At different points in my life, I have both worked for Amazon and been a regular writer for The Washington Post. Jeff Bezos owns both companies and both places have major issues.

Amazon has an insane employee burnout rate—150 percent, according to documents that were leaked in 2022. The Washington Post loses $100 million a year and is filthy with leftist agenda journalism.

Having experience at both companies, I feel confident in suggesting that both could be fixed with one simple trick: Jeff Bezos needs to treat Amazon employees the way he does Post employees, and Post employees the way Amazon workers are treated.

Stay with me here. At Amazon, things are very tightly organized. You are given a uniform, training, and very clear guidelines. There is a point system that penalizes you if you are late or absent. You get a point for arriving late or leaving early, even on your 30-minute lunch break. If you hit eight points you’re gone. You are expected to perform with efficiency.

It was reported that Bezos doesn’t mind firing a lot of workers because if they are there too long, the thinking goes, they get complacent. Bezos believes that workers who have been at the company too long get comfortable and their  productivity declines. Amazon’s reported goal is to filter out the bottom 6 percent of performers to avoid a “march to mediocrity.”

The number of people who quit or are fired each year at Amazon is higher than the total employment at the company. Seventy percent of those hired leave within 90 days. This is double the turnover rate for similar employers and it costs Amazon an estimated $8 billion every year. When I worked at Amazon, there was a crazy dual emphasis on both working you to death and trying to make sure you didn’t quit. In fact, I took a leave of absence after some problems there—about which, more later—and I am probably still in their system. They would rather you take a leave than quit.

At the Bezos-owned Washington Post, we see the opposite problem. Lazy ideologues like Ruth Marcus, Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart, and Jennifer Rubin, all of whom have been there for decades, won’t be disinterred. Hacks who have been writing the same liberal column for years or who haven’t done much of any real reporting in decades demand high wages and union-based comforts. I wrote for the Post frequently as a freelancer in the 1990s. There were a few good writers there back then, but even then, it was mostly leftist hacks.

Today, as a platform for ridiculous figures like Taylor Lorenz and Philip Bump, the march to mediocrity at the Post has become a stampede.

So why not adopt the Amazon system at The Washington Post? Work people hard but expect results. You could even adapt the notorious Amazon points system to the journalists. One story correction gets you pinged with a point. Trump Derangement Syndrome gets you another one. Dating or romantic involvement with a prominent Democrat earns one more. A poorly sourced hit piece? Two points. Crying on the air? A meeting with Human Resources.

The staff at the Post would turn over within one year.

Amazon also has something valuable one can find at most manual labor jobs but cannot find at places like The Washington Post: a capacity in employees to act with honor and air out grievances with the people they work with.

I worked at Amazon Fresh, the brick-and-mortar grocery iteration of Amazon. I was part of the “first crew” that started with orientation in the spring. We worked to exhaustion, starting with the installation of the shelves in the store in March, and were getting ready for an early August opening. The managers loved me—I had worked in grocery stores before, am very personable, and knew the neighborhood the new store was in.

I had a few serious concerns, however. They were working us extremely hard and not giving people two days off in a row to recover. Moreover, they were texting us to ask us to come in to work on those rare days off. Jeff Bezos calls his manual labor employees “worker athletes,” but the Amazon founder has never played an organized sport in his life. It takes the body two days to recover after a week of intense activity. Making sure that happens would so wonders for the retention rate.

The most important issue at my store was the lack dedicated dishwashers. We would be running a deli, a pizza oven, a bakery, and a hot bar that rotated every three hours. To make this engine run efficiently we needed a carburetor—we needed a dishwasher. In fact, we probably needed two. So I asked my manager: We had hired dishwashers—right?

He just chuckled. No, we didn’t have dishwashers. We would all chip in to help with the dishes.

I knew right away that this guy had never worked in a grocery store or restaurant and that we were in serious trouble. No dishwasher meant a massive backup in the kitchen, which meant pulling people from their stations and their customers to do dishes, often late into the night. That’s exactly what happened.

I was trying to hold down my station in the deli section but kept getting pulled back to the kitchen to wash dishes. After the third time it happened and I spent half the night there washing dishes, I had had enough. I went off on the manager, telling him he had completely screwed things up. Standing beside me was a much younger worker. This guy was also ticked off because we had been there until midnight washing dishes all week. He told the manager that from now on he would punch out at his scheduled time, 10:00 p.m. Then he said to the manager, “I want you to look me in the eye and assure me that however this is reported it does not reflect badly on me. I want you to look at me and tell me that this reflects badly on you.”

The manager sheepishly agreed. He had screwed up—badly. I also heard that some of the food at the hot bar had been raw because the cooks had not been properly trained.

Amazon churns through a crazy amount of people, nevertheless there is an honesty and an honor in the work. The people are nice, and the company is expanding. I hope to return there after my leave of absence, provided that the store is run with more common sense. 

Bezos’ other property, the Washington Post, is beyond help. It has the same old lefty farts who have been coasting there for decades. It is collapsing. Unlike my Amazon manager, the Post editors and columnists will never admit fault. They have trashed me in their pages, making critical mistakes as they have proceeded, yet are too arrogant and cowardly to face me. I have called out Emma Brown, I have called out Ruth Marcus, I have called out “legendary” Post editor Marty Baron, all of whom have written about me by name. They will not face me. They should all get hit with points and shown to the door.