Items arrived in plastic crates on a conveyor belt. The employee grabbed a hairbrush, scanned it, put it in an envelope, labeled it and put it back on the conveyor belt to the sky-blue trucks waiting outside the warehouse. His hands moved at lightning speed. He repeated these gestures for 10 hours, with barely two 30-minute breaks. He is one of the 3,200 workers employed by Amazon at LCY3, a distribution center in Dartford, on the outskirts of London, which opened to the general public at the end of January.

Before arriving at the packing station, the products have been extracted from the cartons in which they were delivered and placed on one of the conveyor belts crisscrossing the warehouse, destined for the large yellow shelves on which they will be stored. The shelves, which are mounted on wheeled robots, move by themselves thanks to QR codes printed on the floor.

Then the "pickers" enter the scene. These employees are responsible for identifying the goods that have been ordered and sending them to the packing station. They bend over, kneel down and climb a stepladder, in an infernal ballet. In one corner, a sign shows the most productive employees of the month, with photos to back them up. The Amazon logo, a smiling arrow, is everywhere. So are surveillance cameras.

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