I Was an Amazon Chew Toy
by Corina Zappia
I moved to Seattle five years ago, after being laid off from my job in New York at one of those startups where employees rally around the VC-fueled dream until they’re dumped via email and locked out of the office. A job at a larger, more established company like Amazon sounded good. Solid. For my second round of job interviews, I had been called in for meetings at the department’s temporary office in the Columbia Center tower. In a city where executives wear faded jeans and backpacks to work, the Columbia Center is Seattle’s lone totem to conspicuous consumption: seventy-six floors that hover over downtown’s more modest skyscrapers by a good two to three hundred feet, and are wrapped in reflective black glass.
Amazon prides itself on a rigorous hiring process. For a low-level merchandising job in Amazon’s books department, after passing two phone screens that included a logic puzzle — “How many floors are there in the Columbia Center? No, don’t look it up! Pretend there is no Internet” — I was called in for five back-to-back interviews that lasted from morning through lunch. During a break between interviews, the human resources recruiter, Ashley Jones1, came in to tell me more about the company’s benefits. There is something about the fastidious personal grooming of HR recruiters that makes one feel dumpy; gazing at me behind thick, mascara-coated eyelashes that boasted immaculate lash separation, she talked 401Ks and stock options while I stared longingly at her frizz-less locks. “And when we move to our new offices, you can bring your dog to work,” she said.
We live in such a dog-adoring culture that it’s hard to admit when you aren’t totally enamored of them. What you are supposed to feel — what you must always feel — is love. And dog owners are blessed with the extraordinary ability to call bullshit; they can sniff out your limp pats, your half-hearted game of catch. Soon the question comes: “Oh, you don’t like dogs?”
Translation:
1. How can you not like dogs?
2. How can you not like my dog?
3. When a dying baby’s in the street, do you kick it ’til it fits in the gutter?
No one starts out this way. There’s a time when all kids want a pet, around the time when spreading boogers on the furniture is still okay. My older sister and I worked our way through a small menagerie of pets — hamsters, parakeets, and fish — though everything seemed to perish or run from our feeble, incapable hands. The grass in our backyard grew high, enriched by the nutrients of our decaying mistakes.
But when I was around nine, I was traumatized by my cousins’ unneutered dog, Max. When I visited them in Florida, he ignored the rest of the family, ran over to me, and humped my leg like he hadn’t had sex in years. No one would admit it that perhaps Max picked me because I looked most like a dog. My hair was black just like Max’s coat, and, crouched on the floor screaming, I was just about the same height as a German Shepherd. My cousin Susan always let it go on for a bit too long; I have never understood why people call out the names of their dogs when dogs only respond ten percent of the time, and like humans, never when they are having sex.
“Max! Max! (Ha, ha.) Oh Max, get off her!”
Hump. Hump.
“Bad dog. (Hee hee.) So bad!”
Hump. Hump. Hump.
“Max, what am I going to do with you?”
Humphumphumphumphumphumphump.
After two hours or just ten seconds — what did it matter, when a dog was humping the crap out of you? — she would amble the three long yards across the room to yank Max away, and I would crawl out from under the blanket, the only shield between me and Max’s terrifying dog penis. For years after, Susan would keep me up to date on how my sexual assailant was doing. “When are you coming back?” my cousin asked. “Max misses you.”
My job started in July, and we were supposed to move to Amazon’s new campus the following May. The new campus would unite most of the company into one luxurious mega-compound, the Amazonian equivalent of the Googleplex. I hoped to forget about the new buildings and their dog-filled corridors, but the move was always hovering in the distance, its little puppy paws scratching around the doorway of my mind, dying to be let out so it could take a massive dump. I started to dread my morning hike to work even more than usual. As the date grew closer, you could hear murmurings of excitement around the office and impassioned debates about pet supplies. Kayla, who sat to my left, wanted to discuss her dog’s latest issue. “He keeps peeing on the front yard. It’s so annoying. The neighbors keep complaining about our yard. So now I’m feeding him these pills that won’t kill the grass,” she said.
“There are pills for that?” I asked. I pictured a dog collapsing from acute renal failure in a flower patch. The dog would be fucked, but the begonias, immaculate. “How does that work?”
In November, I felt encouraged by an email sent out by our department head, Scott Reynolds. “Can each of you reply back to me if a) you have allergies to dogs and to what degree, e.g., can’t be on the same floor or just can’t pet them, or b) are afraid or don’t like dogs.”
“Can’t be on the same floor” indicated there might be dog-free floors, which made sense: A multibillion-dollar corporation that had built out space in their complex for nap rooms, outdoor decks, and organic vending machines had surely carved out a few dog-free floors for those of us who wanted to work in a yip-free environment. I speedily typed back my response. “I’m allergic to dog hair — can’t be around furniture or whatever for very long that dogs have been on.” I am far more allergic to cats than dogs, but an allergy is an allergy.
“So if someone had a dog in their office or at their desk,” he wrote back, “would that create problems?”
Every time I admit how I feel about dogs I want to hang my head in shame. When I confess to dog owners, there is an awkward silence afterward filled only by their puppy’s plaintive little barks, barks that have grown mysteriously gentler in the last ten seconds, barks that can now only be translated as “let’s be friends,” barks that make me look like an even bigger toad. But at least the owner moves the dog away from me. I hoped my company would do the same, so I went for the truth: “I am allergic, but to be honest I don’t really love the idea of working around dogs. I would like to be on a dog-free floor, if that’s okay.”
Scott never emailed back, which I took as a sign that things were being taken care of — papers filed, statuses assigned, my employee request put into action! I put my mind to rest and let the talk of doggie adoptions and kennels, puppy blogs and slideshows, swirl around me.
Two months before we were supposed to move, I emailed Scott’s assistant to ensure that my space on the new dog-free floor was secured. She replied that Scott had never said anything to her. Perhaps I should have brought it up with him again, but he and I didn’t have much day-to-day interaction. A Level 7 employee to my Level 4, senior management to my near-entry-level, Scott had only had one appointment with me so far, a little “get to know you” when I first started at Amazon that I had to share with another underling; he spent the first part of it on the phone, refilling a prescription. His assistant told me that I would need to take up my quest to be dog-free with human resources. My HR representative, Deborah “Deb” Pearson, was in no rush to get back to me, but I kept emailing her until she responded.
In huge corporations like Amazon, HR representatives are a separate staff from HR recruiters. Ashley Jones with the thick lashes, my dream girlfriend, was gone. Deb at one point had probably been an Ashley Jones but too much time as the liaison between employees and the corporation had taken its toll. Employees didn’t approach Deb unless they weren’t being paid on time or their health insurance claims weren’t going through. Deb never smiled, and who could blame her?
She examined me from behind small wire-rimmed glasses as I entered. “Hello,” she said quietly. There were no college pennants or posters with cheeky sayings in Deb’s office like in the university-recruiting department. The only decoration was a couple of Harvard Business School alum magazines and a framed picture of her kid and her attractive husband. The picture made me feel less bad for Deb. She could take one more complaint. “So yeah, you know, I just wanted to talk to you about this allergy thing. I had brought it up earlier with Scott, but nothing really happened, and now we’re about to move. So I’m just wondering what I can do at this point. I’d like to be on a dog-free floor, if that’s possible.”
“Uh-huh. Well, so…” Deb stood up stiffly and opened a file folder, yanking a single piece of paper from the stack and handing it to me across the table. “We will need to have your doctor fill out this form,” she said, in a tone that sounded somewhere between bank teller and medical receptionist. Interested, but vaguely so; formal, but not icy.
“Oh. Okay, sure,” I slowly agreed. “I’ll have them fill it out and get back to you.” Gingerly taking the paper from her fingertips, I looked down at one of the first questions on it.
If your patient is limited in his or her ability to work in an environment in which dogs are present, is it safe for him or her to be in such an environment for a limited period of time? If Yes, please state the maximum amount of time that your patient may safely work continuously in such an environment.
If you were limited in your ability, wouldn’t the amount of time be limited as well? I walked out of the office and down the hallway and speedily scanned the other questions.
Does the employee have a medical condition that would limit his or her ability to work in an office environment in which dogs are present? If yes, please fully describe the extent to which your patient would be limited from working in an office environment in which dogs are present. Please include a description of the symptoms or consequences that your patient will experience if he or she works in such an environment. Attach additional pages if necessary.
Can these limitations be fully or partially migrated or offset with appropriate medication?
Is your patient able to work in a building (including use of stairways and elevators) where dogs are generally present, but not in the area of the building in which your patient’s office is located? Assuming the building has a common HVAC system…
I was going to go down in a flood of shrewdly framed questions courtesy of their legal department. This was a game of endurance, to be played until they broke you down. Are you allergic? How allergic? Can they be on your floor? On your side of the building? In the same room? In the elevator? At a desk near you but not, say, at your desk? Okay, what about at your desk? Would if we just set them next to you for five seconds and then whisked them away? Is that okay? Can you handle that? Can you take medicine? Can you handle it now?
I filled out the form, made the appointment at my allergist, and collected the proper paperwork. The allergist’s assistant filled out the form in front of me, and under “Are there any medically-necessary modifications that you believe Amazon should consider?” she recommended that I work on a dog-free floor. Soon after I returned the form, Deb called me back into her office. “Can you go back to your allergist? We need them to fill out more of this form.” She limply handed the paper back to me like it was a half-completed test.
“Sorry, what things? I mean, she filled this form out” — I paused here for effect — “pretty thoroughly.”
“Well, we just need her to elaborate on and clarify some of these points,” she said.
I was confused. There was one box — “If Yes, please describe” — that she hadn’t filled out, but other than that I thought the message was clear: I have allergies. Put me on the dog-free floor. Did Deb want me to go back to my allergist and have her change the answers to suit them? If there was more “elaboration,” would this solidify my position, or would it just make it easier for the company to find loopholes in my allergist’s logic, loopholes big enough to squeeze a miniature schnauzer through?
“You know, I don’t see why an allergy should make a difference,” I said to Deb. “I think if you don’t want to work around dogs, that should be enough.” She stared back at me and blinked. “Are there dog-free floors?” I asked.
Her voice grew soft. “There are special accommodations for the severely allergic,” she said. She emphasized “severely.”
I sighed and looked around the room, my eyes lingering on Deb’s cubicle walls, which were supposed to give the illusion of privacy even though coworkers would overhear every phone conversation. It was just like the dog-friendly policy, there to provide a false sense of comfort: Work hard enough, score your own office, and enjoy the solitude. Bring your dog to work and forget how many hours of your life you spend here. “Where are these special accommodations?” I asked.
Deb walked out from behind her desk with a stack of papers and sat down at a smaller table beside me. She unfolded a thicker piece of paper from the pile — a small map of the surrounding neighborhood, with all the campus buildings identified.
“It’s over here,” she said, pointing to a spot on the map. I followed her finger to a building on the outskirts of our work complex, blocks from my assigned building, where the rest of my coworkers would be located — blocks from where my daily meetings would be held. The severely allergic would be quarantined in a histamine ghetto. “We wouldn’t want to have to separate you from the rest of your team,” she said ominously. I took my allergist’s form back from her, but not before she made a copy of it for documentation purposes.
“What’s wrong with you?” one of my more blunt friends asked me. “Who doesn’t love dogs?” We were drinking at a bar a few blocks from my house, and I had filled her in on my problems at work.
Who doesn’t, indeed. I was the tin man, without a heart. Two of my more supportive coworkers kindly offered to start a petition at the office on my behalf. But I had seen petitions at other jobs before, petitions that would be lining the trash in less than a day. I started to imagine a perfect world where the mere sight of a Labrador retriever could put me on life support. If I could pick, it would be Scott’s dog that would do me in. The last time I saw Scott was during a spring business review. He had refused to follow along during my PowerPoint presentation to the clients, checking his email and eating a mixed nut sampler off my report instead. I imagined him weeping over my body while the paramedics carted me to the elevator lobby on a stretcher. I hoped to die with my eyes open, for maximum effect. Scott would start crying during a post-mortem of the pre-weekly business review, beating his breast with a stapler. Deb, wiping away a tear on the corner of a Harvard Business alum magazine, would be beside herself. “How could I have known? How could any of us have known?”
But I wasn’t even sure if I could sneeze enough to warrant a sympathetic glance. Though getting into the dog-free building would be difficult, the company would, I later learned, honor employee requests for a dog-free room on a dog-populated floor. I dropped the floor issue and filled out another form.
In May, the move to the new Amazon complex was complete. We were in one of the tallest of eleven buildings, all connected by skyways and rooftop terraces and plazas featuring independent Seattle coffee shops. Two campus cafeterias offered daily rotating fresh-fruit-infused water selections, and the company had worked out a deal with Seattle’s most famous celebrity chef, Tom Douglas, to open three restaurants on campus: a cowboy-themed beer tavern, an Italian trattoria, and a Tibetan café that made dumplings stuffed with fresh yak. Floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded all sides of the buildings, bathing the rooms in natural sunlight and offering postcard-perfect views of Lake Union to the east and the Space Needle and Mount Rainier to the west.
One of the buildings was named after the company’s first official dog, Rufus, a pet of one of the earliest employees. According to our company website, Rufus liked walks on the beach, kitties, and his best dog friend, Crew; his academic honors included a certificate from Perfect Paws Kindergarten in San Francisco. Rufus, who used to roam the hallways in the company’s younger years, was responsible for “starting up the dog-friendly culture here.” At last, this was who to blame: A dog that died two years ago and whose turnoffs included “thunder.”
The company did grant my request for a dog-free room — the only windowless office on my floor, and unfortunately, four more poor Level 4s were picked to share the room with me. In lieu of windows, the L-shaped room had wipe boards spanning two of the walls, plus a quote painted in crimson from Dr. Seuss’ Oh the Places You Will Go. “Seuss” was misspelled. (“Suess.”) Short of the bookshelves crammed with textbooks and tech manuals we were promoting that year, we had given up on decorating.
“All I wanted was a window,” Noah, my officemate, said, looking at the plain white wall above his computer where a window should have been. “I didn’t specify dogs or no dogs. That’s all I wrote down on my request form: ‘I’m just excited to be in a room with windows!’”
Just across the hallway, sun streamed in through the enormous windows of the dog-sanctioned offices. Level 4 employees who had requested dog rooms were awash in sunlight. Sometimes, they complained, it got too hot in their room from all those awesome UV rays. I started to envision Scott and his boss Melissa, both doggie super fans, cackling as they drew up this vengeful floor plan — one hand pointing to the windowless cave I would inhabit, the other stroking their dogs’ coats like Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget.
The dog-friendly offices always had their doors closed, lest the dogs escape.
Right before Halloween, an email circulated from Scott’s assistant, Hayley, with images of one dog dressed up as a lion and another dressed up to look like it was being eaten by a crocodile. “Don’t forget to bring your dog in on Monday and dress them up (and you if you want to match)!” During a fire drill, I waited for one girl in front of me to walk her dog down twelve flights of stairs, instead of just picking it up. She dragged it down by the leash. Then picked it up. Then set it down. Then picked it up again. If this had been a real fire, we would have burnt to a crisp.
Another employee, a young temp whom one of my other coworkers had described as “a grown-up version of the Campbell Soup kid,” had taken to walking his dog on a leash around the office. Most people just walked their dog from the elevator to their desks, but the Campbell Soup kid perambulated around the office hallways like this was Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and he was on a mid-afternoon stroll. He would start off at his cubicle, round the bend toward the communal kitchen, pause to chat with a friend, and then proceed on to the elevator banks. Instead of going to the park, I imagined them circling the copy machine.
Most of my other co-workers were considerate; they kept their dogs in their rooms with the doors shut, whisking them away when they happened to wander into my office. It made me feel both appreciative and like an asshole. “Peanut! Peanut, get back here! Get away from her! Get a-way from her right now!” Scooping their puppies up, they would profusely apologize for their dogs’ indiscretions. “Sorry about that, Corina. So sorry!”
It was an apology set up for only one response, which I always gave. “Oh, hey, no problem, no big deal,” I said with a wave of my hand. Then we exchanged smiles, the dog owners and I, the smiles you stick on for bridal shower games and your ex-boyfriend’s wedding. Besides, there was nothing to do but fake it. I gave the dogs air pats that never actually landed on their heads. If I liked their owners, I attempted a soft coo. My boss checked in to see how I was doing. “Oh, you know it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” I told him. “The offices are farther apart than I’d thought.”
I became convinced that I would like the dogs more if our dog-loving culture wasn’t so weird: There were buckets of doggie treats at the receptionist desk and four-dollar gourmet sweet-potato dog biscuits in the vending machine. In the kitchen, there was a sign written in a puppy’s voice, warning owners not to take their dogs out onto the twelfth floor deck: “My cuteness allows me to get away with many things, but dogs are not allowed on the outside terrace.”
When I joined the company, I signed a two-year work contract with a bonus that I would have to pay back pre-tax if I quit early, so I stuck it out for as long as I could. When I left six months later, it was not because of the dogs, but for the lack of work-life balance that the dogs were meant to cover up. I had been accepted to grad school, and knowing that I couldn’t attend school and continue to work the hours expected of me, I quit. The longer you spend at Amazon, the more weekends you are expected to surrender. Still, employees rarely vacated before their two years was up; there is nothing more soul crushing than paying back money to one of the richest companies in the world out of your own wallet. Most people I knew tried to strap themselves in for at least two-and-a-half to five years, spending their lunch breaks weighing their personal unhappiness against how quickly their stock would vest.
I ran into my boss shortly after he broke the news of my departure to Scott and Deb. “I told Scott and Deb about you leaving; they said, ‘Oh, we’re sad to see Corina go, yeah, she was great…’” As his voice drifted off, his eyes focused at a point somewhere behind me, and he concluded with an airy gesture of his hand, like he was summing up their conversation. He had given better performances. That Deb and Scott couldn’t amble down the hallway to say goodbye in person told me all I needed to know about the sincerity of their well wishes, but I appreciated his attempts to compensate.
I went back to the offices a few months later. With me gone, the dog-free room is no longer and the guy who sits in my old spot, a former fraternity brother of Campbell Soup’s, brings his puppy to work every day. Unfortunately, the dog-friendly policy at work still assumes friendly, considerate owners. New Guy’s dog pees on the floor, but he still brought it to meetings, and he expects his officemates to watch the puppy when he needs to step out. Because they are already running out of space in the new complex, managers in my department squeeze several Level 4s, plus their dogs, into one room. Everyone still keep their doors closed, lest the dogs escape.
1. All names have been changed, obviously
Photo by wablair
Re: New WIRED Offices
by Scott Dadich
WIRED Ones:
I need a few minutes of your attention to talk about how we treat the workspace we’ll fully occupy on Jan. 5.
We made a big investment in the construction and design of the new floor — more than $3 million over 10 years — to create a home worthy of our ambitions and a place that’s fun to come to in the morning. There are zones to work together, and quiet spots for focused work. There are drawers for personal items, and tons of storage for our materials and technologies. I believe the new 3rd floor will give us every opportunity to do what we do best, which is create content that’s a source of surprise and delight to more than 45 million community members.
Unfortunately, too often the place where we do that important work looks, at best, like a dorm room.
It’s an embarrassment: coffee stains on walls (and countertops and desks), overflowing compost bins, abandoned drafts of stories and layouts (full of highly confidential content), day-old, half-eaten food, and, yes, I’m going to say it, action figures. Please. WIRED is no longer a pirate ship. It’s the home of world-changing journalism. It’s the West Coast home of Condé Nast. And it’s increasingly a place where we, and our New York colleagues and owners, host artists, founders, CEOs, and advertisers.
We all treasure our photos of loved ones. Mementos of personal accomplishment. I encourage you to proudly display a few small items at your desk because our workspace reflects who we are. It reflects our values. But how we treat our workplace is a manifestation of how seriously we take our work. When we stop caring for our shared spaces, we demonstrate a lack of respect for the space and for each other. When you leave stains on countertops, it’s disgusting for your colleagues and embarrassing for visitors.
When we take occupancy of the full floor, we’ll walk through the specifics. I think you’ll be delighted to see that we’ve engineered spaces that are designed to get messy, entire rooms for the implements of creative inspiration and expression. The common newsroom and community spaces are not those places.
We’re going to see a significant uptick in office visitors next year. Please make every effort to protect the sensitive information you are working on. Do not leave content of any sort on your desk at the end of the day. We have flat files, vertical files, and locking cabinets spread across the entire floor. Please use them. Secure your work.
Every day, publicists send us all a lot of promotional, er, uh … crap: books, tchotchkes, sales mailers. If there are DVDs or books you need to do your job, please do make use of them. But make sure the items you don’t need make their way off of horizontal surfaces and into the appropriate recycling or refuse containers at the end of the day, or simply take them home.
I love your custom-made/vintage/neon sign/one-of-a-kind lighting appliance. But it’s not right for the design of this new space. Please use the brand-new desk lamp we just purchased for you. And yes, we know there are areas that could use better overhead illumination. Our architects are working on it, I promise.
We went to great expense to purchase elevated laptop stands and monitor arms for all desks. Please do customize the setup to optimize your workspace. I want you to be comfortable and productive — we work long hours — but know that the elevated platform is for your laptop, not your phone.
Clean your dishes, and please remove the food from your dishes from the sink. Among many things, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner is infamous for walking through the office handing out demerits and tongue lashings to people with messy desks strewn with half-eaten food, towers of music, and stacks of assorted crap. Martha Stewart once issued edicts about the three types of approved writing instruments allowed at the Omnimedia studios. I’m not going to do any of that — although my OCD can sometimes get the best of me — because I’m confident you’ll understand exactly what I’m saying here and clean it up, not just for me but for all of us.
Thank you,
Scott
CALL FOR ENTRIES: 2015 Mirror Awards
by Awl Sponsors
The Newhouse School at Syracuse University is now accepting nominations for the ninth annual Mirror Awards honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Application deadline is Feb. 15, 2015. Enter online at mirrorawards.com. Anyone may nominate, and there is no fee to enter.
Award categories include:
• Best Single Article — Traditional/Legacy Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Single Article — Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Single Story — Radio, Television, Cable or Online Broadcast Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Profile — Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Commentary — Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting ($5,000 prize)
Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the Mirror Awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who “hold a mirror to their own industry” for the public’s benefit. They are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting.
The competition is open to anyone who conducts reporting, commentary or criticism of the media industries in a format intended for a mass audience. Eligible work includes print, broadcast and online editorial content focusing on the development or distribution of news and entertainment. All entries must have been published or broadcast between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2014.
Entries are evaluated based on three criteria: Excellence of craft; framing of the issue; and appropriateness for the intended audience. Winners are chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators. An awards ceremony will be held in June 2015 in New York City.
For more information, visit mirrorawards.com or contact Sarah Hope at (315) 443–5711 or sehope@syr.edu.
The Concessionist Is Here to Attempt to Help as Much as Anyone Really Can in This World
Do you have questions about how to at least survive under the grim curtain of mist that is capitalism? Whether your concerns be about the horror of work, human interaction, etiquette, general moral quandary, growing up, friendship, death or even love, perhaps we can help minimize your agony. Do inquire within at Concessionist@theawl.com. I’ll begin answering questions here next week. For better or worse.
New York City, January 12, 2015
[No stars] What had been a promising rumor of snow was now the joyless, inconvenient fact of rain and darkness. The rain came on harder, softened, intensified again. At elementary-school pickup time, it was light and bearable; ten or fifteen minutes later, when the substitute teacher finally gathered and brought out the second graders, it had become a soaking downpour. A stream poured from a scaffold. Uncollected dog turds melted and spread. The second-grader’s knit gloves, clutching his umbrella, got drenched. A taxi was necessary to get from the preschool to the swimming lesson — or not to the swimming lesson, but to the nearest non-flooded stretch of curb. After the swimming, wet socks went back on.
Morning
A woman stands behind a counter wearing a button that says, “Good morning!” Her job is to sell people coffee and donuts and egg-and-cheese sandwiches. The bells on the door jingle and a man in a suit walks into the shop.
“Good morning,” she says, as the man steps up to the counter. “How are you today?”
“Mmmmmyeeeaaahhhh,” says the man, looking up at the menu board on the wall above the woman’s head. He has not yet made eye contact with her. “Can I get a… fried egg with ham and cheese on a toasted plain bagel?”
The woman turns around to start making it, marveling at how rude people can be.
(Previously.)
Don't Meat the Chili
Every cuisine has a quintessential stew, a slow-cooked “stuff, usually meat, in sauce, in a pot” that varies regionally and engenders both deep nostalgic love and endless debate. Pot-au-feu in France, soondubu jjigae in Korea, adobo in the Philippines, feijoada in Brazil, borscht in Ukraine; the list could be much longer. America has its own version, a dish beloved by all, yet usually overlooked in “national dish” conversations in favor of the hamburger. Chili is, I would venture, America’s true national dish, a remnant of the Wild West that relies on indigenous plants (chile peppers, tomatoes) and America’s favorite protein, beef. But what happens if you don’t want to eat meat?
Part of the delight of chili con carne is that the dish seems to require argument, especially from Texans, who think they invented the dish (nobody knows who invented it, and it may well have been in New Mexico or Arizona or California or even, possibly, in Mexico). Does it include beans? No, say Texans, loudly. Does it include tomatoes? No, say Texans, sometimes, but on the occasions they do say it, they also say it loudly. Does it include cheese? Can it have white chicken? And even more to the point: Is vegetarian chili even a chili at all?
The problem with removing meat from chili is that the most traditional chili recipes — the strictest observance to which nobody could have an objection — produce something more like a beef curry with different spices than anything else. It’s little more than slow-cooked, fatty meat, often browned in beef suet, in various dried and fresh chiles. (Style guide: “chile” is the pepper; “chili” is the dish; “Chile” with a capital C is the country.) The entire dish is meat, in spiced meat-sauce. It is not possible to replicate this flavor without meat, and it would be folly to try.
But thanks to pre-made pouches of stale chili spice mixes, the taste memory of chili, to most Americans, is not the specific dish of loud Texans. Instead it is stewed tomato with dried chile and cumin. Now that we can work with! To replace the flavor of meat, I tend to lean on other strong flavors: acid, smoke, spice, and herb. Vegetarian chili should not taste like chili con carne sin carne; it should taste like its own creation, a dish that has been thought through to exist on its own and not as a dish you eat when you can’t have the real thing.
Rule number one in making chili of any sort is to never, ever use the packet of pre-made spice blend. It is almost certainly stale, but I have less of an issue with that than with the lack of control you have over the particulars of your chili. The spices in this dish are probably the most important part; do you really want to trust the dark red spice that comes in a ninety-nine-cent paper pouch?
So the first step is to make your own chili mix. Essentials are some sort of dried chile pepper, cumin, paprika, dried oregano, and dried coriander. It would be best to do this entirely from scratch. Your local grocery store will likely have some dried chiles, or you can find them at most ethnic markets (Mexican is best, since chili has such a heavy Mexican influence, but most Asian, Caribbean, and Indian markets will have everything you need as well). The basic procedure for making your own chile powder is to tear out the stem and seeds of dried chiles and toss them in a dry, medium-hot cast iron pan for a couple minutes, flipping a couple times, until pliable and fragrant, then blending somehow. (A cheap coffee grinder is best, though you probably won’t be able to use it to make coffee after this. If you’re doing this a lot, it’s worth it to have a separate grinder for spices; they cost like twelve bucks.) After you grind it, don’t take the lid off for a minute or two; grinding will have churned up a bunch of dust that has to settle, and if you breathe it in you will very much regret it and be turned off the whole process. Do the same toasting and grinding with a bunch of whole cumin seeds and combine with paprika (this stuff is fine to get already ground), dried oregano (don’t bother drying your own) and coriander.
The specific chiles are a matter of personal taste, but it’s worth it to use several. (I know that this is not an easy recipe. This is grandma cooking, old-school stuff, and is going to require a lot of work before it tastes right. The nice part about this is, first, it’s fun, and second, you get to eat a lot of chili as you figure out how to do this.) The aim here is to build flavors upon flavors, getting the right blend of sweet, smoky, spicy, and fruity. This is complicated by the fact that chiles can vary tremendously from pepper to pepper; one may be mild, and the next may be searingly hot. You just have to kind of taste and see what you like. (For an easier version, you can just use pre-ground chiles as long as they’re good quality. An easy way to tell is if the specific kind of chile is listed; if it just says “chile,” or worse, “chili” powder, avoid. If it says “ancho chile powder,” it’s probably pretty good.) I typically use a mix of ancho for fruitiness, guajillo for umami and smoke, and chile de arbol for heat. This is a good guide to the basics, but you have to kind of play around and see what you like. Chipotles are often standard, for example, but I find them too aggressively smoky for a vegetarian chili; they blow out the more mild flavors of the vegetables. Play around!
Once you’ve toasted and ground and mixed your chiles and cumin, add in the dried oregano and coriander to taste. There are plenty of other things you can add; cinnamon is a good one, as is clove or allspice or turmeric or even dried lemon peel. Make your first few chili blends in small batches so you can play around with them and see what you like and what works.
Now for the easy part: the cooking. This is how I usually do it. Chop a yellow onion, a few cloves of garlic, and fresh chile peppers, then throw them in a heavy-bottomed pot of some sort — a soup pot or dutch oven — with some olive oil. I prefer to go very mild with the fresh chiles; the heat is going to come from the dried chiles, so we just want to add a bit of fruitiness with the fresh ones. (Do not use bell peppers. Bell peppers are extremely sweet and also are gross when soft. Bell peppers are the Wonderbread of chiles.) Anaheim and poblano are both good ones for this. Cook that down until the peppers are soft and the onions translucent, then add a heaping tablespoon of your very impressive chili blend. Stir to coat, and let it cook for another few minutes, getting all toasty and aromatic.
Some of your onions and chiles will stick to the bottom of the pot. This is good! Don’t worry about it. Pour in a glug of beer (lean toward hoppier beers, but don’t use the nutso extremophile IPAs with clever names like InHOPerable Brain Tumor) to deglaze, and scrape the stuff off the bottom of the pot with your spatula. Then dump in a can of tomatoes. (On the subject of tomatoes: I mostly use the Cento brand, because they are excellent and the yuppie grocery store down the block sells them. I like to get the whole tomatoes, with no herbs or anything added, and then chop or blend them myself to get the texture I want. Some people like chunks of tomatoes in their vegetarian chili. I don’t, really, so I just open the can and shove in my immersion blender and blend them all up. But do what you want.) Let the them cook down for awhile, removing that raw tomato flavor and getting all friendly with the spices you so lovingly prepared. This may take forty minutes or an hour.
(While that’s going on, let’s talk vegetables. Stewed vegetables are tough, I think. I usually like vegetables to retain their flavor and texture rather than breaking down the way that you’d want meat to do, but chili is designed to break down tough meat, so it’s important to choose the right vegetables. Summer squash, like zucchini, works well, as long as you throw it in pretty near the end of cooking so it doesn’t disintegrate, but it’s not in season now and isn’t always good. Another good option is chayote, a member of the squash family that looks like a pale green avocado with a deep wrinkle down the length of it. It’s tougher than zucchini, but has as mild a taste, so it’s a good candidate for this dish. Sweet potato works okay. Winter squash like butternut and acorn tends to fall apart, which you don’t want, so don’t use it. Green beans work okay if you chop them up pretty small. Carrots, same thing, although you should throw those in pretty early so they soften up a bit.)
After your chili is starting to taste good as hell, add in the vegetables and keep cooking it until they’re done. You’ll probably have to add them in stages. Keep tasting and adjusting as you do this; does the chili need more cumin? More salt? A squeeze of lime juice or cider vinegar for acidity? A touch of honey for sweetness? More heat? (It probably won’t need more heat.)
Near the end of cooking, add in your beans. If you want to cook them from their dried state, soaking overnight, the whole deal, that’d be great; it’ll taste better. If you just use a drained can of Goya beans, that’s fine too. Also add in a drained can of whole kernel corn. Yes, a can: fresh corn in January is offensively bad, and canned fresh corn is usually really sweet and delicious. Cook for another few minutes to warm the corn and beans.
Serve with a wedge of lime, chopped cilantro, a chopped avocado, and cheese if you want. You should go for a fresh cheese here, like queso blanco or farmer’s cheese. Feta will work very well as a substitute if you can’t find that stuff. You can eat it over rice, or grits, if you’d like.
Chili is a perfect learning experience for a cook because it can require lots of pretty advanced techniques — learning to toast your own spices, figuring out how to distinguish between chiles, and how to balance all these flavors. But it’s only as difficult as you want to make it; if you use pre-ground spices, this whole thing can be done in like forty-five minutes, but if you want to rehydrate your own beans, craft your own perfect spice blend of the perfect variety of dried and fresh chiles, it can be one of those dishes you keep coming back to, keep adjusting and trying new things. Maybe this time you’ll try chocolate! Or white wine! Or some weird new kind of chile you found at the Chinese market!
Oh and it’s good for the Super Bowl, right? People eat chili while watching the Super Bowl.
Crop Chef is a column about the correct ways to prepare and consume plant matter.
Photo by Corey Seeman
The Stages of Amazon Grief
The Stages of Amazon Grief
What is Amazon? asks the New York Times.
Clutching her golden trophy with two hands, the creator of “Transparent,” Jill Soloway, thanked both Amazon and Mr. Bezos. Mr. Tambor called the company his “new best friend.”
It was a remarkable moment, considering that only months ago Mr. Bezos and Amazon were being cast as the enemies of American letters. The company’s long-simmering conflict with book publishers over e-book prices had broken out into open warfare, with Amazon going so far as to delay shipments of certain Hachette titles deliberately — a move that invited the collective wrath of the literary world. The host Stephen Colbert directed an obscene gesture at Amazon on national TV.
The juxtaposition says a lot about Amazon’s unusual place in American culture. At the same time that the company was effectively engaged in a book blockade, it was producing what is now an award-winning series that tackles the ambitious subject of transgender people.
And then, not two days later:
Woody Allen is going to write and direct his first television show for Amazon, the studio announced Tuesday morning. The half-hour show has already received a full season order and will be available exclusively on Prime Instant Video in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. Its air date is still undecided.
Here we have an opportunity to avoid a mistake that’s so far been made by every creative industry given option to make it: to engage with Amazon as a conscious cultural force rather than a clear-minded, if sometimes misguided, data-driven financial operation with major but incidental cultural effects. To give credit to Amazon for taking a chance on the excellent Transparent is correct; to characterize that chance as anything but strategic is not. Amazon sees a possible path into the new TV industry through prestige programming, and it has a recent example in Netflix. But it also sees other possible paths, which people tend to ignore: through the soft and nice and star-anchored Alpha House; through its endlessly loopable children’s shows; through the “charming” (and strange! and interesting) Mozart in the Jungle; through a legendary film director who has been publicly accused of the molestation of a child (not to mention its various untapped pilots, which included, among many others, a corny low-budget apocalypse thriller, a musical-comedy series about working at, basically, the Huffington Post, and a Zombieland show).
As a cultural effort its TV plan alone is incoherent; but, again, as a set of TV industry plays, it makes some sense. Every new industry Amazon enters gets a fresh expression of its core expansionist vision, rendered in a native-enough vocabulary that has the effect of convincing competitors that Amazon is actually just one of them, which is never true — not in books, not in diapers, not in TV. Electronics retailers, perhaps a less precious bunch, did not muse on the strangeness of Amazon’s choice to sell tablets and jeans and books and soap; it was not necessary to their egos. “Amazon’s place in American culture” is only “unusual” if you believe the company to be, against all prior evidence, something that it’s not.