This Vice story is just part of the smear campaign.
Strategy:
“We should spend the first part of our response strongly laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety,” Zapolsky wrote. “Make him the most interesting part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire union/organizing movement.”
As applied:
“I was frustrated and upset that an Amazon employee would endanger the health and safety of other Amazonians by repeatedly returning to the premises after having been warned to quarantine himself after exposure to virus Covid-19,” he said. “I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me.”
“I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me.”
What a pathetic excuse from the General Counsel of one of the world's most powerful firms when caught engaging in employee retaliation. This isn't acceptable from any lawyer.
Better to make the world's worst excuse than lie in a way that'll instantly be revealed in discovery for any case that comes of this.
The surprise is that he let himself be reached for comment at all. Between that and the "yeah, I sure goofed it, huh?" style of what he said when he was, I wouldn't be too astonished to see a golden handshake eventuate in the fullness of time.
if you were cynical, you might say this is just yet another attempt at spin; to present himself as a relatable human (like "we all get angry, we all make mistakes", although note he didn't use e.g. angry, but "frustrated", "upset", and "emotions", vaguer and more passive options).
this could work, too, as long as you forget that drafting words seems to literally be his job (for which i'm sure he's handsomely rewarded).
Oddly, it reminds me of the way big banks handled Occupy movement. That was the first time I saw memes used as a carrier for straight propaganda. It was a sad moment for me. Mostly because having seen one of those memes, I immediately understood how terrifyingly effective they can be. Amazon has clearly learned a lot over the past few decades.
odd edit: Just in case. I was kinda doing a fair amount of shorts on Amazon lately, so my opinion is not unbiased.
You would be surprised how much you of what you see around you, you internalize.
The message sticks with you. Look at me. It has been years now and I just remember the message despite not remembering the exact words.
Just for that reason alone I was surprised/grateful, I did not see that great a push from ad industry to use memes yet. There are clearly some thinly disguised ads, but the various communities tends to weed them out fast.
Wait, are you saying this meme that you posted comes from the banks during the height of the Occupy movement? Or if not, how did their talking points / PR reach the undiscriminating masses and become this? I remember this meme, but always assumed it came from Apple-haters or unsophisticated Fox News types.
I am not saying that I know for a fact that this particular meme was concocted by a PR firm, blessed by an internal department and rolled out on imgur, 9gag, 4chan and anywhere else it could find fertile ground. I do not have access to that kind of records. That said, by now it is publicly available knowledge that lobbying firms were proposing ways to handle OWS(1).
I do remember it popping up in a lot of places with anti-OWS message and I just found it interesting in terms of timing and how the subject was basically designed to be hated at the time. Like I said, it is this meme template. I can't find the one with exact wording, which is why it got my attention back then. It does not help that I don't remember the exact phrase.
I will add as a general note that memes are ridiculously easy to create and disseminate en masse. You can obviously create metric ton of variants and see what sticks best. To your point, they can be done Fox News types, Apple-haters, dog-lovers, apple pickers, you name it and tracking its origin can be genuinely hard.
Strategy: “We should spend the first part of our response strongly laying out the case for why the organizer’s conduct was immoral, unacceptable, and arguably illegal, in detail, and only then follow with our usual talking points about worker safety,” Zapolsky wrote. “Make him the most interesting part of the story, and if possible make him the face of the entire union/organizing movement.”
As applied: “I was frustrated and upset that an Amazon employee would endanger the health and safety of other Amazonians by repeatedly returning to the premises after having been warned to quarantine himself after exposure to virus Covid-19,” he said. “I let my emotions draft my words and get the better of me.”