I don't know why I took the bait in my previous reply (A bit of a rough morning I suppose). The point I wanted to make in the original post and did poorly at is this: The guy seems to feel dehumanized that he got a scanner which told him what to do and had an expected minimum rate at which to work. I don't know the specifics of Amazon, but in warehouses this is standard. You don't sit down and have a conversation over each item that needs to get shipped, you go get it and ship it out. While having an expected rate isn't always exciting, especially if you are feeling sick etc., typically the software telling you what to get is having you move around in some kind of efficient manner.
At the warehouse I was at, the system knew where I was (based off the last location I scanned) and would send me to my next location based on priority and proximity. What I'm suggesting is that nothing abnormal is going on. I'm sure hundreds of thousands of people around the globe work in similar positions. While it's not intellectually stimulating, I don't know if I would consider it dehumanizing.