I built some of the components that went in to the test locations. Amazon had absurdly tight tolerances for the parts they were buying. They effectively wanted a shelf that was also a scale, and the tolerances they demanded weren’t really necessary. So it was an insane expense but they paid it and wouldn’t hear otherwise.

My company also made most of the lockers they’re using in places like Whole Foods, and Amazon insisted on controlling the entire design process themselves. They sent us prints, we made parts. They made it very clear that that was the relationship they wanted, so we complied. No test runs, THAT would be too expensive. Let’s just make ten thousand parts and put them together.

I would like to be very clear that in an industrial setting, this is unusual. You need something specific, you call a company that makes things like it and see if they can make what you need. You have a conversation about what you need it for and how many you want. The relationship is personal, you get to know the people around the region that you need stuff from.

Amazon swooping in with a heavy purse and a list of demands is weird, when someone kicks in your door with a stack of prints and enough money to keep the entire plant in overtime all year, it’s hard to say no to that.

So the first batch of prints they send is wrong. Parts do not line up right and the doors don’t even fit. We didn’t discover this until 70% of the components had already been painted.

Second batch they assure us addresses the problem, we need to start over.

My friends, it did not address the problem. Half the changes they needed to make they didn’t. The doors still did not fit.

3rd try, we lied and said we needed some extra time because a different client had elbowed in with a large order while they were redesigning. We had an intern recreate every print in CAD and test fit it, we ran a single batch of test pieces to assemble one row of lockers and as we were doing that they sent a revision.

They finally got their lockers, and asked for basically book dividers but insisted again on insanely tight tolerances.

After the dividers went out we stopped taking their calls.

Worse than they used to be?

I’m just glad I pirated the premium version

The gamification only works until you figure out the rules they used.

I have completed multiple lessons on Duolingo without ever reading the prompt. I even started a language I knew nothing about because I felt like I wasn’t actually absorbing anything in the language I’d spent more than a year on, and pretty much the same results. After a few lessons it became possible to complete lessons basically blind.

Jesus that’s just straight up porn

I kinda figured the H1B visas would be spared, since Elmo is a will known abuser of that program, along with most of silicone valley.