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Please see my other comment. I've worked a $3.35/hr. minimum wage food service job before and it's hell. If you took 1,000 average citizens and threw them int

Please see my other comment. I've worked a $3.35/hr. minimum wage food service job before and it's hell. If you took 1,000 average citizens and threw them into minimum wage food service, factory, or warehouse work, I would completely expect a good percentage of them to burn out and quit within a couple days. Unskilled jobs are just too hard and require too much effort for too little salary to make them acceptable to a lot of people. This doesn't mean they are inhumane; it means we've grown accustomed to easy, white-collar jobs and are fairly divorced from the reality of hard, physical labor these days.

j2bax 9y ago
Any job that would cause a good percentage of people to 'burn out and quit within a couple days', would fall into the category of inhumane for me.
- illumin8 9y ago
  Fair enough, but keep in mind that in the 1800s, parents often made their young children work 16 hour days in the sun farming for them. Child labor, under harsh conditions. We've grown accustomed to a much easier life now, but it was not always like this.
  - computerex 9y ago
    Is there a point you are trying to make that's relevant to this discussion? I have read a few of your comments on this thread and I just can't for the life in me figure out what point you're trying to make.
    - illumin8 9y ago
      Honestly, forget it. The point I'm trying to make is that nobody owes you a handout or an easy job. The fact that I've worked brutal fast food jobs for $3.35 an hour, yet you don't see KFC, McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc, being trashed here for terrible working conditions, while AMZN is, speaks volumes. Today has taught me that HN has a pretty fierce anti AMZN bias, and it shows. I have 4K+ karma, and am sharing my honest opinion and experiences working for AMZN for the last year. Next time, I just won't participate. This community has gone downhill pretty seriously in the last few years... No big loss.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > The fact that I've worked brutal fast food jobs for $3.35 an hour, yet you don't see KFC, McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc, being trashed here for terrible working conditions, while AMZN is, speaks volumes. If it speaks volumes, those volumes are more about this being a tech-industry biased forum than anything else. We don't really talk about the fast food industry and it's working ccondition nearly as much (though, even so, the whole industry is often used as a shorthand for terrible working conditions even when discussing other things.) Your idea that the fact that HN talks about Amazon more than the fast food industry is anti-Amazon bias and not tech-industry focus is interesting, but not particularly plausible. (Especially given that plenty of that talk is positive.)
      - j2bax 9y ago
        I appreciate your honest opinion and I am only providing my own honest response. This thread is about AMZN, you talked about how some workers are treated at AMZN so that's what we are talking about. I actually happen to love AMZN as a whole and own stock in the company which has done extremely well for me. My company buys almost all of our equipment off AMZN. That doesn't mean I can't criticize them when I disagree with one of their practices.
      - computerex 9y ago
        Please don't let me comments prevent you from participating in good discourse. I just don't understand why you are so hell bent on defending Amazon at the expense of all the "seasonal unskilled laborers". They are humans like you and me and they are not secondary citizens. It seems to me like we should be trying to make other people's lives better. I will trash whatever place that mistreats its employees. But this is Hacker news and the topic is about whole food and amazon. Why you keep bringing the fact that you worked for $3.50 an hour at McDonald's is beyond me. Damn man, just because you suffered from having to do fast food doesn't mean everyone else should too?

j2bax 9y ago

Any job that would cause a good percentage of people to 'burn out and quit within a couple days', would fall into the category of inhumane for me.

illumin8 9y ago
Fair enough, but keep in mind that in the 1800s, parents often made their young children work 16 hour days in the sun farming for them. Child labor, under harsh conditions. We've grown accustomed to a much easier life now, but it was not always like this.
- computerex 9y ago
  Is there a point you are trying to make that's relevant to this discussion? I have read a few of your comments on this thread and I just can't for the life in me figure out what point you're trying to make.
  - illumin8 9y ago
    Honestly, forget it. The point I'm trying to make is that nobody owes you a handout or an easy job. The fact that I've worked brutal fast food jobs for $3.35 an hour, yet you don't see KFC, McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc, being trashed here for terrible working conditions, while AMZN is, speaks volumes. Today has taught me that HN has a pretty fierce anti AMZN bias, and it shows. I have 4K+ karma, and am sharing my honest opinion and experiences working for AMZN for the last year. Next time, I just won't participate. This community has gone downhill pretty seriously in the last few years... No big loss.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The fact that I've worked brutal fast food jobs for $3.35 an hour, yet you don't see KFC, McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc, being trashed here for terrible working conditions, while AMZN is, speaks volumes. If it speaks volumes, those volumes are more about this being a tech-industry biased forum than anything else. We don't really talk about the fast food industry and it's working ccondition nearly as much (though, even so, the whole industry is often used as a shorthand for terrible working conditions even when discussing other things.) Your idea that the fact that HN talks about Amazon more than the fast food industry is anti-Amazon bias and not tech-industry focus is interesting, but not particularly plausible. (Especially given that plenty of that talk is positive.)
    - j2bax 9y ago
      I appreciate your honest opinion and I am only providing my own honest response. This thread is about AMZN, you talked about how some workers are treated at AMZN so that's what we are talking about. I actually happen to love AMZN as a whole and own stock in the company which has done extremely well for me. My company buys almost all of our equipment off AMZN. That doesn't mean I can't criticize them when I disagree with one of their practices.
    - computerex 9y ago
      Please don't let me comments prevent you from participating in good discourse. I just don't understand why you are so hell bent on defending Amazon at the expense of all the "seasonal unskilled laborers". They are humans like you and me and they are not secondary citizens. It seems to me like we should be trying to make other people's lives better. I will trash whatever place that mistreats its employees. But this is Hacker news and the topic is about whole food and amazon. Why you keep bringing the fact that you worked for $3.50 an hour at McDonald's is beyond me. Damn man, just because you suffered from having to do fast food doesn't mean everyone else should too?