8 ms·

To the elected officials advocating for closure of Amazon warehouses: would it be better to have 300M people visit Walmart or their local grocery store where th

by ttul 7y ago

To the elected officials advocating for closure of Amazon warehouses: would it be better to have 300M people visit Walmart or their local grocery store where they will interface with perhaps 50 others? Or to have 100,000 people visit their local Amazon warehouse where there are masks, temperature checks, intensive cleaning, etc? Even the most basic math on this indicates the Amazon option is far better for eradication of the pandemic than the Walmart option.

massysett 7y ago
They’d rather have neither, at least insofar as Amazon is shipping “non-essential” goods.
- choward 7y ago
  They stopped accepting non-essential goods from third parties. Now they have the complete monopoly there.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    This is not true. They shut down inbound shipments of non-essentials for a few weeks, but they are in the process of re-opening up non-essential inbound shipments. We are now able to ship in all of our (non-essential) products. And we're hearing the same from most other sellers we know.
- surge 7y ago
  We need non-essential trade, since if you shutdown all non-essential trade suddenly all non-essential people are excluded from the economy, and people have to eat and pay bills. If we're still selling goods online, non-essential manufacturers/workers at least have some economic movement.
  - massysett 7y ago
    Unfortunately this is not applied evenly. Amazon is selling all its non-essential stuff, while other vendors can’t sell their non-essential wares even online. I can buy kid workbooks and mechanical keyboards on Amazon, but School Zone and WASD Keyboards are closed.
    - iso947 7y ago
      Have they been told they have to close? In the UK half the population is under the errant belief that unless you are a nurse you shouldn’t be working.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - tachyonbeam 7y ago
      I've actually been buying food through Amazon (canned goods, protein bars, nuts, etc). Normally, I order online from a local grocery store, but the local grocery store, every time I go to the website, tells me that there are no available delivery slots in the next two weeks.
      - LastZactionHero 7y ago
        You gotta get on at midnight, order two weeks out, and get a weekly pipeline going. I used this method to get a bag of flour the other day, it was amazing.
  - tachyonbeam 7y ago
    There's also a debate to be had as to what's essential or not, which will depend on your perspective as well as the time scale. Is Best Buy essential? No? What if my laptop breaks and I relied on it to work remotely? Are electricians or climate control technicians essential? What if the air conditioning breaks in the middle of a texas summer? How can I self-isolate when it's even hotter inside than outside? What about elderly people who could easily have a heat stroke? Are psychologists essential workers? They might be even more essential now that so many people are facing complete isolation and job loss.
    - surge 7y ago
      I think longer this goes on, the more essential basic roles become needed. Dentists can close offices for a few weeks or a month, but after several months cavities go untreated, cavities are created because teeth aren't cleaned/maintained, preventable issues go unaddressed etc. For a week or two sure essential is very narrow, but after several weeks that can expand. I will say though, my state at least deemed most of the roles you mentioned essential. I can still get my computer repaired, get construction/maintenance done, and at least consult with my medical professionals over the phone/video chat for now in terms of basic consultation. I know betterhelp.com is a service (there are others) my spouse has used.
mrlala 7y ago
Well, at least by me you can order groceries from walmart to have them delivered/picked up. They have an excellent website for it, so it's very easy. Everyone who can should be ordering groceries.. I have been ordering groceries from walmart for the last month and it's great that I don't have to go in there. One time I had to do a pickup at the store (alcohol purchase..), it was very simple as well. But while I was there, I was appalled to see a walmart sized parking lot almost full of people going into the store...
- turtlebits 7y ago
  IME, grocery store pickup is essentially full (including Amazon fresh pickup). You only get to choose from pickup time slots several days in the future, and most the times I have checked, there was nothing available.
  - mrb 7y ago
    I wrote a bot to snatch an Amazon Fresh delivery slot for my groceries. (One bot publicly available just notifies you when a slot is available, but mine goes the whole way including placing the order and paying for it.) What I've noticed is that delivery slots—at least for the San Diego area—are released once a day around 10pm-midnight, and sell out in about 10-20 minutes. So if you are obsessively checking manually every 10min around this time of the day, you are still relatively likely to find one.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  > Well, at least by me you can order groceries from walmart to have them delivered/picked up. Pickup/delivery options are a total failure across the board at all grocery stores right now. They're all generally a week out, or you just can't get any delivery slot at all. IMHO the grocery stores should be prioritizing staff to filling delivery orders, then pickup. If they have any staff left over after that they can operate cash registers. Right now there's a perverse incentive for everyone to pack into grocery stores because there's no other option for actually getting food in a reasonable timeframe.
  - 7y ago
stronglikedan 7y ago
They know, but public safety is not the real reason they're advocating for the closures, unfortunately, so they're playing dumb.
- jdc 7y ago
  Why are they advocating for said closures?
  - outside1234 7y ago
    Bezos owns the Washington Post.
    - ajross 7y ago
      That's not it, actually. This particular pressure is coming from the left, via unions representing Amazon workers. A few NY State representatives have signed on to the effort, as I understand it. And the "call for closure" bit is a bit spun; it's mostly gamesmanship. The unions don't actually want their workplace closed, they're trying to point out the risk the workers are taking being there and advocating, ultimately, for things like hazard pay and PPE.
mrfusion 7y ago
So many of these closures are not evidence based. I don’t know what they’re thinking. My area is limiting store hours. Umm that puts more people in the store at once, sillies.
- smokey_the_bear 7y ago
  It’s so the employees can restock when people aren’t shopping.

by ttul 7y ago

massysett 7y ago

They’d rather have neither, at least insofar as Amazon is shipping “non-essential” goods.

choward 7y ago
They stopped accepting non-essential goods from third parties. Now they have the complete monopoly there.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  This is not true. They shut down inbound shipments of non-essentials for a few weeks, but they are in the process of re-opening up non-essential inbound shipments. We are now able to ship in all of our (non-essential) products. And we're hearing the same from most other sellers we know.
surge 7y ago
We need non-essential trade, since if you shutdown all non-essential trade suddenly all non-essential people are excluded from the economy, and people have to eat and pay bills. If we're still selling goods online, non-essential manufacturers/workers at least have some economic movement.
- massysett 7y ago
  Unfortunately this is not applied evenly. Amazon is selling all its non-essential stuff, while other vendors can’t sell their non-essential wares even online. I can buy kid workbooks and mechanical keyboards on Amazon, but School Zone and WASD Keyboards are closed.
  - iso947 7y ago
    Have they been told they have to close? In the UK half the population is under the errant belief that unless you are a nurse you shouldn’t be working.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - tachyonbeam 7y ago
    I've actually been buying food through Amazon (canned goods, protein bars, nuts, etc). Normally, I order online from a local grocery store, but the local grocery store, every time I go to the website, tells me that there are no available delivery slots in the next two weeks.
    - LastZactionHero 7y ago
      You gotta get on at midnight, order two weeks out, and get a weekly pipeline going. I used this method to get a bag of flour the other day, it was amazing.
- tachyonbeam 7y ago
  There's also a debate to be had as to what's essential or not, which will depend on your perspective as well as the time scale. Is Best Buy essential? No? What if my laptop breaks and I relied on it to work remotely? Are electricians or climate control technicians essential? What if the air conditioning breaks in the middle of a texas summer? How can I self-isolate when it's even hotter inside than outside? What about elderly people who could easily have a heat stroke? Are psychologists essential workers? They might be even more essential now that so many people are facing complete isolation and job loss.
  - surge 7y ago
    I think longer this goes on, the more essential basic roles become needed. Dentists can close offices for a few weeks or a month, but after several months cavities go untreated, cavities are created because teeth aren't cleaned/maintained, preventable issues go unaddressed etc. For a week or two sure essential is very narrow, but after several weeks that can expand. I will say though, my state at least deemed most of the roles you mentioned essential. I can still get my computer repaired, get construction/maintenance done, and at least consult with my medical professionals over the phone/video chat for now in terms of basic consultation. I know betterhelp.com is a service (there are others) my spouse has used.

mrlala 7y ago

Well, at least by me you can order groceries from walmart to have them delivered/picked up. They have an excellent website for it, so it's very easy. Everyone who can should be ordering groceries.. I have been ordering groceries from walmart for the last month and it's great that I don't have to go in there. One time I had to do a pickup at the store (alcohol purchase..), it was very simple as well. But while I was there, I was appalled to see a walmart sized parking lot almost full of people going into the store...

turtlebits 7y ago
IME, grocery store pickup is essentially full (including Amazon fresh pickup). You only get to choose from pickup time slots several days in the future, and most the times I have checked, there was nothing available.
- mrb 7y ago
  I wrote a bot to snatch an Amazon Fresh delivery slot for my groceries. (One bot publicly available just notifies you when a slot is available, but mine goes the whole way including placing the order and paying for it.) What I've noticed is that delivery slots—at least for the San Diego area—are released once a day around 10pm-midnight, and sell out in about 10-20 minutes. So if you are obsessively checking manually every 10min around this time of the day, you are still relatively likely to find one.
mullingitover 7y ago
> Well, at least by me you can order groceries from walmart to have them delivered/picked up. Pickup/delivery options are a total failure across the board at all grocery stores right now. They're all generally a week out, or you just can't get any delivery slot at all. IMHO the grocery stores should be prioritizing staff to filling delivery orders, then pickup. If they have any staff left over after that they can operate cash registers. Right now there's a perverse incentive for everyone to pack into grocery stores because there's no other option for actually getting food in a reasonable timeframe.
- 7y ago

stronglikedan 7y ago

They know, but public safety is not the real reason they're advocating for the closures, unfortunately, so they're playing dumb.

jdc 7y ago
Why are they advocating for said closures?
- outside1234 7y ago
  Bezos owns the Washington Post.
  - ajross 7y ago
    That's not it, actually. This particular pressure is coming from the left, via unions representing Amazon workers. A few NY State representatives have signed on to the effort, as I understand it. And the "call for closure" bit is a bit spun; it's mostly gamesmanship. The unions don't actually want their workplace closed, they're trying to point out the risk the workers are taking being there and advocating, ultimately, for things like hazard pay and PPE.

mrfusion 7y ago

So many of these closures are not evidence based. I don’t know what they’re thinking. My area is limiting store hours. Umm that puts more people in the store at once, sillies.

smokey_the_bear 7y ago
It’s so the employees can restock when people aren’t shopping.