The one I worked at loaded between 1000 and 1,400 items in a 4 hour shift. I quit after 6 months to go back to driving a big rig.
Posted on 11/26/2017 11:23:05 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Amazon's staff are falling asleep on their feet and being taken away in ambulances as they struggle to meet warehouse targets, an investigation has claimed.
Cameras monitor every move as employees try to process up to 300 items an hour, it has been alleged. Screens remind them if they are falling short.
Exhausted staff are said to cover clocks so they are not reminded how long there is to go on their shifts, and have to walk up to a third of a mile to use the toilet.
The claims in a newspaper were made about the online retailer’s newest warehouse – which the company refers to as a ‘fulfilment centre’ – in Tilbury, Essex.
The packing plant is the biggest in Europe, the size of 11 football pitches, and is due to ship 1.2million items this year.
But the investigation, by an undercover reporter for the Sunday Mirror who spent five weeks there, suggested workers suffer mentally and physically as they try to meet demand.
He said that some of his colleagues were so tired from working 55-hour weeks that they would ‘sleep on their feet’.
‘Those who could not keep up with the punishing targets faced the sack – and some who buckled under the strain had to be attended by ambulance crews,’ he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
As someone who worked a 54 hour week for most of my working life I thought this was satire.
I imagine they appreciated the overtime. Amazon expects their warehouse people to work hard. No one forces them to remain employed their, either. There is always a line of people eager to work for the company.
Or whatever the British word for Snowflakes is.
So they will be happy when they can all be replaced by robots....
The one I worked at loaded between 1000 and 1,400 items in a 4 hour shift. I quit after 6 months to go back to driving a big rig.
Not quite so
Each package has to be picked up and scanned with a scanner attached to the forearm with the probe on the index finger.
Package then has to be stacked in the delivery truck in the correct place according to the bar code number;
or stacked on the correct pallet....between 12 to 15 pallets along the length of the conveyor.
Fed-Ex and UPS always hiring “package handlers” ...just think of it as getting paid for free 4 hour intensive exercise...good luck if you last a week.
These people aren’t snowflakes. Amazon is known for disturbingly cutting corners. Their warehouse s sometimes didn’t even have proper AC, and every step is tracked by floor workers to excess, where even using the bathroom is not looked kindly upon because it could throw warehouse targets. Amazon employs humans because they can’t replace them with machines, but they push people to almost machine-like levels.
I managed restaurants my entire life and it was the NORM to work 60-70 hours a week! What a bunch of PANSIES!!!!! Being on salary my pay was far below min. wage these damned workers today are just ridiculous and they DEMAND 15.00 an hour, I would have thought I died and went to heaven for 15.00 an hour!!!
Very simple. If they don’t like their current jobs, they should quit and find new jobs. I’m sure there is a line of prospective job candidates standing by to take their job.
Little Suzy Sunshine.
Sweet cheeks.
Princess.
Little girl.
All could be tossed around.
IOW....they want to unionize.
Amazon recently delivered two packages to my doorstep in a timely manner, tucking them against my front door under the overhang, which is good. A third package, delivered at a different date, was dropped in the middle of my driveway in front of my doorway but not under the overhang, like a newspaper would be tossed on the driveway, and the one corner flap was slightly pulled up and damaged, not so good. Some delivery driver hired quick for the holidays, no doubt.
A neighbor’s son worked at a local Amazon warehouse several years ago in the summer with no air conditioning. He said it was unbearably hot. There were newspaper articles about it & I think they were forced to put in AC.
I don’t have Amazon prime, so I use the 5 to 8 day free shipping when I make an occassional order. My order a few weeks ago arrived into town by UPS in a couple of days. To insure the order made it to my house in over 5 days, they handed it off to the post office to slow delivery. LOL..
I always have my packages sent to a collection point. That way I don't have to worry about being there to receive them or damage. I pick them up at my convenience.
Yes but, this is manual labor they are performing. Non-stop except for a break or two. I’ve worked for a shipping company and when walking through the warehouse in summer time there is no AC, the fans barely do anything and it is just awful stifling until I get to air conditioned office. These are young men, and a handful of women, lifting and stacking small and heavy packages for hours in those conditions.
About half of what the post office delivers now is Amazon packages, they would be in serious financial trouble if it wasn't for Amazon. In fact Amazon has probably increased their business to the post office adding delivery during the weekend which is packages from mostly if not all from Amazon.
My first job out of high school was working for a Maryland based convenience store chain. I started out part time, thinking it would be temporary until I decided what I wanted to do, saving up some money, then going back to school to college or nursing school, then I was promoted to full time and then was promoted to managing a store at 19 years old and the money I was making was too good to give up. I don’t know how it works in that chain now, but managers were paid a salary + a % of sales. But out of that amount, the store’s workers were paid, leaving managers with what was left over.
I typically worked 60 hours a week, sometimes closer to 70, sometimes more, sometimes from 6AM to 11PM and all of it on my feet and often without any breaks and working those hours several days in a row until all I could think of was getting off my feet and getting at least 6 hours of sleep. I had to fill in when I was short-handed or when one of my workers called off at the last minute. I was making a lot of money but now realize that if I divided my gross by the number of hours I was working, a lot of times I wasn’t even making minimum wage.
Then again it was a great experience. I learned a lot at young age about the business, about managing inventory, customer relations, how not to allow slick sales brokers take advantage of my age and perceived lack of experience to over order merchandise, and how to manage (and sometimes how not to manage) workers. I also learned the importance of showing up and being on time and setting a good example to others, those who worked under me. I would never ask a worker in my store to do something that I wouldn’t and didn’t do – like scraping dried milk off the walk in cooler floor, defrosting the ice cream freezer, breaking down and sanitizing the deli slicer…etc.
After doing that for over 6 years, I got an office job as an entry level “office clerk” then a “secretary” then an executive assistant, and eventually moving into bookkeeping, accounting and payroll. Working 40 hours a week and having weekends and holidays off felt to me like I was working part time. Then again as I moved up in an accounting and payroll career, some times of year, especially at quarter and year end, I still put in a lot of hours.
When I got into the accounting field, I didn’t, and still don’t have a college degree. But I out performed and out worked a lot of people who had not only their BA’s in accounting but their MBA’s.
I tend to think that I learned a lot in the school of hard knock and practical experience, sometimes more than those who were good at studying for and passing exams but end up lacking much if any real world experience and common sense.
I recall, surprisingly a speech made by the actor Ashton Kutcher that was praised by many, including many conservatives where he said:
“I believe that opportunity looks a lot like work. When I was 13, I had my first job with Dad carrying shingles to the roof, and then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant, and then I got a job in a grocery store deli, and then I got a job in a factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground.”
"And I never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job. And so opportunities look a lot like work.”
And I would add that he was right. I’ve never had a job that was beneath me, or where I didn’t learn something or didn’t eventually lead to a better opportunity, even in some of the crappiest jobs I’ve had before I moved into accounting and payroll, like the summer I worked for a painting contractor friend of my husband’s painting BGE utility boxes on 90+ degree days, sometimes in very bad neighborhoods, or the job I had for about 3 months working the front counter at a dry cleaning store. I always learned something that I could take to my next job.
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