of 10 football pitches.
By the time the box has crossed into the tangle
of conveyor belts , we’ve moved down one of
the endlessly stretching walkways. There’s
more than an echo of the corridors from The
Shining – only these are colour-coded.
Amazon, the most valuable company in
the world , has repeatedly been criticised for
allegedly monstrous working conditions. Jobs
have been described as damaging to mental
and physical health,
with reports of workers
walking up to 15 miles
daily, of breaks too
short, pay too low and
overtime compulsory.
( Amazon recently told
the Guardian : “We work
hard to ensure they are
provided a safe, comfortable, and modern
work environment.”)
For the past two years, Kezia Cole and
Richard Hay have been developing Fulfi lment,
a puppetry show about robots, artifi cial
intelligence and workers’ rights. Today, Cole,
Hay and I have joined a public tour of Rugeley
warehouse. Our guide has a politician’s ability
to defl ect diffi cult questions and a grating
tendency to refer to women as “young lady”. No,
he hasn’t seen the BBC Panorama episode about
Amazon. “I think perhaps they’re letting a good
story get in the way of the truth.” He reckons
complaints against Amazon are only disgruntled
employees. “What,” Cole snorts, “all of them?”
For three weeks, Cole and Hay hung out
in pubs and on trains around another of
Amazon’s warehouses, or “fulfi lment centres”- so called because they “fulfi l dreams”. They
spoke to almost 70 staff , mostly “pickers” and
“packers”. “They give me 15 seconds from pick
to pick,” one revealed. “Do you know what you
can do in 15 seconds? Can’t even register the
thing you’re picking.”
Fulfi lment blends verbatim transcripts with
the manipulation of Robox, “your personal
fulfi lment device”. Robox is a puppet in the
shape of a robot, with bright unblinking eyes.
Its three puppeteers are dressed as Amazon
staff. “You just blank them out, ” says Hay,
“like we do with Amazon workers.”
Robox learns about its audience live: “Alexa
mark 10,” Cole off ers. Audience interaction
aids the set up, activating voice recognition and
altering the lights in the theatre. Then Robox
starts to ask questions. “ I want to know all of
you as well as I can,” it says. “The more I know
you, the better I can give you all the things
that make you smile.” Robox gets increasingly
confi dent, and the humour darkens. Just as
Amazon gathers our data , Robox gleans more
than we think we’ve given away.
One of the common criticisms about
Amazon is that it already treats its workers like
robots. T he warehouse tour coincides with
lunch, so we only pass a human every quarter
football-fi eld or so. It’s lonely, says one of the
interviewees. “ You’re on your own with your
trolley. The most interaction you get is the
occasional nod as you pass another picker,
turning a corner getting to the next location.”
The warehouse in Ru geley , meanwhile, was
placed under scrutiny in 2016 following the
publication of James Bloodworth’s book Hired:
Six Months in Low-Wage Britain , in which he
reported on the realities of working there. Since
the book, Amazon has increased its wages. But
reports suggest that staff are no longer eligible
for shares or bonuses, meaning some believe
they will be worse off than before. The retailer
claims the increase “more than compensates
for the phaseout”, and pledged to adjust
some wages to ensure employees did not lose
income. Workers say they now also have to
sign a non disclosure agreement as part of their
contract. (All of Cole and Hay’s interviewees
were promised anonymity.)
Even walking slowly, we work up a sweat.
In the summer, it can get up to 33 C inside.
Fulfi lment’s interviewees revealed that the
warehouses are so large it can take up to seven
minutes to cross the space to the bathroom
during a 10-minute toilet break. One worker
short of time felt he had to urinate in a bin.
Meeting Amazon workers made Cole and Hay
confront their own shopping habits. “They’re
never going to change unless you legislate,”
Cole insists, “but the government won’t do
anything because of the jobs, and Amazon
won’t do anything because of the bottom line
for its shareholders. And it’s all set up in areas of
deprivation, so it’s not like you can walk out of
one job into another.” The directors have been
boycotting Amazon for six months and hope
the play might encourage others to shop more
consciously. “It’s about showing people what
their choices mean .”
In the play, as Robox starts to demonstrate
the data it has collected over the audience,
it becomes increasingly frustrated with the
employees moving it. Taking on the persona of
a fulfi lment centre manager, it criticises them
for wasting time. Then it turns sweetly back
to the audience, the focus always on realising
our desires, never mind the back end of the
operation. “Your fulfi lment is my fulfi lment,”
the robot says. “I am here to make you happy.”
Fulfi lment is at the Underbelly, Cowgate,
Edinburgh festival , 1-25 August.Shop til
they drop
From low pay to
loneliness, an Edinburgh
show explores work in an
Amazon warehouse. Its
creators toured the real
thing with Kate Wyver
You blank out the
puppeteers, just
like we do w ith
Amazon workers
fi nal series, Blackadder Goes Forth,
Robinson needed only to say “I” to
reduce the audience to hysterics. “It’s
not that you’ve said anything funny.
It’s just out of recognition of all those
times they’ve laughed in the past.”
He refers to it now as a kind of
spell. “It makes people go into a
place they weren’t in before. And to
use that spell overmuch is to weaken
it. That’s why I don’t usually say it
when people ask me to. If they’re
absolutely dying for me to , I will. ”
However, just as Wilson has revived
his catchphrase for a fake Radio 4
memoir (Believe It!), and a comedy
sketch campaigning for a second
EU referendum, so Robinson has
borrowed his for an autobiography
(No Cunning Plan) and a live show
(Tony Robinson’s Cunning Night
Out). “There’s a limit to the amount
of times I’m prepared to prostitute
my catchphrase,” Robinson laughs,
“and I think I’ve reached it.”
It isn’t so funny for everyone.
Cuba Gooding Jr admitted to this
paper last year that he hadn’t gone
more than two days since the
release of Jerry Maguire in 1996
without someone shouting the best-
known line from his Oscar-winning
performance in that fi lm: “Show me
the money!” The late Barry Norman
expressed bewilderment that the
phrase “And why not?” proved so
unshak able when he had never
said it in the fi rst place. Instead, it
was the l inchpin of Rory Bremner’s
impression of him.
But few performers have been
more imprisoned by a single line and
its associations than Gary Coleman ,
who starred in the US sitcom
Diff ’rent Strokes from the age of 10.
He died at 42 having never outrun
his sassy catchphrase – “Whatchoo
talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” – from the
show. “He was a sweet guy, but he
hated being asked to repeat [it],” said
his friend, the porn star Ron Jeremy,
shortly after his death. “He didn’t
want to live in the past.”
There are some performers for
whom familiar lines are like medals
testifying to battles won: Arnold
Schwarzenegger was little more
than a glorifi ed bodybuilder prior
to the Terminator movies, so it’s
no wonder he will repeat excerpts
from those scripts (“I’ll be back”,
“Hasta la vista, baby”) at the
drop of a barbell, and on the most
spurious pretext. Catchphrases
can also serve as helium rather
than ballast, lifting an actor higherin the public’s aff ections across a
wide-reaching career, as in the case
of Michael Caine. His greatest hits
encompass movie dialogue (“You’re
only supposed to blow the bloody
doors off !”); asides elevated to the
level of verbal signatures (“Not a lot
of people know that”); and even a
needless introduction (“My name is
Michael Caine,” as on the Madness
song named after him).
Catchphrases never work as
hand-me-downs, however, as David
Cameron has twice discovered, fi rst
when he launched the National
Citizen Service with Caine standing
nearby in 2010 (“As a project, I
hope it does more than just blow
the bloody doors off ”) and again a
year later, when his use of Michael
Winner’s ad line “Calm down, dear”
in the Commons in response to
Angela Eagle revealed him to be a
patronising sexist rather than a wit.
Sending yourself up is one way
an actor can try to neutralise a
troublesome catchphrase. Wilson
did a delicious job playing himself,
apoplectic with rage, in an episode
of Father Ted , though he concedes
it may only have increased his
visibility. “People who’d never
seen One Foot in the Grave saw and
enjoyed that,” he says. And revisiting
a catchphrase can backfi re in other
ways: there are few sights less
edifying in cinema than Robert De
Niro delivering his confrontational
Taxi Driver dialogue (“You talkin’
to me?”) while hamming it up in
a monocle as the villain in The
Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Best to make your peace , as
Robinson has done. He claims not
to wince when someone asks, yet
again, if he has a cunning plan. “For
me it’s a reminder of the fact that my
life was transformed by that series.
It makes me feel great. My whole
working life I had been a jobbing
actor and then suddenly I was put in
this powerful position. ”
Lipman would be overjoyed if
she never heard the word “ology”
again but it hasn’t made her blind
to the appeal of catchphrases.
“There’s nothing intrinsically
amusing about somebody calling a
younger man ‘stupid boy’ and yet
we long for [Arthur Lowe as] Captain
Mainwaring in Dad’s Army to say it.
Once you’ve laughed at it, you can’t
wait to laugh at it again. As humans
we need to bond and we need ritual- and that’s what catchphrases
represent.”
‘You’re only
supposed to blow the
bloody doors off ’ ...
Michael Caine in
The Italian Job
‘You stupid boy’
... Arthur Lowe
in Dad’s ArmyPHOTOGRAPH: KATE WYVERRobox at work ...
Fulfi lment’s puppeteers;
below, Kezia Cole
and Richard Hay at the
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