Party at Dan's House

Chapter 24 of my ongoing story about workplace surveillance

Photo by Peter Bravo de los Rios on Unsplash

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Stamper picked up the phone as soon as she knew that Cascade was out of earshot. She hesitated for just a moment, wondering if her call would be recorded, but then she thought “screw this” and dialed anyway. 

“Dan,” said Stamper as soon as he picked up. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Hi to you Stamper! It’s been a while,” he laughed.

“Oh yeah, hi, sorry,” she said. “Got a lot on my mind. Anyway, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure Stamper, no problem, as long as I don’t have to kill anyone.”

“Ha ha, no killing. I just want you to host a little get together. You, me, Keith, and Christopher.” 

“Oh wow, yeah, that sounds great. I’ve tried to get Keith and Christopher together before, but Keith was too busy. But I bet he’ll do it if you ask him.”

“He will. So will Christopher. But I need this to happen soon.”

“How soon?” asked Dan.

“Tonight,” replied Stamper.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Yes, 7:00. Get pizza and beer. I’ll pay you back.”

“Stamper, you’re a trip! I’ve got to check with Erin, let me call you back in a few.”

“Dan, I need it to be yes. Please. I’ll make it up to Erin, I promise.” 

Dan couldn’t recall a time he had heard Stamper so serious.

“Okay Kate, I’ll make it work. Is everything okay? You sound ... off.”

“It’s fine. Thank you. See you tonight,” and she hung up.

Well, thought Dan, this should be interesting.

---

Erin wasn’t pissed at all. She liked Stamper and Christopher, and—though she could never quite figure out how these two had come from the same gene pool—she liked Dan’s brother Keith. And truthfully, she was curious as hell about what could possibly bring Kate Stamper to call an emergency meeting at their house, of all things. She and Dan immediately started speculating about what was going on to spur this impromptu summit.

“I get Keith and Stamper,” said Erin. “After all, they work closely together. But why Christopher? I thought you said he was paranoid about this HD program Stamper is running?”

“He is, or he was the last time we talked. He’s the one who got me worried that Stamper’s ideas were getting a little out of control. I wonder if Stamper needs a back-channel place to tell Christopher to ... I don’t know. Quit? Ship up? It’s fucking weird.”

“Didn’t Stamper and Christopher have a thing once?” asked Erin. 

“Sort of,” replied Dan. “Stamper was into him one day, and then suddenly she wasn’t. Stamper was like that with everybody.” 

“Including you,” Erin chided.

“And you know how far that got!,” Dan replied. “I’m a one-woman man!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she smiled. “So if it’s Stamper and Christopher working out a personal thing, why is Keith invited?”

“Maybe Stamper needs a witness?” wondered Dan. He honestly couldn’t figure it out. “I’ll tell you what though,” he laughed. “I’d put money on Keith arriving first ...”

“And Christopher last!,” laughed Erin.

They were both right. Keith got there first, fully ten minutes early. Keith was early to everything, after all. Keith was usually so careful to talk to Erin and ask about the kids, but this time, he quickly pulled Dan aside and asked, “Do you know what this is about?”

“I know nothing! Erin and I have been speculating ...” said Dan—but they were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell, then Erin opening the door. 

“Erin, hi,” gushed Stamper, giving her a big hug. 

“Hi Kate, it’s been a while,” said Erin warmly. Erin knew that Stamper had crushed on Dan for a bit, but she didn’t hold it against her and she knew nothing had ever happened. To Erin, Stamper was simply a force of nature, someone to be wondered at. Erin was one of the few people to call her Kate. “I’m sorry we haven’t asked you over ...”

“So I fixed that by asking myself over!” laughed Stamper. “I see you beat me here, Keith.”

“Big surprise, huh?” Keith smiled warmly. “You didn’t think that a leopard would change its spots just because his boss issued a surprise command to show up at his brother’s house did you?”

Dan and Erin exchanged an amused glance. Was deferential Keith actually giving his boss a hard time?

“No, I should have known that I had to show up 30 minutes in advance to get out in front of you!,” laughed Stamper.

Keith and Stamper had clearly established a nice rapport, thought Dan. It was nice seeing his little brother show a little confidence. They all went into the kitchen together, Erin urging them to help themselves to a beer from the fridge.

For ten minutes they chatted easily, but Stamper couldn’t help stealing a glance at her watch. It was 7:15 and there was no sign of Christopher. She hadn’t been able to get him on the phone or on Chime, but he did answer her Slack message asking if he could show up at Dan’s at 7:00 pm. It would be just like him to throw a monkey wrench in her plans.

She recalled their exchange: 

“Do you have the address?” she wrote.

“👍,” he replied

“See you there at 7?” she double-checked. 

“👍,” he shot back.

“Thx,” she returned, echoing his brevity..

“🤷🏼‍♂️”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“I’ll be there,” he replied, and then his green light disappeared. He had closed the program. She wondered if maybe he would just not show up. That would take some nerve, but she wouldn’t put it past him. 

So she was relieved when, at 7:20, the doorbell rang and he didn’t wait, just opened the door and called out, “I’m here, late as usual.” 

Dan greeted him first, wrapping his buddy in a hug. “I wouldn’t expect you any other time!”

Stamper and Christopher stood back, unsure quite how to read him, but Christopher quickly diffused any tension by saying, “Hi guys, I’m sorry, really—I just always forget how long it takes to get out here,” and he was so warm and genuine that Stamper quickly forgot about their cryptic exchange. In an odd way, it just felt like a gathering of old friends, and for 15 or 20 minutes—long enough for Dan to crack his second beer—that’s what it was. But Stamper broke it up when she said, “I’ll have a second beer after we cover some serious business.”

“Serious business?” said Dan. “You didn’t tell me this was a business meeting!” 

“I know, but it is—and you’re our arbitrator,” said Stamper. Only Dan was surprised. Keith and Christopher both acted like they had expected something like this.

Dan looked hard at her: she was dead serious. Erin had seen it right away, and she slipped out with a “I’m going to leave you guys to it.” She hated work talk, and her studio always beckoned to her anyway.

“I wouldn’t normally think we’d need an arbitrator, until Christopher and I got together last weekend and found ourselves totally deadlocked ...”

“Wait,” interrupted Keith, “you were with Christopher last weekend? The rumor was you had a death in the family!”

“I kept it pretty quiet. I think we both did. But yeah, after that call you and I had with Christopher, we finally got together for a long conversation...,” said Stamper.

“You call that a conversation? It sure felt like an argument to me!,” said Christopher. 

“Down in this godforsaken canyon in Eastern Washington,” continued Stamper. 

“What the hell?,” said Dan, at the exact same time Keith asked, “Why a canyon?”

“Because I wanted to make sure that Stamper’s freaking HD spies weren’t following us ...” said Christopher.

“There are no HD spies Christopher!” Stamper slammed her hand on the kitchen counter. “You’re just being paranoid.  I notice you agreed to come here,” she said, an I-told-you-so tone in her voice. 

“I thought this was just a friendly get-together, for fuck’s sake!,” said Christopher. “I didn’t realize I was coming to a Human Dynamics summit. Where’s your grinning psychopathic puppet master anyway? I thought you two were joined at the hip.”

“Goddammit Christopher ...” started Stamper. They were both getting hot.

But Dan interrupted: “Guys, guys, I see why Stamper wanted a neutral party on hand. Can we both take it down a notch?”

“Christopher, I’m sorry,” said Stamper earnestly. “I’m not your enemy.”

“I know Kate,” replied Christopher. “I’m not yours either. Friends?” He extended his hand and they shook.

“Okay,” said Keith, “I’m starting to see what’s going on. Can I set the stage for Dan?” 

And with that, the ever-reasonable, pragmatic Keith weaved together the strands that Dan had picked up over the months from all of them, bringing them into a coherent story that Keith, Stamper, and Christopher could all agree on. 

In its barest bones, it looked like this: Stamper had come to Amazon with a dream for how to revolutionize compliance training, and soon realized that Amazon’s data collection and content delivery capacities offered her everything she had been hoping for ... and a hell of a lot more. Mitch Cascade, who had found great success in mining customer data to increase sales and had also been involved in increasing productivity among warehouse workers and drivers, had joined Human Dynamics with the idea that they could use Stamper’s “system” to maximize productivity and “alignment” among Amazon’s growing knowledge-worker population. He drove Stamper and her growing team to optimize performance and “utilization” with a system that closely observed a vast array of employee behaviors and offered “taps” and “interventions” to steer employees in the right direction. Some of these took the place of training, but others were designed to teach people to think like Amazonians. Keith had joined the team during this period of growth and proved critical to helping Stamper visualize and communicate the system’s successes to leadership. The system worked beautifully ... perhaps “too beautifully,” admitted Keith ... and the majority of employees demonstrated “positive” growth in the core metrics. There was just one problem: some employees chafed at the interventions.

“That’s me, Exhibit A for chafing employees,” inserted Christopher.

“Exhibit A for pain in the ass,” joked Stamper. 

“Yeah, yeah,” said Keith, “we’ll get to that. But let me just be dispassionate about it. What we saw was increasing evidence of people pushing back against the taps. At first it was just really quiet, and people were low-key about it, because it was just so clear that the S-team loved the HD system, but over time it grew, in ways that I was having a hard time pinning down in data.”

Dan laughed. This was the brother he loved: relentlessly logical and committed to putting the world in order.

“So I looked for correlations in the broader data set, and what I noticed was that ‘resistance,’ or ‘friction’ as I came to call it, had this strange correlation with heightened productivity.” 

“Huh?” said Dan. “Remember Keith, I’m not an Amazonian like you guys.” 

“Right. How’s this: the people who resisted the taps appeared to be our best employees. People like Christopher.”

“The fuck?” laughed Christopher. “That’s the first I’ve heard that one.” 

“It’s true though,” said Keith. “When I first noticed the anomalies I later came to associate with you, I thought you were just screwing with us.”

“And I was! Your damned taps are so annoying,” laughed Christopher.

“What I thought I’d find was that your Pulse file would indicate other problems ... but exactly the opposite was true. Your performance ratings are impeccable.” 

“Damned right!” said Christopher. He was enjoying this more than he expected.

“Weirder yet, you (and a couple other people like you in other divisions) appeared to be ... infectious or something.”

“This is where I started to get interested,” insert Stamper. “Because it seemed so odd: it was the best employees who were most tap-resistant, and they seemed to spread that tap-resistance to others who were working around them. I mean, when I first told Cascade about this, he said, ‘Well, just fire them if they’re spreading negativity,’ but Keith could clearly show that not only was tap resistance increasing, so was performance. These people, people like Christopher, seemed to increase tap resistance in those they worked with—but they seemed to increase performance even more.” 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you Stamper!,” blurted Christopher. “If you put people in a cage, they can’t thrive. But if they think they’re free to create and innovate—and if they feel like they can stick it to the man a little bit—they fucking do great things.” 

“Oh shut up,” said Stamper, “nobody is putting anybody in a cage. We’re helping you! Don’t you see how much better it is when we help people avoid mistakes, especially repeat mistakes, and learn to be better Amazonians?”

“This is where we got stuck last time!” exclaimed Christopher, refusing to take the bait. 

“Let me just tie this up,” said Keith. “Stamper’s right: high performance correlated with high friction, and we could see both increasing in pockets throughout the organization. It became a ... well, a conundrum that Stamper and I had to figure out. And that’s why we started to interact with Christopher more.”

“I knew it!,” exalted Christopher. “It just started to feel like I was getting tapped by people, not the system.” 

“Well, the system tapped you, but we jumped in on the interactions,” said Keith.

“And that’s when we could see that maybe we needed to learn more about where you were coming from,” said Stamper. 

“Is that when you released those ‘Friction Reports’ Keith,” asked Christopher. “That was badass!”

“Woah, woah, what are ‘Friction Reports,’” asked Dan. “No disrespect to my brother, but I’ve never heard one of his reports labeled ‘badass’ before.”

“Screw you Dan,” said Keith with a smile. 

“Yeah, mild-mannered Keith really took us all by surprise with these ‘Friction Reports,’” said Stamper ruefully. “They pulled together all this data that illustrated the ‘friction’ that our taps were creating in some people, and, uh, helpfully drew attention to the fact that the fiction was highest among top performers. Honestly, I could have used a little more time to work this stuff before it went public,” she admonished Keith without malice. 

“I felt like I had to do it, Stamper. I could just sense the pressure that you were under, and I thought if I didn’t bring this stuff out into the daylight a bit, Cascade was going to seize control, fire some people, and we’d never have a chance. Christopher, I think you came this close to losing your job,” said Keith, his fingers nearly touching for emphasis. 

“I felt that!” said Christopher. “And honest to god, I did not give a shit. I don’t give a shit now. Look, I love parts of working here: I love being able to bring software to market at the scale we’ve got, I love how good the engineers are, I love having access to these kinds of resources. But I’m not going to be some fucking robot. I’m not going to let your damned system objectify me into nothingness. Fuck that!”

“You know Christopher, you would have been fired if it wasn’t for Kate, so why don’t you give her a fucking break?,” barked Keith. “She protected you because she was sure you had something useful to tell us.”

“The only problem is, all we get is this ‘robot’ and ‘objectify me into nothingness’ horseshit! You know that’s not who I am!,” complained Stamper, her voice tight with anger and hurt. “I’m not the control freak you’re making me out to be!”

Wow, thought Dan, he could see why Stamper wanted him in this conversation. All three of them were so deeply invested in this that they couldn’t hear each other. But it was Kate who was about to blow, and he placed his hand on Stamper’s forearm, and said, “Kate, can I take this one?”

Stamper let out a long, loud breath, and said, “Fine, that’s why I wanted you here. But I’m not letting that robot shit go.” She smiled at Christopher, though it looked more like a grimace.

“Okay, can I just tell you guys what I’m seeing?” said Dan. They all nod, eager to stand down from the ramparts they had climbed.

“This is what it looks like to me: Stamper isn’t ready to give up on her system, but she’s open to the idea that it needs to be modified. Keith really loves digging around in this much data, and he’s willing to let the truth in the data come out—in fact, he’s committed enough to that to really stick his neck out. And Christopher just wants people off his back!” 

“Wait a minute,” said Christopher, “I do want that ... but that’s not the whole story!”

“Well what am I missing, because all I’ve heard you say so far is that this system—you guys call it the HD system, right?—is too in your business.”

“Yeah, fair enough! But when I first got here, I thought it was cool as hell. I think there’s a lot to it—I think it’s just gone too far.”

“I’m not even sure that saying it’s ‘gone too far’ does it justice,” inserted Keith.

“Keith, really? You’re jumping on Christopher’s bandwagon?” asked Stamper.

“I’m not on anyone’s bandwagon!” said Keith. “But I want to bring something up that we’re not even talking about.” 

“What the?” asked Dan, incredulously. And then “Keith?” as if he wasn’t even sure it was his brother bringing up this point.

“Look, one area where Christopher is right is that we in Human Dynamics are sitting on a system of employee monitoring the likes of which the world has never seen before. Now Christopher likes to piss and moan about how it cramps his style, but I want to know, do you guys have any idea what delivery drivers and warehouse workers are dealing with?”

“Keith, that’s a whole different story, a whole different system,” said Stamper. “We don’t have anything to do with that?”

“Bullshit!,” said Keith, and everyone else in the room raised their eyebrows in surprise. “Are we part of Amazon or are we not?”

“Yes, of course,” said Stamper, “but these systems aren’t connected at all ...”

“But they are: they’re part of a corporate program to restrict the autonomy of workers across the entire company. The only reason we’re all here is because this is the first time that knowledge workers have really been subject to this level of monitoring and behavioral control. But workers elsewhere in Amazon have been dealing with this for years. I think they’ve been sharpening their tools on workers who aren’t as likely to push back.”

“Oh my god, my brother is talking about the universal rights of workers! Next thing I know you’ll be leading the union drive,” Dan needled his brother affectionately. He knew Keith had a good heart, but god it took a lot to bring it out.

“I know you think I don’t care about complicated stuff Dan, but I just like to think about it first. And I think Stamper’s ideas—which I love, by the way—have been co-opted by people like Cascade, people who think that only those at the very top should have autonomy and control, and that everybody ‘beneath’ should just snap to and do their jobs. If that makes me a union leader, sign me up.”

“I have not been co-opted,” objected Stamper, and she was about to go on but Keith cut her short.

“I did not say you have been co-opted,” said Keith. “I said your ideas have been co-opted, and I still think it’s not too late for you to take back control. Kate, I believe in you and I believe you have good intentions. You have my support.”

Before Stamper could respond, Christopher jumped in: “And you have mine too. I know I’ve bitched a lot, and I’ll keep bitching if things don’t improve, but I’ve pushed back on you because I still think you can make the best of your system, if you figure out how to back off just a bit.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere!,” said Dan. “Are we at a point where we can talk about how to help Stamper reel in this system and make it work the way it should?”

---

“Before we can talk about anything,” announced Stamper, “this girl’s gotta pee!” 

Keith just laughed—he was still reconciling himself to the idea that his “boss,” a title that once would have driven him to worshipful deference, was such a goofball, someone he could joke around with. And challenge.

“Well, while you empty, I’m gonna fill,” he said, walking right to the fridge. “Anyone else ready?”

He got Dan and Christopher another beer—and handed one to Stamper when she walked back in. 

“Up your alley,” said Dan, raising his beer bottle. 

“Up yours,” the others all said in unison. 

“Holy shit, you guys know this toast?” marveled Keith.

“Know it, Dan practically forced it on me,” said Christopher. 

“It took me years to learn it,” laughed Kate, “but hey, it kind of grows on you.” 

“It’s simple and very loving,” said Dan, “kind of like Stamper’s HD system should be ... if you guys figure out how to fix it.”

“Oh jeez Dan, do we have to get back to the serious stuff already?” said Christopher.

“Hey, it’s not up to me,” said Dan, “I’m just the arbitrator and I successfully kept you guys from murdering each other. I don’t give a shit what you talk about now!”

“Seriously though,” said Keith, “can we just bullshit about what we’d do to improve the system? I for one don’t want to lose our momentum.”

“I love you Keith!!!” laughed Stamper. “Of course I want to talk about it, as long as we keep our focus on turning people into robots!” She punched Christopher in the arm like he was her little brother.

“Well, since you’re willing to admit that’s your target,” parried Christopher, “the first thing we need to talk about is implants!”

“Breast implants?” asked Stamper.

“No,” scoffed Christopher, “chips that we implant in employees as a condition of accepting the employment agreement. Just a small chip, inserted in your temple. Forget about phishing and data protection rules—a chip will make it so that you’ll never violate an LP again. ‘Are Right, A Lot’? Hell, you’ve got no choice!”

“‘Learn and Be Curious’ ... or else,” Stamper volleyed.

“We might be able to just do away with ‘Disagree and Commit,’ once disagreeing becomes impossible!” Christopher laughed. 

Keith joined in: “‘Bias for Action’ is easy when you get a little shock if you hesitate!”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” asked Dan. “It’s like you’ve slipped into some weird code language.”

“Sorry Dan,” said Keith, “we’re just riffing on the sacred Leadership Principles. I’ve told you about them, right? LPs?” 

“Oh yeah, right,” said Dan. “But if you can control these kinds of behaviors with a chip, why do you even need people at all? I mean, why not just hire robots? You’re kind of halfway there, with drones and self-driving vehicles and all the robots in the warehouses. I mean, it’s just one more step to bring this to all jobs ...”

“Holy shit, this is what you’re talking about, isn’t it Christopher?” asked Stamper, her expression now showing no sign of humor. 

“Yeah,” replied Christopher, “I guess it is. I mean, I know you aren’t planting chips, but when you figure out how to intervene in my thoughts before I complete them or at least before I can really act on them, it starts to feel like I no longer have a choice. I know I’ve exaggerated it, but I feel penned in, overdetermined, like I’m no longer capable of acting on my own. I fucking hate it.” 

“Can I tell you guys a quick story about my wife and an Amazon driver?,” said Keith. “You’re gonna laugh, but I think it will help.”

“It’s not kinky is it?” Stamper eyed him mock-suspiciously. 

“Oh god, no!” Keith blushed. “It’s not like that.”

“I’d love to hear it,” said Dan, “as long as I can give Lori shit about it!” 

“Could I stop you?” asked Keith. “Let me just tell it real quickly.”

“So my wife, Lori, is home alone a lot, and she gets a lot of Amazon deliveries. She tries to be friendly to the Amazon drivers, just making small chit-chat and stuff, but she complains to me that they will never stop and chat, and—and this is what really gets her—the main driver, Ken, will NOT accept one of the cookies she tries to give him.”

“Oooh, that must drive Lori nuts!” said Dan. “Cookies are her language of ... well, you know, friendship anyway.”

“I know, it’s like she tells people that she sees them by giving them a cookie,” continued Keith. “So anyway, she’s just stumped and kind of hurt that Ken and other drivers just won’t give her the time of day, and I tell her, they’re just doing their job, they’ve got timelines, don’t sweat it, but well, you guys know how it goes, you’re married,” he says to Dan and Christopher. “No offense Stamper, but you ladies tend to overthink things a little bit.” 

Stamper tried to look peeved but she couldn’t quite pull it off.

“So one day, back when Lori had broken her ankle, she was out walking around the neighborhood on her crutches! I told her to give it a break but she’s gotta have her morning walk. So she’s up near the top of the hill, near the end of the road that leads down into our subdivision, and she just bites it on some ice, falls on her ass, and one of her crutches goes skidding out into the road ... where it’s run over by a Prime van! The guy screeches to a halt and calls out, ‘Lady, are you okay?’ and Lori goes, ‘Ken, it’s me, Lori. Can you help me?’ And Ken says, ‘I’ll call 911,’ but Lori says, ‘No, no, can you just drive me down to my house? It will just take a second.’”

“You’d have to hear Lori describe this, but she says that he just looks at her like he’s trapped, like there’s some wild animal bearing down on him, and he looks up at the screen in his truck, and he calls out, ‘You’ll be okay, I gotta go,’ and then he just peels out, his rear wheels snapping Lori’s crutch in half as he rolls over it, but he’s not stopping, he’s zooming away. Lori can’t believe it! And she basically hobbles all the way home.”

“So we’re sitting in front of the fire that night and she’s telling me this story, and I’m being totally sympathetic ...” Keith continues.

“Not your natural state,” Dan inserts.

“Very funny Dan,” says Keith, “but it happens from time to time. And I was like, man, that’s really kicking a cookie lady while she’s down—Lori does not appreciate my joke—and just then there’s a knock at the door, and since Lori is hobbled I get up and get it. And guess who it is? It’s our Amazon driver, Ken! I don’t know him, I’m never there, but he introduces himself and he says, ‘Is the lady on crutches here?’ And Lori of course has heard this, and she comes up and just bursts into tears.” 

“Oh my god, you should have seen this poor guy! He does NOT know what to do, but he just starts apologizing like crazy, ‘Lady, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you! I was already running late, and my Tracker was flashing at me, ‘Return to delivery! Return to delivery!’ and my numbers were already down this week ... I didn’t know what to do. So I just ran!’ And then he started crying, and Lori grabs hold of my shoulder to steady herself and she gives this guy a big hug and she says, ‘It’s okay, I’m okay.’ And they just stand there for a minute, hugging awkwardly, him saying ‘I’m sorry’ and her saying ‘It’s okay.’ Until finally she pulls back and says, ‘You need a cookie!’ And he says, ‘I’m off the clock now, I can have a cookie!’ and bursts out laughing.”

“And then we spend the next hour sitting at the table eating cookies and drinking milk, and Lori is pumping this guy for information about his wife and his kids and where he grew up, just standard chit chat stuff, and finally she asks, ‘How come you never want a cookie?’ And Ken sighs and says, ‘I love cookies ... but I can’t afford to stop to take one and I sure can’t eat one in the truck.’ And he explains to Lori—to both of us—that from the moment he clocks in in the morning every one of his actions is tracked and timed, and he’s constantly reminded, by the in-van Tracker and by his shift boss, if he falls below standard. Fall below standard too much, he says, and you’re gone. So he just can’t take the time. ‘I’d love to take more time to talk to my customers,’ he says, ‘and to have a cookie, but there’s just no time.’”

“And that,” says Keith, wrapping up his story, “is exactly how I think a lot of our people feel too. They want to be decent humans, to pick up the lady by the side of the road, but they’re too busy trying to optimize their time on task. We’ve got to find a better balance.”

“I don’t give a shit about being a decent human,” said Christopher, “I just want to do cool stuff, and being constantly reminded that this behavior doesn’t align with that LP, or that I’ve fallen off of some dumb-ass metric related to inclusiveness ... well, it doesn’t exactly make me want to deliver the packages on time, if you know what I mean! It makes me want to pee in the gas tank!”

“Okay, okay, I get it: we’re over-reaching,” said Stamper. “Message heard! But what do we do, strip out all the behavioral tracking and just go back to doing it all old school ... which didn’t work, by the way. The problem is, people like Cascade like what they see with this program—they like seeing the good metrics going up, the bad metrics going down. They don’t give a damn about how you feel, Christopher, or about helping some lady who has slipped on the ice.”

“Yeah, but how will they like it if all their expensive engineers and product managers decide they don’t want to put up with this and find other jobs?” asked Christopher. 

“And how will they like it if their warehouse workers and drivers unionize and insist on better working conditions?” added Keith, surprising himself by siding with Christopher. 

“Guys, can I offer an outside perspective?” asked Dan.

“Please!” they all said simultaneously.

“Stamper, within this system that you started, there’s still this beautiful idea, this beautiful impulse that we shouldn’t punish people by asking them to do a bunch of stuff they already know how to do. I totally see that what you wanted to do was set people free, free to avoid repetitive training, free to focus on the work that mattered to them.”

“But somewhere along the way it got twisted to try to do too much. You had the technology to do one thing, and it allowed you to do another thing, and pretty soon you’re dealing with the unintended consequences of technology and control run amok. You started by trying to diminish the time people spent on training and before you knew it you had created this monstrous surveillance machine.”

“I know why it happened—because you did enough to catch the interest of the folks who only care about profits and growth and control, and they twisted it to give them more, more, more.” 

“Now, the only thing I think you can do is to refuse to play the game this way. Take a stand on what you will and won’t monitor people about, and then leave people to be people. There are things that are going to be messier, because you’re going to have to rely on humans and they’re going to make mistakes and sometimes the way they resolve their differences are not going to be as neat and orderly as you’d like, and they may even take more time and reduce efficiency. But that messiness is what makes people feel like they’re human, that they’ve got the ability to make choices and make mistakes, and that their individuality is valuable. Recognize that you may have to value trust and humanity over profits and efficiency–people over dollars.”

“Jesus Christ Dan,” complained Christopher, “this is starting to remind me of those stretches of Atlas Shrugged where Ayn Rand gets all preachy—only you’re going in the opposite direction.”

“Oh my god, I haven’t thought of that one in a while!,” Dan laughed. “Look, I’m not trying to get preachy, I’m just saying the whole direction of your conversation tells you’ve got to turn the dial back on the level of surveillance and control you’re subjecting people to—and you’ve got to be ready to deal with the consequences.” 

“Which starts with me telling Cascade that we’re about to make some major changes to the system,” said Stamper. “We don’t have to specify what they are right now. In fact, we shouldn’t. We’ve got to start by opening ourselves up to feedback—to understanding what works, what really helps people, and what pisses them off. That means we’re going to have to gather a lot more data. Keith, that’s where you come in.”

“I do like the data!” said Keith. 

“And Christopher, we need some good, direct feedback from people who find the program ... uh, problematic.”

“I’m not running a focus group Stamper!,” objected Christopher. 

“I’m not asking you to run it, but my guess is you know a few other troublemakers in the company who you could convince to share their thoughts?”

“Do I!”

“So what if we pull you and your fellow anarchists onto a kind of advisory board to help ensure that whatever changes we make work for everybody?”

“You mean I get to bring my bitching into the light of day? As long as you can assure me this won’t become a witch hunt to find dissenters, I know people who will have good ideas,” said Christopher.

“There’ll be no witch hunts on my watch,” said Stamper. Now all she had to do was control Mitch Cascade.

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