17 
Having a bad job is better than having no job, but there’s no doubt that monotonous, bottom-wage manual labour is the pits. Photographer Michael Wolf snapped this haunting series of Chinese workers building cheap toys for… us.
The labour depicted here is of a very different kind than that at Foxconn in one important way: these people know what they’re building. Dolls, trucks, little Mickey Mouse figurines. They’re cogs, but not in a machine so vast they don’t know what the end result is. Still, it’s not exactly rewarding work—and their faces show it all, though Wolf tells us the atmosphere in the factory was mostly “busy, not depressing.”
All photos by Michael Wolf, republished with permission
No Apple or Samsung products in the photos!
Is it because Mr Wolf owns one of these?
No, they don’t look sad. Just because someone isn’t grinning inanely doesn’t mean they look sad. If anything they look neutral, and they look like that because the photographer told them to and discarded the photos that didn’t back up his point.
Sensationalism and hyperbole, nothing more.
Actually even the photographer said the atmosphere was “busy” rather than depressing. It seems if anyone’s trying to put a slant on this, it’s Sam (surprise surprise).
Definitely a negative spin put on these photos from Biddle.
I bet he’s a racist.
Some of gizmodo’s posters really like to make China and North Korea look bad. Not that’s nothing bad to show there but why so much emphasis? In my home country, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people are freed from slave like working conditions every year and it’s never shown in international news. Why? Maybe because we are neither communists nor asians?
You sir, are right.
They would look at lot more sad if say for instance if inflation keeps occurring, wages increase to more western minimum wage standard, and then they are replaced by automated methods of production, then forced to either learn skills to support mechanised forms of manufacturing, retrain to support it or end up with the social problems akin to the west.
I not sure I understand you comment. Is it supposed to be disagreeing with me through irony? Sorry for my poor understanding of british communication style
I wish I could say having a bad article is better than no article at all but I can’t.
Also, none of the Michael wolf links work.
Shoppers Photographed with the Cheap Things Sad Chinese Factory Workers Build: http://www.primark.co.uk
If these people are “sad” it’s because their expressions mirror ours when we read a Sam Biddle article.