![]() Is pecunious Amazon a 21st-century peculiar institution? Some people would say so. The earliest citation in the OED is from an 1829 article in the Carolina Observer: “South Carolina, from her climate, situation, and peculiar institutions, is and must forever continue to be, wholly dependent upon agriculture and commerce.” The peculiar institution is the 19th-century euphemism for slavery in the United States. There’s also a verb, peculate, that means “to embezzle” or “to pilfer.” Peculium was imported directly into English and meant “private property.” A close relative of peculiar is pecuniary, which has retained its original sense of “related to money.” Also related: pecunious (wealthy) and the more-frequently-encountered impecunious (destitute). Latin pecūliāris meant “personal” or “private” its root, pecū, meant “a herd of livestock”-especially cows, a primary source of wealth in the ancient world. Since the early 1600s, peculiar has meant “strange” or “odd,” but that’s not how it started its long life. In his 2019 article, Harry McCracken wrote: “I’m still trying to figure out why one Peculiar Way is unabashedly pro-bragging while the next maintains that the company tries to avoid a boastful tone.” Just how peculiar is Amazon? The company is fond of enumerating its “Peculiar Ways.” The account’s avatar is Peccy with a frown and a black eye. Or not so warm and fuzzy, in the case of the FACE of Amazon Twitter account-FACE stands for Former and Current Employees-which retweets negative items about working conditions at the company. Some of these pins are given to employees for achievements such as perfect attendance-a feat more conscientious than peculiar, and evidence that Peccy is, as much as anything, an adorable manifestation of warm, fuzzy feelings about Amazon. T, Richard Simmons, and multiple Game of Thrones characters, just to share a few examples that recipients have posted to the web. There are ones depicting Peccy as Superman, Wonder Woman, Harry Potter, Chewbacca, Sherlock Holmes, a ninja, both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Mr. If I’d been paying closer attention, I would have spotted an April 2019 article by Harry McCracken in Fast Company, “ Meet Peccy, the Bizarre, Beloved Mascot You Didn’t Know Amazon Had.” McCracken doesn’t tell us who created Peccy, or when, but he does offer some insights into Peccy’s range and influence. I want to talk about peculiar’s peculiar history, but first I need to acknowledge that the Peccy story wasn’t exactly a secret. (His name derives from management’s insistence that “Amazonians” are proudly “peculiar” individuals.) Carrington still hoped to snag the rainbow gay-pride Peccy and the Black History Month Peccy, which sported an Afro. Byers has shown up, even though he is “skeptical of the unionization effort”:Īs was the custom at the warehouse, Carrington had decorated his lanyard with an array of pins depicting the company’s mascot, Peccy-a neckless orange creature with an Amazon smile for a mouth. The story begins at a pro-union event at a Bessemer union hall in early March 2021. ![]() The central figure in Brook’s article is 23-year-old Carrington Byers, one of 5,876 employees at the Bessemer warehouse. ![]() I learned about Peccy in an article by Daniel Brook in the July 2021 issue of Harper’s about the (ultimately failed) campaign to unionize the workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
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