My week as an Amazon insider

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Very long, but a fascinating read – part-polemic on the consumerist Western society of the 21^st century, part account of workers conditions in a distribution centre of the world’s largest e-commerce retailer. Guardian journalist goes undercover and gets a job working at Amazon’s vast warehouse in South Wales, close to where she grew up, an area in which the post-industrial recession and closure of the coal mines cut a swathe through the community. Yes, there is an absence of knowledge about modern supply chains, but she also brings a refreshing view of life on today’s shop floor, although – “it turned out I wasn’t the only journalist who happened upon this idea. BBC’s Panorama aired a programme that featured secret filming from inside the same warehouse. I wonder for a moment if we have committed the ultimate media absurdity and the show’s undercover reporter, Adam Littler, has secretly filmed me while I was secretly interviewing him”.