You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
     Another day older and deeper in debt.
     Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go,
     I owe my soul to the company store.

Travis Merle wrote the song Sixteen Tons about working your life away in the coal mines and spending your whole paycheck–and then some–at the company store. You had no other options in the corporate mining villages of the early twentieth century.

The most famous version of the song came from Tennessee Ernie Ford. Sixteen Tons was covered by many others, including Johnny Cash, and even Elvis at some concerts though he never recorded it.

And South Park recently featured their own version in an episode called “Unfulfilled,” about working for Amazon.

Of course, South Park is a comedy cartoon series that parodies real-life events.

They depicted Amazon fulfilment centers as the only available jobs in the small Colorado town. People worked in dangerous collaboration with machines, and went home to spend their entire paycheck on Amazon.

Jeff Bezos was depicted as a telepathic villain. He would tune in to various Alexa streams to gauge the mood of the town. And anyone who didn’t do his bidding would have their Prime status revoked.