Amazon Kept a 'Burn Book' of Everyone Who Said Mean Things About Them
When global retail giant Amazon abandoned its deeply terrible plan to build its proposed HQ2 center in New York City this past winter, the company complained in a press release about “a number of state and local politicians” it claimed “have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project.”
The statement seemed aimed at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and other progressive leaders who chaffed at Amazon’s hellacious campaign, which sent cities groveling for their piece of company’s labor-unfriendly pie. And according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s woe-is-us self-absorption went even deeper than a whiny press release: The company, valued at around one trillion dollars, reportedly kept burn book of all the oh-so-mean things people were saying about them at the time.
Officially titled “NY Negative Statements,” the Microsoft Word document consisted of eight pages filled with “separate sections for a half-dozen politicians and officials who had gone from thorns in the company’s side to formidable opponents of a deal that now looked to be in jeopardy,” the Journal reported on Wednesday.
Among the politicians and their statements Amazon reportedly tracked was state Sen. Mike Gianaris, who garnered 25 different entries for his opposition to HQ2. Stuart Appelbaum, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union president, also made the list with the sick burn: “it’s a cold day in New York, but it’s not as cold as Jeff Bezos’s heart.”
All told, the document seems like a very low-tech, junior high kind of petty coming from a company at the forefront of expanding our surveillance state, especially given the $14 million dollars the company reported spending on lobbying in 2018. Then again, given how we’ve seen Amazon absolutely bungle its response to criticism lately, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re not above journaling about those meanies in City Hall.