It all happened so fast, we never got a chance to ask the most fundamental question: Is the sudden and dramatic shift to warehouse work a good thing?
Has the explosion in warehouse jobs, taken as a whole, left us better off than before?
As my colleague Katherine Long outlines in her story about musculoskeletal disorders, warehouse work is dangerous.
"Warehouse workers," he says, "are the assembly-line workers of contemporary capitalism."
That experience has given him hope that warehouse jobs, like their assembly-line predecessors, could wind up being a source of both personal pride and economic advancement.