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Reddit AMA: I'm a Former Amazon Fulfillment Center Employee
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kerng 7y agoOne of the biggest issues seems the problem with bathroom breaks and time lost doing so. Why does Amazon not put more bathrooms in the warehouses, so it doesnt take 10 minutes just to walk there and back? That's like a distance of more then half a mile... Not drinking any water during ones shift doesn't seem a healthy solution.
- sebazzz 7y agoYet again we see that the true cost not the listed price is. I wonder who approves these conditions in the company, or whether it is just some general company management culture embedded in the system.
- cultus 7y agoIt's not even the culture, it's 100% intentional. Everyone up to Jeff Bezos is fully aware of all of this and makes the decision to maintain these conditions in order to slightly raise profits. Fulfillment center employees also searched for theft after their shift every day. Not only is this dehumanizing, but they don't hire enough security people. This results in 20+ minute lines. The employees are unpaid while waiting. There was a lawsuit about this that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and Amazon won.
- BuckRogers 7y agoIn that case the results should be one hour worth of wages should be deducted from every government employee’s paycheck including the Supreme Courts Justices until private market employees are paid for their time standing in line at the end of the day. If working at Amazon means your time is free for corporations, then it should apply to everyone until it’s fixed.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoWow, I had to look it up, but this is all true. I guess companies can hold you on premises as long as they like without pay, so long as you’re not working. Strange. I’m not totally sure what it is about waiting in a security line that makes it “not working”. Supposedly cleaning chemicals from the plant off your body does count as work. But participating in a workplace compliance process like a security line is not work. But I assume the screeners are getting paid? I guess it’s because screening is part of their job description. I guess I’d have to read the opinions to find out where that line is. It’s not obvious to me. “Am I free to go” would seem like a more obvious line... although then the chemical showers wouldn’t be billable. Since you’re free to leave dirty. I can see the legal dilemma. All of this isn’t really any constitutional issue though, it’s just federal employment regulations. So good regulators in the executive could fix it.
- krapp 7y ago>Strange. I’m not totally sure what it is about waiting in a security line that makes it “not working”. They've already clocked out, but not yet left the premises. Technically speaking, they're choosing to wait in the security line on their own free time.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoThey aren’t choosing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bin0 7y agoBecause it's often about the "piece of paper" cost. What I mean by this is explicit costs and savings are preferred by management: they can point to their bosses, wave a sheet of paper, and say, "See, I saved twenty-six dollars here!" In reality, it may have cost fifty dollars, but that doesn't matter. It's the same reason why we have open offices, "hot desks", and improper tools: the incentive structure is wrong.
- mcny 7y agoAt this one company, the developers have pretty decent HP desktop machines on Windows with Intel eighth generation processors, 8 GB RAM, ... and a $19 500GB hard disk drive. Why? I am sure someone somewhere got a pat in the back for saving the company money while every single npm operation takes at least an order of magnitude of time more.
- krapp 7y ago>Why does Amazon not put more bathrooms in the warehouses, so it doesnt take 10 minutes just to walk there and back? That's like a distance of more then half a mile... Amazon reduces costs by only having the minimum number of bathrooms legally required regardless of the size of the warehouse.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 7y agoIt's so typical I'm almost laughing. Every workplace I've seen makes it just too hard to work at peak efficiency and invent all the wrong answers to the simplest of problems. Let's not buy pens, let's not buy a table, ... Is there a formula for non adversarial job structures ?
- pardavis 7y agoThe reddit AMA author seems to have worked at a ‘traditional’ FC where there are miles of bookshelf or pallet style storage. In this layout it is difficult to place optimized restrooms as one pick worker may cover half of a million sqft building in a shift. Newer, robotized FCs have much more tightly packed, human-inaccessible storage zones and have restrooms a reasonable distance from static pick workstations.
- metaphor 7y ago> Why does Amazon not put more bathrooms in the warehouses, so it doesnt take 10 minutes just to walk there and back? Not my industry, but I wonder if building code requirements for contracted facilities construction has anything to do with this. Would be interesting to hear perspective of civil engineers on this, in particular, those involved with standing up fulfillment centers. For example, a few observations from the 2017 Florida Building Code[1]: Minimum 1 lavatory per 100 and 1 drinking fountain per 1,000 in occupancies classified for storage (per Table 2902.1). Natural inquiry that arises in my mind is what the specified occupancy of the fulfillment center in question is. In occupancies other than malls, lavatories normally located not more than 1 story above/below the target space, path of travel not to exceed 500 feet (per 2902.3.2). However, there's a possible exception for factory and industrial occupancies which allow this requirement to be waived with approval. I wonder if Amazon has pursued this exemption when contracting the construction of their fulfillment centers. [1] https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/FBC2017/chapter-29-plumbing-systems https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/FBC2017/chapter-29-plumbin...
- massysett 7y agoI see “modern day slavery” and I stop reading. There are no whips. No rape. No families torn apart. No slave ships. Grow up people.
- ericzawo 7y agoJust as the means of production have evolved so too have the means of oppression and control. Not that I'm putting words in OP's mouth, but I'm sure they are not making a direct comparison of "this is just like that," more a "This is the modern version of that."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- erikpukinskis 7y agoIt’s not the modern version of slavery though. The modern version of slavery is indentured workers in Dubai, prisoners is the U.S., sex trafficking victims.
- BeetleB 7y agoGiven that the US still prosecutes people for slavery, it's easy to argue that modern day slavery exists, and this is not it.
- RandomBacon 7y agoThere's no "Company Store" where you get deeper in debt to your employeer. No indentured servitude. No one forcing you to work there (quit anytime for a better job). Etc. I don't like what I hear about working conditions and agree it should be improved, and I also agree this is not slavery.
- BuckRogers 7y agoI don’t disagree but only on the concept of chattel slavery, there are other forms of slavery. The idea that there are better jobs for every single employee there isn’t true. Amazon knows that, you know that, the parent knows that. And since people have to work to survive, it is a bit of a trap or a form of wage slavery. But then if you sit around on welfare, you’re demonized less than a worker that undoubtably contributes to society. If you ask for a pay raise and a union, the propaganda goes in full affect. Resistance to improving working conditions seems to be almost as strong as resistance to ending slavery in the south as well. Regardless of the use of the word slavery, I’m all for supporting the people who actually work on the bottom rung. Wage competition between union and salary jobs are the main reason things are as good as they even are in the US today.
- alexmlamb2 7y agoWhy do hourly employees care how long your lunch break is? At least in the US it's usually not counted as work time. Assuming people clock out for the lunch break, I don't see why they'd care if it's 30m or 2hr, since people could just make up the hours by working later. Although I suppose it depends on the type of work being done.
- krapp 7y ago>Why do hourly employees care how long your lunch break is Because you have a ten hour shift of difficult labor and twenty minutes of your thirty minute break is taken up with walking. And if you're in a FC with robots the time it takes for the Kivas to arrive at your station counts against you because you're expected to start working thirty minutes after your break starts, so on top of everything else you have to end your break early to make that time up. >I don't see why they'd care if it's 30m or 2hr, since people could just make up the hours by working later. I'm not aware of any business that allows its employees to take arbitrarily long breaks or to work arbitrary extra hours to "make it up." If such a company exists, Amazon is definitely not one of them.
- jarfil 7y agoSeems like they're being evaluated on their "items per time" rate, but that time also includes the lunch and bathroom breaks.
- krapp 7y agoMany employees are evaluated by "scan to scan," which is a literal count of the rate at which they physically scan ASINs and bin codes in sequence, so any activity other than that (including bathroom breaks) counts as a penalty against their rate. Of course they also have multiple quotas for items per hour, based on item size and expected daily volume, etc.
- cultus 7y agoI see you have never worked an hourly job.
- cultus 7y ago
- mighty_bander 7y agoAnyone who says unions are no longer necessary should go and work in an Amazon warehouse for a year. Until the workforce organizes, this is going to keep happening.
- spodek 7y agoExactly. Capitalists who don't want collective bargaining probably shouldn't motivate people to see their strength in numbers. I don't see any mystery in why employees would band together in situations like these. They'd be fools not to.
- krapp 7y ago>I don't see any mystery in why employees would band together in situations like these. They'd be fools not to. If they're Americans, it's because they've been raised to believe that unions are for lazy degenerate communists who don't want to earn an honest living.
- futureastronaut 7y agoThe northeast and upper midwest are pro-union and people aren't raised to think that way in those places. It's a big country.
- krapp 7y agoFair enough. There are parts of the country for which it is definitely true, though. I'm part of a number of Amazon employee groups on Facebook and the recent news of strikes by Amazon employees over Prime day was met with almost universal derision there - by FC employees, not even managers or tech workers.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- SantalBlush 7y ago
- Simon_says 7y agoWhat's the over-under on how much longer Amazon will employ people for warehouse jobs? 10 years?
- gpm 7y agoAt least. Robots will (and are) reducing the number of employees, but humans are incredibly flexible components to stick in your pipeline. Fully eliminating the use of them will take a long time unless there is a large external motivator (i.e. politics/unionization making it untenable to continue hiring humans for the tasks). (Personal opinion, I have no special experience in the field)
- SantalBlush 7y ago>humans are incredibly flexible components to stick in your pipeline You can also lay them off during a downturn and substantially cut costs. That is a big deal.
- cheeky78 7y agoAmazon Warehouse jobs have been well above minimum wage for quite some time. They are difficult, but warehouse jobs are not easy. I feel like there is a generational gap where people are expecting a comfortable office job. It's hardly slavery. It's a choice. You an always go somewhere else to work. Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on low-skilled labor jobs. I've known plenty of people that have worked in an Amazon Warehouse (in different states/locations) and they don't have to piss in bottles.
- tempguy9999 7y ago> warehouse jobs are not easy I did a few in my post-graduation days (as the joke goes, "do you want fries with that?"). There's nothing notably hard about them. > have been well above minimum wage for quite some time be lovely if you could give some figures, ta
- mattr47 7y agoAmazon's starting wage is $15 / hour.
- JetSpiegel 7y agoWasn't this brought by Bernie's campaigning, and proposing the Stop BEZOS Act?
- claudiawerner 7y ago>It's hardly slavery. It's a choice. This mode of thinking makes a dangerous assumption - that any issue can be resolved simply by an individual action. It assumes that because one person is making the complaint, then the issue which the complaint attempts to access must therefore be individual. It's an anti-political stance; politics isn't only about individuals, it's about creating a better society at large. Let's say that it really is such an easy choice as you're describing. It's implausible that it's the case for every worker who feels mistreated there. Therefore your solution means to them we say "tough shit". This is one consequence of the divorce of economy and politics. In no political situation is it viable in rhetoric or otherwise to say "tough shit" to a group of people. But it's fine to say that in economic circumstances. The examples go on - most of us are in favour of democracy in the political sphere, because we believe we should have a say over our lives, but in the anarchic economic sphere in which pressures arise which are extremely compelling (so compelling that there are even markets for selling one's own organs) we balk at the idea of democracy. This is why I'm in favour of economic democracy - to stop statements like "It's a choice. You can go somewhere else." from being the end of these discussions, and to take away their logical basis which falsely assumes democracy should be relegated to politics.
- bubblewrap 7y agoI suspect toilet rules are strict because people are prone to abuse the system. Would be nice to have a warehouse operator for an AMA some time.
- tofflos 7y agoUnionize.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jauke 7y agoOther Amazon employees have commented on the thread saying that their working conditions don't match the picture the OP described - so either practices differ between warehouses, or there's something else going on.
- krapp 7y agoPractices differ between warehouses and at different times, depending on volume.
- tiller23 7y agoEven if Amazon were to be brought in line, the situation won't get much better, it would simply move to smaller no-name contractor companies that would do the same, the only difference being that there will be too many and too small to ever get the focal point attention that Amazon is getting. The fundamental problem here is there are too many low skilled people for the number of low skill jobs available. Considering the birthrates in this country are already low, this looks like that that problem is solving itself and yet apparently we need to increase the immigration numbers for low skilled immigrants, to keep exacerbating the situation?
- PunchTornado 7y agoI was wondering why the design is so shit. Turns out that the link is from old.reddit. Can someone change the link?
- e40 7y agoAs AMAs go, this was pretty poor.
- Doubl 7y agoGreenspan, in his testimony, then suggests technological change and international competition as possible reasons for worker insecurity, before noting that "suppressed wage cost growth as a consequence of job insecurity can be carried only so far. At some point, the tradeoff of subdued wage growth for job security has to come to an end. In other words, the relatively modest wage gains we have experienced are a temporary rather than a lasting phenomenon because there is a limit to the value of additional job security people are willing to acquire in exchange for lesser increases in living standards. https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul/21/facebook-posts/social-media-meme-says-alan-greenspan-said-insecur/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jul...
- pooya13 7y agoIf automation improves productivity by two times, it means that people have to work half as much. Simple math. Why is this not happening with the glorious free market capitalism? I once brought up the idea of automation tax and UBI here and was downvoted to oblivion by the HN conservatives. But that’s obviously the only way to avoid modern day slavery or else we end up in a local equilibrium where the owners of capital automate away every thing that gives the masses their edge and we put the final nail in the coffin of democracy. (Not that we are too far from that with the media, legislation, election laws and enforcement being massively biased towards capital controlled by a small minority)
- majewsky 7y agoEvery Amazon executive, including Bezos, should be required to work as a picker one week per year.
- mellosouls 7y agoAlternative report: https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-journalism/ https://quillette.com/2019/07/19/the-problem-with-tourist-jo... Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20486348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20486348