How I Became CEO of Amazon

My name is Danny, and I’m the CEO of Amazon.

I started at the bottom of the corporate ladder, stealing packages off porches. "Porch pirate" is the common job title.

I wasn’t technically on payroll, but I felt like I was part of the Amazon team back then. I’d meet up with the drivers for donuts and coffee in the early hours, shooting the shit and all. I’d head off with them.

The Amazon drivers, they liked me. I was their tip guy.

See I paid them a bit of what I made off the merchandise, about 10 percent (I’m a cheap tipper).

I figured I’m giving them work too. When the people reorder their products, my boys are back in business.

My dad didn’t approve of my career choice. His scam made way more money. He was an insurance salesman.

See, what my dad does is “hire” other people to sell insurance, commission only. They end up selling a few policies to their friends and families and send them up the food chain where my dad makes a cut too.

That’s usually it, but if anyone starts making real sales, my dad fires them and swoops in on the new market.

He’s a real dick, not like me. Stealing a package or two in a nice neighborhood doesn’t hurt nobody.

Then came my chance to take over the entire company.

You see, my boy Teddy was working a real nice neighborhood called Copley Acres. Good shit in those packages, so I followed him. First package I grabbed that day was weird. It didn’t have the normal paper, instead it was just a plain brown packaging. Whatever. I opened it.

I was like, oh, it's just one of those Amazon echoes, but I picked it up and the damn thing stung me. I dropped it, and it came on. It said, "Hello, Danny Rodriquez, the hunt is on." Creeped the shit out of me. I threw it out the car window and high-tailed it out of there.

I had to smoke through half my emergency pot stash to calm down. I thought maybe I just imagined the whole damn thing.

So, I chilled and turned on some late-night TV. But then I heard something. I peeped out the blinds, and I saw that damn smile. You know the one. The Amazon logo thing that looks like a smirk. It was floating in the air on about a dozen drones that were surrounding my place with machine guns strapped to them.

I jumped into my kitchen, and the whole damn apartment got tore up by gun fire. Everything I owned, from my 4500-dollar curved screen TV to the 20-dollar couch I got from Salvation army.

The drones finished shooting, and I took a last toke off my bong and went straight Barry Bonds on their asses. Two of them were in my apartment looking for me, so I popped out, grabbed a slab of wood, and smashed them both. Then I just bolted.

I lived on the second story of a shitty three apartment complex, so it wasn't anything to run across the roof to the parking lot. At least, not until those drones started shooting again.

I don't know how I survived, but before I knew it, I was in my car. I peeled out with my head down. I think I hit some truck, but I doubt anyone would care what with an aerial drone army shooting the neighborhood up.

Now, once I got on the road, I knew I had one big advantage - power lines. The streets were loaded with them. I smashed those things into so many lines and transformers my whole neighborhood went black. Just sparks on every damn street corner.

And silence. I stopped the car and got out. I just needed to breathe, you know? I barely heard the buzzing over my heartbeat. More drones. I needed to get out of there. They had to have a range, right? I decided to just keep driving until I was out of it.

The next morning, I was in the dessert. Outran the drones, but I also emptied my gas tank. I was stuck. Endless, half-paved road on either side. But here's what really scared me. On the backseat there was a copy of the Washington Post. On the cover it said, "Daniel Rodriquez is a Dead Man" with my picture. I couldn't go back.

I knew the drones were on one end of the dessert, so I started walking in the opposite direction.

You ever walk in the dessert with nothing but a week-old diet coke to drink? It sucks. I eventually got to some old ranch. I knew it was trouble, but I was dying. I made it about a hundred yards from the front door when Earl popped out with his rifle and yelled, "Don't take another step."

No problem for me - I passed out.

When I woke up, Earl introduced himself. And gave me the full info on my situation.

Earl stole packages too. Until one day, he picked up the wrong parcel and got stung. Amazon put a tracker in him, just like mine. He couldn't take it out, but he could get out of range. So, he founded the ranch, a place where Amazon criminals could seek safety.

For three weeks, I lived there with a dozen other Amazon refugees. It was real caveman shit. We had to pump our own water, grow our own food. We even shopped at Wal-Mart.

No Internet allowed. Which meant buying DVDs. It was hard, but we learned. Most of us. Denise was a new arrival like me. She wasn't a porch pirate; she gave too many one-star reviews on Goodreads. She didn't take to living on the ranch easily. One night, while getting stoned in Earl's living room, I heard a song that made my skin jump - the title song to Z: The Beginning of Everything, the hit Amazon Prime show.

We burst into Denise's room and found her streaming. "I just needed the season finale," she pleaded.

"You've killed us all," Earl screamed. A dozen delivery vans showed up and surrounded the ranch. Earl got his rifle and went to fight. The rest of us fled; porch pirates aren't fighters. All except Denise, she stayed, hooked to her laptop.

In the chaos I tried sneaking out the side. I almost made it, until I saw my boy, Teddy. Motherfucker was there in the same goddamn van.

I picked up a metal pipe and was about to cave his head in when he saw me.

"What the fuck Teddy!" I yelled at him.

"Whoa, whoa Danny," He said, "Dude, just take it easy."

"You almost got me killed!"

"I know. I know, but man. Once they found out what we were doing, it was you or me. You'd do the same."

He was right. I would’ve sold out Teddy. Hell, I was a porch pirate. But he still owed me one.

"You're going to give me that van."

"What?"

"You heard me," I said, holding up the pipe.

"Alright, alright." He handed over the keys. "What are you going to do Danny?" I drove off and left him there like that. I knew what I had to do though. My tracker couldn't be surgically removed without killing me. Too close to the brain or some shit.

So, the only way of getting my life back was to breach the distribution center and destroy the central computer. Lucky for me, I had an Amazon van.

I got there the next morning.

The gate recognized the van and let me in. I got out, and some drones started loading up the days’ shipments.

Not flying drones. Just people, but work at Amazon long enough and everyone’s a machine.

I got into the warehouse without even a question. It was vast. I couldn’t see all four walls, but I didn’t need to. I just needed the manager’s elevator.

“Attention employees,” a voice over the loudspeakers said, “There is unauthorized personnel in the satisfaction center.”

My face appeared on giant screens throughout the warehouse.

“The first team member to kill the intruder will have unlimited bathroom breaks.”

I ran. Ran like hell. The worker horde crawling over itself to get those sweet bathroom breaks. I tried hiding, but it didn’t work. A worker tried reaching through a shelf to grab me, but he got shocked.

“That is not the correct item, please try again,” his wristband said.

The gamification system. Amazon has its people wear armbands for productivity. Reach for the wrong item, and it shocks you. That was my key.

I taped as many packages to myself as I could. No one could reach for me without the shock. Amazon workers learn fast. They surrounded me, but they couldn’t get close. I eased my way to the elevator. Hundreds of workers watched as their dreams of peeing ascended away.

The elevator arrived at a long hallway. Both sides of the hall were lined with large TV screens. They were showing me streaming on Twitch. My escape from my apartment. My life on the ranch. My conversation with Teddy. Even me walking through the hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a library. Shelf after shelf of old dusty-ass books. And a single old man at a desk. He was typing the text of some out-of-print textbook into a Kindle creator file.

He turned to me. Thick glasses. Old moldy beard. Blood-shot eyes. A frenzied look. He whispered, “Kill me.” I had enough of that floor. I got in another elevator and took it to the top.

I walked into the biggest office I ever saw. And there it was, the regional central computer. But there He was, sitting between me and my goal behind a massive mahogany desk.

“Good job Mr. Rodriquez,” Jeff Bezos said while clapping sarcastically, “No one has ever made it this far.”

“This world is a nightmare,” I said, “I’m here to end it.”

“Then there’s just one more obstacle you’ll have to overcome.”

He pushed a button on his desk. Out came an orange cylinder, waddling into the main office. The mutant freak had lumps for arms and legs. Its eyes were dead. And it had that smile. Always that smile.

“It’s Peccy,” Jeff Bezos announced, “the Amazon mascot.”

“Amazon has a mascot?” I asked moments before the mutated cylinder collapsed dead. It smelled like ass and my refrigerator.

Jeff just sighed. I got closer to the CEO and saw the stress lines and frustration on his face.

“I’m so damn tired. The world of ecommerce is all about murder and slavery, but I just wanted to sell books without renting a storefront.”

He went to his window overlooking a vast space complex.

“Danny,” he said after a long silence, “I’m going to space, but I have to leave all this to someone. That someone is you, Danny.”

“But I don’t know anything about running a multinational…”

“Shh, shh,” Jeff said while pressing a single finger to my lips, “You stole merchandise, crashed several drones into residential neighborhoods, recognized a hit Amazon prime show, defeated hordes of workers using ridiculous productivity hardware, and watched Peccy die. You’ve done everything an Amazon CEO would ever need to do.”

And that’s how I became the CEO of Amazon.

The rest of the story is well known. Jeff Bezos died when his rectum was sucked out of his body in an unfortunate space toilet incident. Amazon replaced the U.S. government as the leading military and public policy solutions provider.

And my dad was finally proud of me.

Work hard. Have fun. Make history. – Amazon.