If you were worth billions in your midlife and had more dosh than you could ever spend for the rest of your life – bearing in mind that life expectancy is 72.6 (UN global estimate) – would you expect your workers to use bags and bottles to perform bodily functions in so your company could record high levels of productivity? If you are wondering what the link is between going to the loo in non-toilets and midlife the answer is Jeff Bezos aged 57 at Amazon.
There is a rather glum story in The Guardian . Despite the company still ‘doth protest too much’ at allegations of employees being mistreated, first hand testimonials continue to abound. More to the point, an internal Amazon memo was leaked which confirmed that employees do indeed use their vans as portable loos because they have no other choice due to demands on their time.
When I was growing up I was told that the older one got the kinder one would get hence why old people (over 80) are seen as paragons of virtue. The midlife, by deduction, is the phase equivalent of ‘purgatory’ where our bad ways gives cause for a reappraisal of our actions. It’s the training ground on our pathway to becoming virtuous. In my analysis of Jeff Bezos I am glad to say that expert philosophical interpretation has been undertaken using Kant’s Laws. The article states that:
‘Kantian ethics states that a certain action can only be deemed to be “good” if the motivation behind it is due to a moral law. The key idea of Kant’s moral law is the categorical imperative, which was introduced in his 1785 essay, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of the Morals. In layman’s terms, you should only act if it makes sense for you to will everyone else to act in the same way. For example, if you are tempted to lie, ask yourself: would you want to live in a world where you will everyone to lie. In such a world, the barrier between truth and lies would break down and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to live in such a place.’
Would you want your legacy to be tainted by the fact that people who worked for you suffered in numerous ways because of your demands? I seem to be on a quest to call out bad midlife behaviour so expect more rantings. It stems from part being perimenopausal and, part, suffering from a midlife crisis.
Alternatively, to quote Joe Biden, ‘As Ma used to say’, if you can’t do something nice then try harder.
P/S Rather than post Amazon’s logo , I have chosen to post a photo of the Amazon Forest instead.
