In the latest in both high-tech wristwear and management oversight of employees, Amazon recently received two patents on wristbands intended to monitor every movement of warehouse workers. According a Feb. 1 report in The New York Times, the wristbands would “emit ultrasonic sound pulses and radio transmissions to track where an employee’s hands were in relation to inventory bins, and provide ‘haptic feedback’ to steer the worker toward the correct bin.” Amazon hasn’t said whether it will actually deploy the wristbands, but warehouse workers (or former workers) said that the company already enforces strict piecework quotas that seldom allow time for even bathroom breaks. “You had to process the items in seconds and then move on,” said one. “If you didn’t meet targets, you were fired.” No word if cities (like Austin) under consideration for the company’s second headquarters (“HQ2”) will be likewise monitored for sufficiently abject performance.

Robots “R” Us

A version of this article appeared in print on Feb 9, 2018 with the headline: Robots “R” Us

This article appears in February 9 • 2018.

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Contributing writer and former news editor Michael King has reported on city and state politics for the Chronicle since 2000. He was educated at Indiana University and Yale, and from 1977 to 1985 taught at UT-Austin. He has been the editor of the Houston Press and The Texas Observer, and has reported and written widely on education, politics, and cultural subjects.