Let’s face it, when you’re a college-educated 57-year-old slinging parcels for a living, something in your life has not gone according to plan. That said, my moments of chagrin are far outnumbered by the upsides of the job, which include windfall connections with grateful strangers. There’s a certain novelty, after decades at a legacy media company—Time Inc.—in playing for the team that’s winning big, that’s not considered a dinosaur, even if that team is paying me $17 an hour (plus OT!). It’s been healthy for me, a fair-haired Anglo-Saxon with a Roman numeral in my name (John Austin Murphy III), to be a minority in my workplace, and in some of the neighborhoods where I deliver. As Amazon reaches maximum ubiquity in our lives (“Alexa, play Led Zeppelin”), as online shopping turns malls into mausoleums, it’s been illuminating to see exactly how a package makes the final leg of its journey.
This is from Austin Murphy, “I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon,” The Atlantic, December 25, 2018.
The whole thing is worth reading. I even found it somewhat inspiring.
His last paragraph suggests that Mr. Murphy does too:
This is also true: Gina and I got approved for that loan [on a house] last week, meaning that our monthly outlay, while not so minuscule that it can be drowned in Grover Norquist’s figurative bathtub, is now far more manageable, thanks in part to these daily journeys which I consider, in their minor way, heroic.
People my age may also appreciate his discussion of the need to find a place for urinating. Here’s something I carry in my car. I do NOT recommend using it while driving. You should stop somewhere first.
Personal story that this article reminded me of:
Years ago, when I went to give two talks at the University of Rochester, I had lunch with economists Steven Landsburg and Ron Jones. I was reminiscing with Steve about an excellent luncheon talk he had given to a group of Congressional aides at a Mercatus event in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He remembered the talk I had given that same day on a panel dealing with health policy. I asked him what he remembered. He said that what really stood out was my statement that although I was saving for old age and was on track, if worst came to worst and I had to work for a living, I would see nothing wrong or demeaning or embarrassing in working at a cash register at McDonald’s.
HT2 Glenn Reynolds, aka The Instapundit.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Dec 28 2018 at 3:31pm
I read the story when it came out on line the other day. I was also a long time Sports Illustrated subscriber and remember a number of Mr. Austin’s stories. I found the article unconvincing and more like a pitch for the next book he is writing. In the Atlantic, Austin writes “During my 33 years at Sports Illustrated, I wrote six books, interviewed five U.S. presidents, and composed thousands of articles for SI and SI.com. Roughly 140 of those stories were for the cover of the magazine, with which I parted ways in May of 2017. ” During a lot of that time SI had a large audience and salaries for lead writers much have been more than decent. Austin’s wife is also an attorney bringing in a second income. Is this couple so destitute that he has to go to work as an Amazon driver? Count me as a cynic on this one.
RPLong
Dec 28 2018 at 5:01pm
He says in the article that he took a job so that he could get refinancing on his home — he doesn’t say that he needed the job. But just because he took the job to get a better interest rate on a loan, or as you intimate to write a hit book about it, doesn’t detract from any of the points he made in the article. It’s not as if what he says is only true if he took the job for the right reasons.
Jon Murphy
Dec 28 2018 at 3:55pm
I know that feeling. Last Spring and Summer, I worked part-time at a liquor store in Virginia. People were always surprised to find out I was doing it when I had my Masters in economics and working toward my Ph.D. I probably could have/should have interned somewhere over the Summer when I wasn’t teaching, but I liked working at the store. I learned a lot about logistics there (not to mention the glories of globalization).
I’m happy that Mr Austin is enjoying learning at his new job.
David Seltzer
Jan 4 2019 at 7:08pm
Old guys like me often feel they want/need to be productive even after retiring from successful careers. After I retired, I enjoyed working at Home Depot. The reason, it reminded me of working in my family’s hardware store when I was growing up.
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