[knapp]

One thing that struck me watching that was that the timer counted down from 15 to 0.

Since "gamification" is so popular amongst management and business theory these days, I was surprised it didn't go the other way and count up, which would mean the worker gets a time to try to beat in the next pickup.

Don't get me wrong: it would still be unbearably grim. Maybe even more so.

Who knows -- maybe Amazon has tried both methods and has stacks of data that shows counting down is better for productivity, all in neat SQL tables and thrown up on PowerPoint slides.

shudder