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> "Delivery on a Sunday would be very compelling for consumers. There are certainly people who decide not to make an order on a Friday because it won't get ther

> "Delivery on a Sunday would be very compelling for consumers. There are certainly people who decide not to make an order on a Friday because it won't get there until Monday," I am definitely one of those people. It seems like I always end up remembering to order something late Thursday night or Friday. When using my Prime membership's 2 day shipping on a friday, the package does not arrive until Tuesday. Is this ever going to change? What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? Surely there are people out there who would be willing to work weekends (if the pay was right)? How much more would it cost them?

megablast 13y ago
> What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? Surely there are people out there who would be willing to work weekends (if the pay was right)? How much more would it cost them? This disturbs me, just like forcing shops to open on the weekend. People need a break, and should have a break, just because you can't wait an extra day? Sure, they have a choice to work, just as shop workers have a choice to work, they can always get a job somewhere else.
- GauntletWizard 13y ago
  People need a break. People should get a break. They should also hire extra weekend help. Spreading the load out by hiring part-time but weekend-bonused workers would benefit society as a whole. It's not just going to be overtime, it's going to be more interesting and flexible work hours - And society will benefit.
  - kubiiii 13y ago
    Spreading the load when generalized also spreads the shops income, and will make paying sunday bonuses unsustainable for companies. Sunday work appears great only if a portion of competitors open, it doesnt create income out of nowhere but draws it from closed competitors.
    - eru 13y ago
      > Sunday work appears great only if a portion of competitors open, it doesnt create income out of nowhere but draws it from closed competitors. So by the same argument--but in reverse, only opening shops one day a week or even month would not destroy wealth generation, but would just reshuffle income?
- clarkm 13y ago
  What? No one said anything about taking away breaks. People work Saturday and Sunday and take their breaks during the week.
  - Kell 13y ago
    The problem I see is that your kids are in school the week... And you should have at least one day with your kids (society benefits a lot of this, and it makes day care cheaper) . Maybe have either Saturday or Sunday of mandated free time, and then Amazon could hire people either Sunday or Saturday... Maybe that's why I live in France :-).
    - davidw 13y ago
      Perhaps people with kids are best off if they look for jobs where they can spend the weekend with their kids. But not everyone has kids - some people are busy during the week with, say, university, and might welcome the chance to make a bit of money on the weekend. Fortunately, here in Italy, Mario Monti got rid of some of the rules about working on Sunday.
    - jacalata 13y ago
      But it took France until 2008 to stop sending kids to school on Saturday mornings while the parents were home, so obviously you coped without a complete overlap of leisure time among the family for a while :) It is impossible to mandate that nobody work on any of the 7 days, because hospitals. So we already admit that some people will be working when most people are not - the question is whether we tell them to suck it up, society is going to ignore them forever, or whether we can re-arrange society so that the family of the ER doctor can also work Sunday and take Wednesday off to be together.
  - mangotree 13y ago
    I think there are benefits to us all having breaks at the same time, so we can see friend and family. I think we can survive without everything being available every day of the week.
    - 13y ago
- eru 13y ago
  You might want to move to France or Germany.
- biot 13y ago
  It disturbs me that you seem to think that Saturday and Sunday are the only two days a week that someone can not work.
jakobe 13y ago
If we allow shipping companies to work on sundays, we should also allow some warehouse employees to work on sundays. Now all these companies will need electricians and mechanics that work on the weekend to fix stuff that breaks on weekends, because else they would have to wait until monday to continue working. These technicians will need to get their spare parts somewhere, so their distributors need to work on the weekend too. With so many people working on the weekend, it'll be necessary for typical white collar workers to work on the weekend, because a business owner doesn't want to wait until Monday for his accountant to do the paperwork for his new weekend employees. At some point the IT system of a shipping company, or a warehouse, or an accountant will fail on a sunday, and then some HN reader will have to go to work on sunday and miss the delivery of some parcel they ordered and they will have to wait until monday anyway.
- unsignedint 13y ago
  Actually I thought of the same thing when I read the article. These expectations are what making Japanese working environments so insane like unpaid hours and people fatiguing to death -- though I won't say such expectations would create same effect as mindset and legal ramifications are different, but these changes can create shift in peoples' expectations and someone do have to pay for it.
- rb2k_ 13y ago
  That chain of events is a bit questionable since there are already enough people working on Sundays. Hospitals, Restaurants, Police, ...
  - jakobe 13y ago
    Yes, and all these things already require a lot of people to work on the weekend. Blood transfusions are delivered on weekends just fine. But that's no reason to allow consumer electronics to be delivered on Sunday...
    - eli 13y ago
      "People willing to pay for it" sounds like a reason
michaelt 13y ago
It is possible - indeed there are companies that will do it. Sunday delivery driver pay is about 25% higher. The thing is, the changes to the company are bigger than you might imagine, and that can make them expensive in other ways too. One factor is what type of deliveries your company does. Some delivery companies want to deliver to offices; most offices have receptionists and are open 9-5 so deliveries are quick and you don't have to make multiple delivery attempts, the parking and roads are usually good, and offices tend to be in densely populated areas so you don't have to drive too long. Offices aren't open over the weekend. Another factor is the shifts your staff are going to work. You have to give people several days a week if you want to keep them skilled and stop them needing a second job. You need managers as well as drivers. So you don't just have to hire one day's more warm bodies, you need to reorganise all your existing employees' shifts too. If your company has always done Sunday deliveries, and your drivers knew they'd be working Sundays when they signed up, that's all well and good. But if you have a bunch of people who signed up with a company that always gave them Sunday off, and you have to change that, that's going to cost you a lot of staff goodwill, a.k.a. money.
Avshalom 13y ago
>What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? Surely there are people out there who would be willing to work weekends (if the pay was right)? How much more would it cost them? Supposedly preachers lobbied the government to shut down the USPS on Sunday because people were hanging out at the post office instead of going to church. http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/19/sunday-mail-service-in-a-christian-nation-book-notes-divided-by-god.htm http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/19/sunday-mail-service-in...
logn 13y ago
> What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? You can thank the Jews, the Christians, unions, Henry Ford, and the Great Depression.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Yeah, I think it's important we have time off (possibly more than we do), but I think it's much less important that all line up...
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    Agreed. Also there are benefits to spreading out the acceptable work week like reducing traffic congestion. Obviously this sort of spread wouldn't work in every industry, but the idea that any "professional" should work from approximately 9-5 on M-F causes obvious lifestyle load balancing issues we could avoid by spreading it out much more were possible.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    Its often important that organizations that work together have operational time off that aligns well most of the time, because misalignments create latency in decision loops and, therefore, inefficient use of resources. When you start tracing the dependencies between organizations throughout the economy, you start seeing why having a widely shared set of shared working days and working hours actually makes quite a bit of sense from that perspective.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      That is unquestionably a concern. I think you overrate it, though. Having more diversity in working hours would often lower latency, as there's someone available during off-hours rather than having huge gaps. We're also already dealing with a certain amount of distribution with timezones in (sorry for the cliche) "our increasingly globalized world" - I don't see that spreading that around more is going to cause more problems than it solves. As pointed out elsewhere, spreading out peak usage of things like roads and electricity provides significant benefit.

megablast 13y ago

> What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? Surely there are people out there who would be willing to work weekends (if the pay was right)? How much more would it cost them? This disturbs me, just like forcing shops to open on the weekend. People need a break, and should have a break, just because you can't wait an extra day? Sure, they have a choice to work, just as shop workers have a choice to work, they can always get a job somewhere else.

GauntletWizard 13y ago
People need a break. People should get a break. They should also hire extra weekend help. Spreading the load out by hiring part-time but weekend-bonused workers would benefit society as a whole. It's not just going to be overtime, it's going to be more interesting and flexible work hours - And society will benefit.
- kubiiii 13y ago
  Spreading the load when generalized also spreads the shops income, and will make paying sunday bonuses unsustainable for companies. Sunday work appears great only if a portion of competitors open, it doesnt create income out of nowhere but draws it from closed competitors.
  - eru 13y ago
    > Sunday work appears great only if a portion of competitors open, it doesnt create income out of nowhere but draws it from closed competitors. So by the same argument--but in reverse, only opening shops one day a week or even month would not destroy wealth generation, but would just reshuffle income?
clarkm 13y ago
What? No one said anything about taking away breaks. People work Saturday and Sunday and take their breaks during the week.
- Kell 13y ago
  The problem I see is that your kids are in school the week... And you should have at least one day with your kids (society benefits a lot of this, and it makes day care cheaper) . Maybe have either Saturday or Sunday of mandated free time, and then Amazon could hire people either Sunday or Saturday... Maybe that's why I live in France :-).
  - davidw 13y ago
    Perhaps people with kids are best off if they look for jobs where they can spend the weekend with their kids. But not everyone has kids - some people are busy during the week with, say, university, and might welcome the chance to make a bit of money on the weekend. Fortunately, here in Italy, Mario Monti got rid of some of the rules about working on Sunday.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    But it took France until 2008 to stop sending kids to school on Saturday mornings while the parents were home, so obviously you coped without a complete overlap of leisure time among the family for a while :) It is impossible to mandate that nobody work on any of the 7 days, because hospitals. So we already admit that some people will be working when most people are not - the question is whether we tell them to suck it up, society is going to ignore them forever, or whether we can re-arrange society so that the family of the ER doctor can also work Sunday and take Wednesday off to be together.
- mangotree 13y ago
  I think there are benefits to us all having breaks at the same time, so we can see friend and family. I think we can survive without everything being available every day of the week.
  - 13y ago
eru 13y ago
You might want to move to France or Germany.
biot 13y ago
It disturbs me that you seem to think that Saturday and Sunday are the only two days a week that someone can not work.

jakobe 13y ago

If we allow shipping companies to work on sundays, we should also allow some warehouse employees to work on sundays. Now all these companies will need electricians and mechanics that work on the weekend to fix stuff that breaks on weekends, because else they would have to wait until monday to continue working. These technicians will need to get their spare parts somewhere, so their distributors need to work on the weekend too. With so many people working on the weekend, it'll be necessary for typical white collar workers to work on the weekend, because a business owner doesn't want to wait until Monday for his accountant to do the paperwork for his new weekend employees. At some point the IT system of a shipping company, or a warehouse, or an accountant will fail on a sunday, and then some HN reader will have to go to work on sunday and miss the delivery of some parcel they ordered and they will have to wait until monday anyway.

unsignedint 13y ago
Actually I thought of the same thing when I read the article. These expectations are what making Japanese working environments so insane like unpaid hours and people fatiguing to death -- though I won't say such expectations would create same effect as mindset and legal ramifications are different, but these changes can create shift in peoples' expectations and someone do have to pay for it.
rb2k_ 13y ago
That chain of events is a bit questionable since there are already enough people working on Sundays. Hospitals, Restaurants, Police, ...
- jakobe 13y ago
  Yes, and all these things already require a lot of people to work on the weekend. Blood transfusions are delivered on weekends just fine. But that's no reason to allow consumer electronics to be delivered on Sunday...
  - eli 13y ago
    "People willing to pay for it" sounds like a reason

michaelt 13y ago

It is possible - indeed there are companies that will do it. Sunday delivery driver pay is about 25% higher. The thing is, the changes to the company are bigger than you might imagine, and that can make them expensive in other ways too. One factor is what type of deliveries your company does. Some delivery companies want to deliver to offices; most offices have receptionists and are open 9-5 so deliveries are quick and you don't have to make multiple delivery attempts, the parking and roads are usually good, and offices tend to be in densely populated areas so you don't have to drive too long. Offices aren't open over the weekend. Another factor is the shifts your staff are going to work. You have to give people several days a week if you want to keep them skilled and stop them needing a second job. You need managers as well as drivers. So you don't just have to hire one day's more warm bodies, you need to reorganise all your existing employees' shifts too. If your company has always done Sunday deliveries, and your drivers knew they'd be working Sundays when they signed up, that's all well and good. But if you have a bunch of people who signed up with a company that always gave them Sunday off, and you have to change that, that's going to cost you a lot of staff goodwill, a.k.a. money.

Avshalom 13y ago

>What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? Surely there are people out there who would be willing to work weekends (if the pay was right)? How much more would it cost them? Supposedly preachers lobbied the government to shut down the USPS on Sunday because people were hanging out at the post office instead of going to church. http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/19/sunday-mail-service-in-a-christian-nation-book-notes-divided-by-god.htm http://atheism.about.com/b/2006/02/19/sunday-mail-service-in...

logn 13y ago

> What exactly is the reason these shipping companies seem to go into a kind of hibernation over the weekend? You can thank the Jews, the Christians, unions, Henry Ford, and the Great Depression.

dllthomas 13y ago
Yeah, I think it's important we have time off (possibly more than we do), but I think it's much less important that all line up...
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Agreed. Also there are benefits to spreading out the acceptable work week like reducing traffic congestion. Obviously this sort of spread wouldn't work in every industry, but the idea that any "professional" should work from approximately 9-5 on M-F causes obvious lifestyle load balancing issues we could avoid by spreading it out much more were possible.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Its often important that organizations that work together have operational time off that aligns well most of the time, because misalignments create latency in decision loops and, therefore, inefficient use of resources. When you start tracing the dependencies between organizations throughout the economy, you start seeing why having a widely shared set of shared working days and working hours actually makes quite a bit of sense from that perspective.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    That is unquestionably a concern. I think you overrate it, though. Having more diversity in working hours would often lower latency, as there's someone available during off-hours rather than having huge gaps. We're also already dealing with a certain amount of distribution with timezones in (sorry for the cliche) "our increasingly globalized world" - I don't see that spreading that around more is going to cause more problems than it solves. As pointed out elsewhere, spreading out peak usage of things like roads and electricity provides significant benefit.