I worked as a customer service rep at Amazon in the late 90s, at the same time as Mike Daisey. I don’t think he and I ever interacted one-on-one, but I knew who he was, saw him around the ol’ cube farm, and received the emails he periodically sent to the department, alerting us to upcoming performances by his improv group. <\/p>\n
After he left Amazon, Daisey created a one-man show called “21 Dog Years”, which documented his zany adventures with the company. A book soon followed, and I have harbored a petty grudge against him ever since. He had the initiative to do the thing we’d all fantasized about (i.e., turn our experience with Amazon into a book deal), and that made me resentful. You know how that goes (or don’t, and are a better person than I).<\/p>\n
A lot of my coworkers saw “21 Dog Years”, and most enjoyed it. Some thought it was great. But the consensus was that it was “truthy” at best, a slurry of his actual experiences, exaggeration for comedic effect, some good stories he’d heard from others cast into the first person, and maybe a little bunkum. <\/p>\n
In 2001 when he spoke about the show with the Seattle Weekly (which was on a weird anti-Amazon jihad at the time), the interview contained this exchange<\/a>:<\/p>\n Seattle Weekly<\/b>: How much did you really deal with Jeff, and have you heard anything from former co-workers about his reaction to the show?<\/b><\/p>\n Daisey<\/b>: I saw Jeff all the time, almost every day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I worked like 100 meters from Daisey, and saw Bezo maybe three times in as many years. Like I said: truthy.<\/p>\n In the context of an interview, “I saw Jeff all the time” is a lie, plain and simple. But if Daisey said the same thing on stage as part of “21 Dog Years”, I wouldn’t have objected. I guess I agree with Daisey when he says that the tools of theater are different than the tools of journalism.<\/p>\n And although I and others were irritated at some of the “facts” Daisey got wrong in “21 Dog Years”, it seemed okay that the monologue took liberties with the truth, even if he didn’t state as much. After all, no one thought that all of the workplace events recounted by David Sedaris in “Santaland Dairies” were literally true, and that story was everywhere<\/em>. Heck, it had even appeared on everyone’s favorite radio show, “This American Life”.<\/p>\n So where did Daisey go wrong with this whole Foxconn debacle?<\/p>\n For me, the key clue comes not from the This American Life Retraction<\/a> episode (although there are plenty of damning moments in there), but from a February appearance Daisey made on “Real Time with Bill Maher”. It’s at the two minute, 35 seconds mark of this Youtube clip<\/a>: <\/p>\n