Year: 2011

Amazon Workers Left Out In the Cold: Excuses Expose Amazon’s Sustainability Issues

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments
Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...
How To Make Enemies and Exploit People

I’ve heard some people in this here Valley saying that Amazon was justified in keeping warehouse workers, often clad in nothing more than t-shirts and short, outside in the wee hours of the morning in the freezing cold for ridiculously long periods of time.  Oh, they’re not saying it exactly that way.  Remember, the evacuations at the warehouses were caused by fire alarms being pulled, and the alarms were pulled so that these workers could steal, so the narrative goes.  Sometimes people with throw the word “lazy” in there before “workers,” or maybe the occasional “thieving.”  So, you know, because some workers are allegedly stealing, everyone has to be exposed to extreme cold for close to two hours so some middle managers can get some iPod Nanos back.  Some of the workers, by the way, have been saying that the managers are the ones doing the stealing.

Amazon and Amazon fans can spin this however they want. The fact remains that these procedures, and the culture that breeds them, are the definition of unsustainable business.  There’s really no better to handle rogue alarm-pulling (if, indeed, that’s what happened) than to let your workforce freeze in the early hours of a November or December morning in Pennsylvania?  That’s atrocious and unacceptable.  Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, really has no better way of cooling their facilities in the summer than farming out heat-sick workers to local ERs via a veritable concierge ambulance service?  Please.

Strike a blow for sustainability and stop buying from Amazon until they figure out how to run an ethical business on the supply side.

Related articles

People With Cooler (Or At Least Other) Heads Are Making the Same Point

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

I don’t think I jumped to any conclusions last night when calling for, and continuing to call for, Joe Paterno’s termination.  Some friends disagreed, either with my assessment or with my contention that I wasn’t rushing to judgement.

In the larger context of this story, I want to share a few thoughts from some other people opining on the issue.  They’re not all calling for his termination, but they’re making the same basic points about what Paterno’s specific (and egregious) failings were in this sad, disgusting turn of events.  I believe those failings mean  Paterno must be fired.

Penn State vs. Kent State
Image by seng1011 via Flickr.

Paterno Still Hasn’t Answered The Question That Matters by David Jones of The Patriot-News.

Joe Paterno, Penn State Failed Miserably in Sad Sandusky Case by Michael Rosbenberg at Sports Illustrated.

An excerpt from Bill Plaschke:

What do you think would have happened if, say, Paterno had gone to his athletic director requesting a change of the shade of black on his football team’s legendary shoes. What if Curley had done nothing with the request? How long before Paterno did something himself? Maybe nine minutes?

Yet he tells Curley about an alleged child molester frolicking in his showers and then casually forgets about it for nine years?

At some point after informing the athletic director of the report, Paterno should have gone to Curley and said, “If you don’t do something, I will.”

Although this is not a gesture mandated by state law or school handbook, it is a fact of simple humanity.

“If you don’t do something, I will,” is a statement that now needs to be directed at the coach by the school’s board of trustees.

For the sake of a university whose continued association with him would damage its success and stain its honor, if Joe Paterno doesn’t quit, they should fire him.

Others are rightly pointing out that Paterno’s statement yesterday directly conflicts with the grand jury report which found that Paterno was told that Sandusky was seen committing acts of a sexual nature with a child in the locker room shower.

The upshot for Paterno is this: the national sports media will begin exposing the narrative that Paterno, rather lamely, tried to cover his ass with a tepid statement that stands in direct contrast to things he told the grand jury.  Things about what he knew and didn’t know.  In that light, Paterno’s press statement is callous at the very best, but is also slovenly, self-serving, and, frankly, despicable.

Because, as Paterno’s nominal superiors know, lying to the grand jury is perjury, let’s assume Paterno told the truth to the GJ and lied today to the press.  See paragraph immediately above.

Last night,  I felt as though PSU would let Paterno finish the season and then make him retire.  Now I think this cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up has real traction.  A few more heads will roll before the week is out, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Paterno “resign” in short order.

 

The Grad Student’s Failure Doesn’t Make the Coach’s Failure Any Better

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
I didn't say "Penn Sate" or "Joe Paterno" once in this post, but look what WordPress did.

You’re a grad student. You witness a crime. Of course you should go to the police. Instead, you go to one of the most powerful people you’ll ever meet, a man who has prided his career on the development of men of character, and rather than go to the police, said coaching legend tells the AD and the VP of business and finance about what you said you saw. No one ever goes to the police. Heinous crimes against children continue for ten years. If you’re the grad student, you made a huge mistake and are as guilty or almost as guilty as the coach. Legally, you’ve both violated state law by not reporting to the authorities.  If you’re the coach, you’re still guilty, at least as much as the grad student, maybe more so because of your position in the community and because of your immense credibility. You should be fired. That’s it, and that’s all.

Should Penn State Fire Joe Paterno?

~ Chris Cocca ~ 12 Comments
Main entrance of Old Main, at Penn State Unive...
Image via Wikipedia

First, let me be clear: I don’t know Jerry Sandusky or anyone involved in the investigation, but I believe the allegations against him are true.

Even if they’re not, Penn State should fire Joe Paterno.

In one instance, Sandusky’s alleged conduct was reported to Paterno by an eyewitness over 10 years ago.  Paterno passed the information on to Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior VP for Business and Finance Gary Schultz.  Curley and Schultz did nothing with the information.  On Saturday, Penn State either fired or forced the resignation of both men, who now face arraignment and further criminal investigation.

Paterno claims he did what he was supposed to do by reporting the information to Curely and Schultz.

Consider this:  If Paterno were a Catholic bishop reporting alleged abuse to some peers or cardinals instead of the police, his ass would be in the fire in the court of public opinion (if not actual court).

He needs to go.

Related articles

BOMB Magazine Gets Me All Theological

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...
I freaking love this guy.

Harnessing both my theological and literary training, I present the curious parallel between BOMB Magazine’s “tips for writers” and Romans chapter 7.

Please do not send genre fiction. Please read the magazine before you even think of submitting work. Sample copies are available for purchase.

Setting aside the fact that samples aren’t usually something one pays for, BOMB has, by the sly legalism of these suggestions, already made me an offender.  Had I not thought of submitting to BOMB, I never would have read the commandment to read BOMB before thinking of submitting.  Sisters and brothers, this is a quandary.

I’m inevitably reminded of St. Paul’s lament in the seventh chapter of his epistle to the Roman church:

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”[b]8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

 

Then, one of my favorite Pauline images:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

It’s quite the predicament we’re in.  Even if the language of slavery and sin doesn’t resonate with you, I’m reminded at a very basic level how quickly our good intentions can turn to crap, or how, from one moment to the next, our tempers flare and we lose the plot with peers, co-workers, and loved ones. We do things we don’t mean to do.  Say things we don’t mean to say.  Hurt people we don’t mean to hurt.  Having to balance the tradition of the law and the freedom he felt in Christ, Paul does some exhausting footwork getting us to the point that shame for our shortcomings is only such because the law has named them.  The law has, in a sense, enshrined our every failing.

Paul loses me when he says next that it’s not him sinning in these moments, but sin in him.  I mean, I get it, I guess: if sin is the manifestation of the all the marks we miss, and we wouldn’t think of it as sin without knowing the marks the law sets, and if knowing what the standards are entices us to miss them, then, yes, okay, who can really blame us?  Except for when we choose to miss the mark, when we fail, on purpose, to help the poor, speak justice to the powerful, or extend care to those who need it.  I think what Paul’s groping for is some explanation of why our good intentions don’t keep us from both kinds of failings: the harsh treatment of a friend in a moment of stress or the convenient overlooking of a neighbor’s plight.  Why do we do the things we do?  Why aren’t we perfect?  Why does Paul suffer from this thorn?  Why intrusive thoughts, anxieties, distractions?

I don’t know.  What I can say is that theologies of guilt, of fear, of shame, can lead to dangerous places.  I’m back on track with Paul when he talks about God’s power being made perfect in our weakness.  When he points us to the cross and encourages us to see the world through the lens of a broken, beaten God.  A God who mourns when we mourn, who’s mourning even now, with you, with me.

I don’t know if the law makes us sinners, but it can make us feel like shit.  It made a dead man out of Jesus…it made a mourner out of God.  And that makes God our ally, help, and hope.

And so we hope.