From: Jeff Bezos
To: All Amazon Employees; Santa’s Elves; Santa’s Hoofed Helpers;
CC: Santa Claus; Mrs. Claus;
Subject: Welcome Santa’s Workshop!
Amazonians,
Today we welcome Santa’s Workshop as Amazon’s newest corporate acquisition. Santa’s Workshop is a storied small business whose commitment to quality products and empathy for its employees has been holding it back for centuries. Amazon’s customer-centric innovation will ensure that Christmas can stay competitive in a streamlined and automated future. Let me answer a few of the anxious questions I’ve received from you today.
I am an elf who makes beautiful dolls for children. Will Amazon preserve the Workshop’s tradition of handcrafted toys infused with love and magic?
The perfect toy is a relic of the past. Today, customers need to be overwhelmed with 1,000 nearly identical offerings so they can roll the dice trying to get one that won’t fall apart. Your beautiful, bespoke toy designs will be auctioned to manufacturing firms in China and Brazil. But take heart—these elven toy creations will still be desired by children around the world who make them in factories.
Does this mean Santa’s Workshop will close?
Santa’s Workshop will live on as a digital storefront competing with hundreds of mercenary counterfeiters on the Amazon Marketplace. We believe in a free market where no one can really tell which products are authentic or not, and where quality does not stand a chance against hot garbage disguised by stolen pictures and fraudulent star-ratings.
Are Santa’s Elves out of the job now?
Elves attracted to the stimulating field of sorting goods in a warehouse ruled by robots are invited to stay at the North Pole (at their personal expense) until construction of Amazon’s Sleighride Distribution Center concludes. Santa himself has insisted on designing the SDC to look like an enormous sleigh and reindeer action figure.
I am a specialty gift-wrapper at Santa’s Workshop and I’d love to share my techniques.
We are aware that customers hate Amazon’s cut-rate excuse for a prom purse that we call gift wrapping. Our machine learning insights conclude that customers are angry at gift wrap and just want to rip it off and throw it away. We are therefore planning a next-generation gift-wrapping service called Amazon Trash™. We need self-starting elves with a bias for action to deliver crumpled wads of wrapping paper directly to the trash bins at customer delivery addresses.
Likewise for gifts that our algorithms predict are defective or not wanted: straight to the garbage. Prime members may have incoming Amazon Trash™ thrown away before we ship it.
Will Santa still read wish lists addressed to him at the North Pole?
Santa will harvest human wishes 24/7, every day of the year. By Q3 2021 we expect to roll out SantAlexa™, a line of tastefully disembodied Santa Heads that will sit on every kitchen counter in the world. SantAlexa™ will see you while you’re sleeping and will charge your credit card at the barest hint of consumptive intent.
SantAlexa™ will chastise children at random with “naughty naughty!” until parents get their kids on the nice list by signing a durable financial power of attorney on Amazon’s behalf.
I heard that Santa’s Reindeer will be visiting our shipping warehouses. Thank you for hearing our concerns about warehouse morale!
We hear the feedback loud and clear that warehouse workers feel exhausted after grueling 12-hour shifts, and yet are still able to walk and speak. To recapture this surplus organic energy, Project Blitzen will study Santa’s Reindeer and learn how they convert organic energy into airborne thrust and bioluminescence.
By Christmas 2022, our fleet of warehouse robots will recharge its batteries by attaching to the backs of Blitzen-enhanced human packers, reclaiming the untapped life energy that workers have embezzled from company coffers for so long. By 2025, Christmas packages will be flown from warehouse to doorstep by humanoid caribou delivery drones.
How does this acquisition advance Amazon’s strategic long-term objectives?
In a few short years, thanks to Project Blitzen, the Sleighride Distribution Center will achieve lift-off and fly in circles while blasting Amy Grant’s Prime-available “Christmas Collection.” Far above the surface of the ocean, where no labor laws and taxes can reach it, the SDC will airdrop a thick and steady stream of Amazon Trash™ directly into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Does this mean we don’t have to work on Christmas Day anymore?
Haha, just a little holiday humor for you all. Nobody who works here is dumb enough to ask that question. Merry Christmas everyone!
-Jeff