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Amazon offers 'wellness chamber' for stressed staff
- erhk 5y agoGiven the size of it I must assume that all warehouse workers are required to be no taller than 5'8"
- artiscode 5y agoEvery hipster, open-space, max-collaboration co-working space I've been to, has had such a box/room. What am I missing that makes Amazon's case so special?
- josefx 5y agoOutside of the concept fitting better into an ironic hell than a real life workplace? Last I heard Amazon warehouse workers barely had enough time to take a piss, how are they supposed to even use this without getting fired the next day?
- papaf 5y agoWhat am I missing that makes Amazon's case so special? The Amazon version has the nickname 'despair closet' [1]. [1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-health/555953-social-media-blasts-amazons-mental-health-effort-as https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/mental-healt...
- postpawl 5y agoBecause it’s a coffin sized isolation box placed in the middle of a warehouse as a PR stunt for a company known for high pressure work for their low wage employees.
- 14 5y agoWill you be fired if you go to the booth too often? I mean if you are stressed about work maybe you want to unionize or have a complaint about work and so maybe should be fired. Not for using the booth of course but for poor performance in your job suddenly.
- rapnie 5y agoThe box is soundproof, and you are allowed to discuss unions with yourself while in it. There's no echo listening in either, in order to maximize wellness effects.
- pcurve 5y agoCorporate America is spending big bucks on various mental (and physical ) wellness programs. I wonder know if it is a fad or if companies are seeing results. Or they are just trying to keep up with the Jones.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoI suspect the intent of wellness programs is to reduce healthcare expenses.
- jka 5y agoEither that, or the research has been done -- privately by industry -- determining the mental tolls that modern workplaces take on people, and companies are planning to have moats ready to push back on and mitigate future litigation. Also cost saving, to your point, but from a slightly different angle. (I'm fully supportive of people seeking wellness programs and therapy, but I squint and become cynical when employers offer it themselves, because the long-term alignment of interests isn't always clear)
- hliyan 5y agoSomeone (I believe it was a comment in HN) recently said that the way we have incentivized corporations and have structured the regulations around them, corporations have no choice but to behave as giant sociopaths.
- dogma1138 5y agoWhile I don’t know if regulations are to blame or what their contribution this is quite true. Corporate policies are all designed around one thing - reducing litigation risk, wellness, health and safety, “ethics”, inclusivity etc. training/policies are all designed to cover their asses rather than actually improve outcomes. Now whether this is purely an outcome of the regulatory landscape and how the legal system works or the outcome of simply natural selection for large entities regardless of the environment I don’t know. Anyone that ever was in a position of a people manager in any corporate entity even a relatively small one knows exactly just how poorly these policies are structured from an individual perspective. I manage people right now and if I see someone struggling whether it’s on a personal level or professional one my options are severely limited. If I have a direct report that is clearly struggling with some personal issues taking them out for a coffee and asking them about what is going on would pretty much be against company policies and could put my position and the company at risk. The best I could do is essentially send out a refresher on some mental health help line that the company uses anything else opens me to a liability.
- hliyan 5y agoInteresting. Last year I moved from a large corporation with well defined policies to a startup. The options you mentioned are fortunately very much on the table for me. If someone's struggling with something at home for example, I could literally send them some sort of help, within a reasonable budget of course. It's a win-win: they're happy, I'm happy and more often than not, it translates to higher motivation once the crisis is over. I'd hate to see those options be policified away one day.
- dogma1138 5y agoIt’s a win win when things don’t go wrong, the litigation environment means that anyone taking offense or claim that they have been discriminated poses a pretty big risk to a big enough company. It also assumes that managers are always competent enough and have sufficiently good soft skills to handle these sort of situations since involving HR is always “against the employee” as HR is there to protect the company. Unions might solve this issue but sadly unions aren’t immune to the same corruption that plagues any sufficiently large and political organization so the union becomes self serving rather than serving the employees. Some countries have better solutions like having an employee board in every company but in large corps these tend to be plagued by corruption as well.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoThe Buddha Box? I do like Amazon, but they seem very afraid of unionization, and seem to be going overboard on what a spectacular caring employer they are, along with caring about the enviornment too. I noticed millions are going to be spent on electric delivery trucks. Why do I fear our taxes will be going to their marketing hootenanny in forms of credits?
- courtf 5y agoNo shitting in the sanity cube!
- swader999 5y agoI want one for my home.
- the-dude 5y agoThat would be a man cave : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_cave
- corobo 5y agoPlease have your mental breakdowns away from the other drones
- rvense 5y agoI'm guessing most of their employees already have a wellness chamber that they refer to as 'home'. Amazon could make it so the pay and working hours they offer their employees allowed them to spend more undisturbed time there. I suppose wellness chambers are cheaper, though.
- maccard 5y agoNot everyone's home is a center of calm and might even be the source of stress. An employee might be going through a tough relationship patch, a difficult time with their kids, have a family member staying for a long period of time. Moves like this might genuinely help some employees
- dessant 5y agoOr they could just spend some time literally anywhere else after work, like visit a park. Though that may be difficult after a 12 hour shift. A company that indirectly punishes people for bathroom breaks can only end up abusing such initiative. If this booth is ever widely rolled out, it will eventually be used to weed out "low performers".
- lwhi 5y agoIf you were going through a tough relationship patch, would you choose to sit in a phone booth to spend 15 mins watching wellness videos?
- maccard 5y agoIf the alternative was going home to a home I didn't want to be in, maybe?
- roenxi 5y agoAlthough it looks pretty stupid, I do have to wonder at the level of condemnation it seems to be getting. I'm going to wait until I see a reason it is a bad idea before deciding what I think. "It is a small box" doesn't strike me as a reason. It might work well.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoI guess it's the culmination of all bad things we learned about the condition of Amazon warehouse workers over the past decade or so.
- factsaresacred 5y agoThe idea of having a mental breakdown and being advised to spend 3 minutes in a phone booth in the middle of a warehouse scrolling through advice on how not to completely lose it so that you can continue to functionally carry out your peonage is hilariously horrifying. It's akin to Foxconn's suicide nets.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- roenxi 5y agoWhere does it say that is how they are being used? I doubt that is what they are for.
- onion2k 5y agoThe fact its necessary at all is a reason to condemn it. Good workplaces don't need this sort of thing.
- maccard 5y agoAll people can have bad days/weeks/months even in the best of workplaces.
- AvocadoCake 5y ago
- tibbydudeza 5y agoComplimentary pee bottle available.
- joefife 5y agoTokens are far better than fixing the underlying cause eh
- ostenning 5y agoPerhaps this is reflective of a broken society, one that values abstract numbers more than people and life
- rapnie 5y agoA society of hypercapitalism, that serves some, while leaving out most others.
- scollet 5y agoI mean, you can have valuable metrics. However reaching a local minima of optimal KPI is very easy when all is said and done. The hard part is factoring out/in the core philosophy of those metrics. Like designing a target and then designing all your arrows to meet it.
- ysleepy 5y agoTHX 1138 becomes reality. Don't forget, everyone: "Work hard, increase production, avoid accidents, and be happy."
- Jiocus 5y ago- I slipped on the thermal transfer this morning.. It's never happened before. I wasn't concentrating enough. [1]: THX 1183, https://youtu.be/U0YkPnwoYyE https://youtu.be/U0YkPnwoYyE
- mordae 5y agoNo Futurama reference?
- enriquto 5y agowhy did they design it to look as a suicide booth? it looks like they are mocking the workers. If they were serious about that it would have comfy sofas and billiard tables or something.
- lwhi 5y agoCan you imagine how this would work in reality. Worker 1: "Where's Jerry?" Worker 2: "Oh, he's in the booth again .." Worker 1: "What a loser .."
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI guess the ugly look is part of it... "we set up wellness booths but they don't get used very often, it means our employees are happy!". God damn, it must be like the Stanford prison there, with the white collar workers not treating the blue collar ones as humans any more. But maybe I'm extrapolating from a conjecture.
- lwhi 5y agoThis is so grim. A repurposed phone booth. Reprogramming via 'mental health relaxation videos.
- ulfw 5y agoCan that company become any more inhumane? This must be some April Fools joke.
- aylmao 5y agoSome middle-manager was tasked to do "something" about employee wellness, and discovered soon enough theres little they can do without will from very high up in the chain of command.
- drewcoo 5y agoI used to do something similar in Dwarf Fortress. Are there grates that drop in to a pit below if things get out of hand?
- courtf 5y agoBe sure to clock out before you attempt suicide.
- seba_dos1 5y agoHello, and, again, welcome to the Amazon Warehouse Relaxation Vault. This is art. You will hear a buzzer. When you hear the buzzer, stare at the art. BUZZ