I Worked at an Amazon Fulfillment Center; They Treat Workers Like Robots

[ZiprHead]

https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment-robots/

I wasn’t prepared for how exhausting working at Amazon would be. It took my body two weeks to adjust to the agony of walking 15 miles a day and doing hundreds of squats. But as the physical stress got more manageable, the mental stress of being held to the productivity standards of a robot became an even bigger problem.

Technology has enabled employers to enforce a work pace with no room for inefficiency, squeezing every ounce of downtime out of workers’ days. The scan gun I used to do my job was also my own personal digital manager. Every single thing I did was monitored and timed. After I completed a task, the scan gun not only immediately gave me a new one but also started counting down the seconds I had left to do it.

It also alerted a manager if I had too many minutes of “Time Off Task.” At my warehouse, you were expected to be off task for only 18 minutes per shift–mine was 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.–which included using the bathroom, getting a drink of water or just walking slower than the algorithm dictated, though we did have a 30-minute unpaid lunch. It created a constant buzz of low-grade panic, and the isolation and monotony of the work left me feeling as if I were losing my mind. Imagine experiencing that month after month.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Large company, low level job. Is there any place like that that doesn't treat them like robots?

And 15 miles a day is a big deal to those who aren't used to it but I've met hikers who do it for fun--and over uneven terrain with a lot of elevation change. Just yesterday I encountered a woman on the trails that was doing roughly 19 miles--with about 5,600' of climb involved.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I worked in a a fulfillment center in Indiana, It is a rough job and certainly not worth the pay. The massive warehouse did not have air conditioning, and there were times I had to literally run not to fall massively behind. I think the pay at the time was 12.00/hr. Hey Loren, there are Olympic sprinters that do what they do for fun too, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining,

ETA: Most positions were filled through temp agencies so that Amazon didn't have to pay any health insurance or other benefits. On any given day they would be unsure of workload, and "employee morale" or how many could stomach showing up that day, So some days were short, but much more often many of us would be sent home because they didn't need that many people that day. Ultimately that's why I quit, a job like that might have been sustainable if you had steady money, but I wasted more and more gas going back and forth either to not work the day at all or work a few hours before being sent home.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Large company, low level job. Is there any place like that that doesn't treat them like robots?

And 15 miles a day is a big deal to those who aren't used to it but I've met hikers who do it for fun--and over uneven terrain with a lot of elevation change. Just yesterday I encountered a woman on the trails that was doing roughly 19 miles--with about 5,600' of climb involved.

JFC, why did you post this?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Large company, low level job. Is there any place like that that doesn't treat them like robots?

And 15 miles a day is a big deal to those who aren't used to it but I've met hikers who do it for fun--and over uneven terrain with a lot of elevation change. Just yesterday I encountered a woman on the trails that was doing roughly 19 miles--with about 5,600' of climb involved.

JFC, why did you post this?

You've been posting here long enough to know that a thread without a contrary personal anecdote of Loren's just isn't a thread of worth at all.

 

[James Brown]

Apparently no working condition is too extreme for the general public if anyone else endures the same condition voluntarily at a time and place of their own choosing.

Scaling tall buildings is a big deal to those who aren't used to it, but I met a man who can free-climb El Capitan, so therefore elevators and stairwells are not necessary in high-rise office buildings.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Jessica Bruder's wonderful book Nomadland is immersion journalism on the RV community, specifically, those who once owned a house but now live transiently in RVs. Some of these folks do seasonal work at the Amazon fc's, mostly around Christmas. I forget how many football fields long some of these places are -- could it really be 15? There are visceral descriptions of the workers, many of them past retirement age, trudging from aisle to aisle and bin with bin with scanner guns in hand, seeking multiple items that might be a quarter mile apart. (Okay, I improvised the 'quarter mile', but it's probably not too far off.) One woman's comment stuck with me. She said that the most frustrating part of the job wasn't the walking and the boredom. It was the thought that so many of the cheap plastic items she was retrieving were just dopey, flashy gift items and that in a month or two they'd be in a landfill. That made the job infuriating and hear-breaking to her. If you pick up Bruder's book, you'll probably read it in a day or two. Compelling and compassionate, in its way.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Apparently no working condition is too extreme for the general public if anyone else endures the same condition voluntarily at a time and place of their own choosing.

Scaling tall buildings is a big deal to those who aren't used to it, but I met a man who can free-climb El Capitan, so therefore elevators and stairwells are not necessary in high-rise office buildings.

I know people that like to camp all the time... and the weather in the Bahamas is much nicer than where they camp, so clearly the solution is the Hurricane victims need to just camp and stop complaining.

 

[Jarhyn]

Apparently no working condition is too extreme for the general public if anyone else endures the same condition voluntarily at a time and place of their own choosing.

Scaling tall buildings is a big deal to those who aren't used to it, but I met a man who can free-climb El Capitan, so therefore elevators and stairwells are not necessary in high-rise office buildings.

No, they need elevators to go up, but to go down, they will be expected to get there by bungee jumping or sliding down a pole hole. The elevator just free-falls to get to the bottom again.

For efficiency.

 

[TSwizzle]

It's disgusting but not surprising how badly these people are treated. They treat their vendors like shit too.

 

[starwater]

I worked in a a fulfillment center in Indiana, It is a rough job and certainly not worth the pay. The massive warehouse did not have air conditioning, and there were times I had to literally run not to fall massively behind. I think the pay at the time was 12.00/hr. Hey Loren, there are Olympic sprinters that do what they do for fun too, so maybe I shouldn't be complaining,

ETA: Most positions were filled through temp agencies so that Amazon didn't have to pay any health insurance or other benefits. On any given day they would be unsure of workload, and "employee morale" or how many could stomach showing up that day, So some days were short, but much more often many of us would be sent home because they didn't need that many people that day. Ultimately that's why I quit, a job like that might have been sustainable if you had steady money, but I wasted more and more gas going back and forth either to not work the day at all or work a few hours before being sent home.

It sounds like its all to benefit the wealthy, and the workers are just those pesky humans that help make them wealth, so their expendable anyway right? disgusting.

BFI - I'm curious did this fulfillment center have robots? How do they use humans versus robots?

Does Amazon expect to replace most humans with robots?

 

[thebeave]

Time to boycott Amazon! Who's with me? Everyone who is going to cancel their Amazon Prime membership because of this bullshit raise your hand!

<crickets>

Hmmmm. I thought so.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Time to boycott Amazon! Who's with me? Everyone who is going to cancel their Amazon Prime membership because of this bullshit raise your hand!

<crickets>

Hmmmm. I thought so.

Am I the only one here who has never used Amazon?

This sort of story, showing big companies hiring temps, who cycle from temp assignment to temp assignment, so they don't have to pay benefits or decent wages is just another case in point for the need for both Universal Single Payer health care and for Universal Basic Income. Make it happen.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Time to boycott Amazon! Who's with me? Everyone who is going to cancel their Amazon Prime membership because of this bullshit raise your hand!

<crickets>

Hmmmm. I thought so.

Am I the only one here who has never used Amazon?

This sort of story, showing big companies hiring temps...

It isn't just the "big companies". Since the crash this is endemic. No one (consumers, companies, governments) wants to pay anything for anything. Secretaries, receptionists, IT, field labor... if it can't be centralized and condensed into two positions for an entire corporation, they'll temp it out.

 

[Gun Nut]

If your skillset can be replaced by a robot, then you should be thankful anyone has any use for your work efforts at all... and your focus should be on increasing your value beyond an arm on a dolly.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If your skillset can be replaced by a robot, then you should be thankful anyone has any use for your work efforts at all... and your focus should be on increasing your value beyond an arm on a dolly.

Do you have any idea how many jobs have been automated away or become redundant through contraction? While higher tech jobs are around, job growth isn't what it used to be, as computers and connectivity continue to absorb more and more jobs.

 

[starwater]

If your skillset can be replaced by a robot, then you should be thankful anyone has any use for your work efforts at all... and your focus should be on increasing your value beyond an arm on a dolly.

Do you have any idea how many jobs have been automated away or become redundant through contraction? While higher tech jobs are around, job growth isn't what it used to be, as computers and connectivity continue to absorb more and more jobs.

Remember the 1980s movie Norma Rae with Sally Field as the Union organizer? That type of factory - a textile mill that used to employ 2000 workers in 1980s now employs 125 - the rest is done by robot. Until recently these mills were closed until manufacturers like American Giant helped reopen them. Story Here

It's not an easy answer - many of these manual jobs moved to China and other places overseas for cheap labor and to avoid the unions. As they return they are fewer and need high tech skilled workers.

 

[J842P]

Time to boycott Amazon! Who's with me? Everyone who is going to cancel their Amazon Prime membership because of this bullshit raise your hand!

<crickets>

Hmmmm. I thought so.

I did it a long time ago.

 

[J842P]

If your skillset can be replaced by a robot, then you should be thankful anyone has any use for your work efforts at all... and your focus should be on increasing your value beyond an arm on a dolly.

Yeah, the problem with this sentiment is that most people are going to be replaceable by robots in a rapidly approaching world. It's coming for everyone. And you can't just expect all these people to become software engineers (most of the roles where that would even be realistic are rapidly being automated away as well...).


So, "sucks to be you" is one way you can look at things, I suppose.

Honestly, I don't care. I don't have kids and I'm not going to have kids.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Even if everyone could become software engineers, there wouldn't be enough software engineering jobs to go around. And even software engineering will eventually to a large degree get written by computer AI. Society needs to shift towards a new way of looking at how we support human beings. We either need UBI and strong social programs, or we are going to end up with a dystopian future in which 10% of humanity are living comfrotable lives and the rest are simply left to die. Then the human population will shrink to near nothing and we'll eventually go extinct, replaced by the AI we created.