Just when you thought it was safe to buy Nike products or Apple products, you now have another cause to feel guilty about. Remember in 1996 when boycotting Nike was popular to protest the working conditions of pubescent Chinese workers and recently for signing Michael Vick. What about when Starbucks wouldn't send coffee to the troops and you refused to get your daily Joe at the Big-S (which turned out not to be true). Then there was and is the Apple labor practices at Foxconn in China, although you wouldn't find an Apple lover giving up their oh-so-cherished, uber-cool, iPhone, now iPad. What about trying on your favorite shoes at Macy's and then buying them from Zappos or putting your local bookstore out of business by shopping on Amazon.  

There is no such thing as just making a "purchase". Where did it come from and what is the make-up of the materials? Does it contain does your yoga mat contain PCBs, your Bumble & Bumble Seaweed Shampoo contain sodium Sodium laureth sulfate, your Nalgene waterbottle bpa's? What about your food. Christ. Fat, carbs, gluten, MSG, wtf, organic, fair trade, natural. Ugh. What about fish-farmed, line-caught, Alaskan, Atlantic.  Do you carry around the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" list.  Did your precious blueberry really travelled over 1500 miles by just so you could have this summer fruit in December? I think there are so many decision, shoppers have put on blinders and just said screw it-I'll buy it at Costco in big bunches 'cause it's easy and cheap. What am I supposed to be do Michael Pollan?   

Let me add to your guilt. Two words: Order Fulfillment. While enjoying one of my favorite podcasts, Slate's Double X Factor,  I was pointed to Mother Jones's article "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave--My brief, backbreaking rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine". These are the folks that gather your Gaiam Forest Green yoga block, Oxo Good Grips Silicon spatula which is now called a "turner" and according to Mother Jones, lots of dildos. These "pickers" are given scanners which give coordinates to where the product is located, it's then picked, scanned, and put on a conveyor belt. They are given time targets to get from one pick to another. "Olive-oil-mister. Male libido enhancement pills, Rifle strap. Who the f*&^k buys paper towels off the internet. Fairy calendar. Neoprene lunch bag," says the author, Mac McClelland.   

US online retail sales is projected to grow 10 percent every year with Amazon having 69 giant warehouses, 17 of which came online in 2011 alone. The employees don't actually work for the retailers but for a temporary-staffing agency, which in this reporter's case, is hiring 4,000 "drones" for some warehouse between October and December. The warehouses are immense, cold, cavernous with thousands of people picking, packing, box-taping and labeling. Fifteen percent are temps and make $3 less an hour (around $11) than the permanent workers.   

The two 15 minutes breaks allow time to finish the order you're working on, make your way across the huge expanse to the metal detector before being allowed off the floor and then to the break room where there's a line for the bathroom. "As quickly as we've come, we all run back. At the end of the 15 minutes, we're supposed to be back at whatever far-flung corner of the warehouse we came from, scanners in hand, working," the article reports. It's estimated the pickers speed-walk an average of 12 miles a day on cold concrete picking from stacks 7 feet high or ground level, bending and reaching to retrieve an "iPad protector case, iPad anti-glare protector, iPad one-hand grip-holder device". 

Besides being physically punishing, these workers know there are 16 others waiting in line for their jobs. On her first day, the reporter is told, "They need you to work as fast as possible. . . they're going to give you goals then. . . increase the goals. They're going to break you down. . . tell you 'you're not good enough' to make you work harder. If you say 'this is the best I can do, they'll let you go'".  According to the article they hire and fire constantly, every day. In many of these towns, these workers have no other job opportunities. Most have families to support.   

What to do? I have no good answer. I do order off the internet, but now every time I put my pointer finger on the "Place Order" button(1), I'll picture someone scrambling to snatch the soon-to-be-mine Tsubo Sarona sandles from a warehouse in Wisconsin, sector M, section yellow, row H34, bin 22, Level D.    

1. From the article: "I feel genuinely sorry for any child who ever aske me for anything for Christmas, only to be informed that every time a "Place Order" button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job."  

Did you want to read some of my past columns?  You can right here.