Kinja reply list

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dickmoveHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 12:59pm
It's a fucking warehouse job...he didn't get hired as an international man of mystery.

I have to imagine that the author is in the 18 - 22 age range, didn't go to college, and is now reaping the rewards of his mediocre education.

His complaints are stupid. The application process was too long and you didn't get paid for it? Since when has anyone been paid to fill out an application? The loss prevention guy lied and he could totally steal something.

I expect his next e-mail to be "I can't believe they had me arrested for stealing from Amazon."

Gah.
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  Gibbelinsdickmove
  7/29/13 1:03pm
  He acknowledges that himself:
  
  Seriously though, I realize I'm in a position of privilege to have better options out there. Some of my co-workers have looked at me like I'm crazy whenever I talk about how shitty this job is and how I am applying for other jobs all the time.
  
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  aismodickmove
  7/29/13 1:05pm
  Yea this a stretch to me. SOUNDS LIKE A NORMAL PLACE TO WORK.
  
  *And to that end: I have a whole pile of degrees and work in a sweet fancy sounding job. My day-to-day working conditions are worse than that. Granted I don't have the awful monotony... but if I have to take a piss I have to walk like 300 yards. Thats nothing special.
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aismoHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 1:09pm
Can we hear from a real Amazon employee that is working there as their actual job? HAM, I love you man but this person just seems like they blew this whole thing off well before they even clocked in.
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  APersonaaismo
  7/29/13 1:22pm
  I agree completely. Martyr they ain't.
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  superuberaismo
  7/29/13 1:35pm
  In fairness, I think that's what he's asking for here.
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SychophantRantHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 12:55pm
I've worked with Amazon as a business partner for about 7 years - primarily within their technology and marketing groups. They are, without a doubt, some of the smartest, most professional people I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

But, you know, who cares about the bourgeois. They are evil.
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  Hamilton NolanSychophantRant
  7/29/13 12:58pm
  That's great, but those people don't work in the warehouse. Numbers-wise, Amazon, like most businesses, is mostly blue collar workers. That's who I'm trying to hear from here.
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  CPR14SychophantRant
  7/29/13 1:05pm
  Love your username. Really suits you.
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leftfieldHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 10:42pm
Would you be interested in fast food stories? McDonald's, Taco Bell, a company like that?
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  Hamilton Nolanleftfield
  7/30/13 8:53am
  Yes, feel free to email me.
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  Lewisboyleftfield
  7/30/13 9:06am
  He's probably be one of those people that strike because they want to make $15 an hour flipping burgers.
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Paradise02Hamilton Nolan
7/29/13 1:52pm
Always articles about those that work at the fulfillment centers and never any articles about those of us that work at the Customer Service centers :-(
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  Hamilton NolanParadise02
  7/29/13 3:13pm
  Feel free to email me.
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  G3istbotParadise02
  7/29/13 11:58pm
  I hear that man, I don't work for Amazon but still my experience with companies can be ridiculous. I'm not going to name names, but a company I worked for in the past in a call center; when our call volume got too high they would do things like cancel breaks, reduce lunches to the point where you barely had any time to actually eat, etc. If it got too bad though, they would start just doing crazy things. Like no water breaks (despite being constantly talking on the phone), and the worst? Having to literally raise your hand to use the restroom - like you were a kid in school.
  
  In the interoffice politics and pettiness of every thing can get really crazy too. I've witnessed every thing from people having mental break downs to just being unable to take it any more and just flipping out. Places like call centers can really eat at your soul and mind.
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TheStrategeristHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 12:57pm
Meh. Sounds to me like a fairly cushy, albeit corporate, warehouse job.

I know a few folks who work in warehouses around here, making a similar wage, but don't have the option of slacking off. It's everything they can do to make the quota over a 12 hour shift.
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  FuckThisNoiseTheStrategerist
  7/29/13 1:00pm
  I agree. This one doesn't sound so bad. I'm sure we'll get the stories like the ones Allentown's Morning Call ran a couple of years ago, with the workers regularly passing out from dehydration and heat exhaustion by the end of each shift. But I really don't have too many problems with this dude not being paid during his long interview.
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  icewaterTheStrategerist
  7/29/13 1:05pm
  This is one position. The much more common position in "Integrity Staffing" (amazon's temp facade) is a 'picker' position. I worked one over one christmas a few years ago.
  
  Best shape in my life. 66 hours a week on C shift, 60 on my feet mostly pushing around a cart at a good pace. Most day shifts made about what, $800, 900 a week after taxes (for 60 hours of work. I was night shift, so with the overtime and after taxes I pulled down about $1000 a week, sometimes a bit more.
  
  It's not the hours that killed you at my location — it's the attitude. Like people were happy to have hours to work (though the day shift people got pretty poor pay for it). I just remember every supervisor there was just a complete asshole - more than your average supervisor. It seemed like their goal was to make everyone feel like shit. Might have just been that location though.
  
  My least favorite part of that job: There were like 3 or 4 microwaves and the line was super long. I could wait a whole lunch in that line and not get to use the microwave, so I just ended up bringing food I could eat cold. It wouldn't have ruined their budget to buy a couple more.
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strayHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 12:59pm
I kind of wish more attention was drawn towards the temp-to-fire model where permanent jobs are basically non-existent at a lot of companies. It's something that has been going on for a long time now.

That said, I've read horror stories in the past about Amazon warehouse life, from 100+ temps inside the warehouse and more. Kind of intrigued to see how this pans out.
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  aismostray
  7/29/13 1:11pm
  YES. This really is whats killing us. Being underemployed.
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  jenaliciousstray
  7/29/13 1:25pm
  It makes sense from Amazon's perspective to have temp/contract workers, because positions like this tend to have a high turnover rate or be seasonal. The agency deals with the sourcing, screening, and on-boarding and also picks up the payroll costs, taxes, unemployment, and benefits. The agency also carries the risk of worker's comp and any liability for the working conditions.
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DolemiteHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 12:58pm
"whereas customers may interact with a dozen Wal-Mart employees on a single trip to the store, Amazon workers remain unseen and behind the scenes". Not dealing with the public on a daily basis is one of the most massive perks imaginable. $11 an hour to count boxes?
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  SoundsGoodinTheoryDolemite
  7/29/13 2:00pm
  I was doing this same basic job at a small (less than 50 employees) book wholesaler in 1996, making $4.50 an hour ($6.71 in 2013 dollars), and I did it for two years while killing my back and putting up with persistent sexual harassment. This dude's tale of woe seems like the definition of "meh."
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BorkowskowitzHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 6:38pm
When my job at Amazon came along, I was in a bad spot. I was stuck at home in that post graduate rut, and I felt a million miles away from moving to NYC which was my goal. I went to the holiday season hiring run by Amazon's staffing company (which the writer mentioned in his letter) and hired within 45 mins.

I started work on the shipping dock for the overnight shift. It was peak season, so we were going to be working 60 hr weeks. It was hard, especially the first 3 weeks, but I lost a ton of weight, and while the job was boring, the company was good. Lots of people waiting for other jobs to start up, chill guys who maybe weren't as ambitious as their IQ promised, and some that this was the ceiling of what they could expect job wise.

I was hired as part of Amazon after about a year and a half of working there. Until you are hired by Amazon, you are technically an employee of the staffing company. During this time, you can be let go at any time, have no benefits, and may not have work within a month or two. Once you get hired full by Amazon, you get benefits, vacation, and stock options. It's a pretty sweet deal. They also pay lip service to the idea that you are a member of Amazon, and so we had a lot of state-of-the-company meetings where they told us lots of pro company BS. It was a little obnoxious, but miles better than target's "team member" crap. The stock options were great, although you had to stay on at least a year after you were hired in order for them to vest. I didn't stay around long enough.

Safety was kind of a weird deal. They took it seriously, especially OSHA violations, but in a very bureaucratic way. I was on the Safety Comittee, which was comprised of both management and labor reps, and they were very diligent about safety...until they weren't. They were big on things that were easily fixed, but I had a huge verbal fight with my boss over allowing a piece of machinery to be run by one person. I said that by their definitions of safety, this practice was unsafe. My boss argued that he had run it himself, and held firm on it. After all of this, I was not disciplined in any way, and my boss thanked me, and told me I was doing a great job on the safety committee. He said he wished he could make me a permanent member (it's supposed to be rotating). They took on the job injuries very seriously. If you said you had a problem, they sent you to the medic with no questions asked. I was never told "You're going to have to wait for break" ever. You were treated on the clock, and the medic would be around to you to ask follow up questions. They erred on the side of over reaction.

After peak season, they put me in packaging as well as the docks. This involves scanning UPC labels and comparing them to the packing slip. It's a boring, boring job, so when ever the line goes down (which happened often for various general maintenance issues) people would often flip through the books in the orders they were packing. Any time a book with naked people hit the line, you would see a group of 5-6 clustered around one station, peering over shoulders. The computers were hooked to the internet, so I would frequently look up cds I had seen on the line, and end up buying them used from third party sellers. It was always interesting when people ordered several books on a particular topic, or when someone ordered multiple dvds and you could kind of piece together a mini profile on them. I remember scanning an order of 4 dvds and they were all art movies with lots and lots of softcore erotica, supposedly full of truths about loneliness,anger, and jealousy. We really weren't supposed to be doing much of what we did, but managers kind of looked the other way on it.

Overall, my time there was great. I started slipping as I got near the end of my time, showing up late and using my vacation time to cover it, but that says more about how I approach employment than it does about the job (freelance work is good for me for a reason). Management could be obnoxious but it was never abusive. Their attempts at making you feel part of the team sometimes felt like a high school guidance counselor's attempts to get people "involved" but it was light years ahead of Target and Wal Mart. More importantly, if you were scheduled for 40 hours, only you could make the decision to work less. They tried to get people off the clock when work slowed down, but you had to agree to it. None of this BS in the restaurant business of "Ok, clock out now." They also were pro education and encouraged people to take college courses that could be reimbursed if it had anything to do with the job at all. It was boring, it was slow, and the overnights killed me after a while, but as far as how we should be treating blue collar workers, this was a pretty good model. I was able to save up enough money to get to NYC, I met my girlfriend because I finally had money to do things, and it got me out of my post grad haze. All and all, not so bad.
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  S.AllenBorkowskowitz
  1/01/15 2:42pm
  I'm a large 3rd Party FBA seller (7 figures a year in sales), and I often scour the internet for posts on how employees are treated. It's hard to gauge sometimes, it seems a lot of people are biased and likely upset at Amazon because they were fired for low productivity. It also seems like sometimes, Amazon themselves makes posts about how awesome it is working in a fulfillment centers - I look for posts like yours. When my company switched to FBA, my partners and myself made the decision to downsize on our workers and downsize on our warehouse - we didn't need as much of both when our items are being stored at Amazon and processed by their workers. I miss the relationship I had with my employees, and often need to read posts like yours to make sure Amazons employees are being treated with at least some level of respect. When we send items to Amazon, we call it "feeding the beast," and lots of the bigger sellers like me are more concerned about Amazon's treatment of their employees than most buyers and Amazon employees would assume. Most of us held similar jobs.
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  BorkowskowitzS.Allen
  1/01/15 4:35pm
  Keep in mind that my time was about 8 years ago. When I talked to other employees who had been there for much longer, they said that the place had changed for the worse since they started. Not that it was horrible, but that it still wasn't what it used to be.
  
  I don't know what it's like now. The way some people have described it, it sounds worse off, but I imagine a lot of that has to do with which plant you call home. I'm glad I went through it, and it gave me a lot more exposure to people from all walks of life, but I don't know how it has changed.
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SeriousAsAShartAttackHamilton Nolan
7/29/13 1:22pm
"I have only worked one week now and already we have forced overtime for the unforeseeable future. I have no desire to work more hours but will lose the job if I don't."

Contrast this with a common gripe among many Wal-Mart workers, who say they're desperate to get more hours in order to make ends meet. But usually, the Wal-Mart managers will specifically avoid letting anyone do that.
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  getitgetitSeriousAsAShartAttack
  7/29/13 2:40pm
  The WalMart workers ARE employed by WalMart when they complain about getting hours. If the WalMart workers get hours, they qualify for better benefits, etc. If the Amazon workers get overtime, as sub-contractors, they might not even get paid for the extra hours, run the risk of injury (and if you can't work, you don't get sick time or they find a way to fire you), and basically, get dick at higher risk.
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  Sheeeeeeit-ClayDavisgetitgetit
  7/29/13 4:53pm
  They definitely get overtime pay since they aren't salaried and it would be illegal otherwise. It also seems like he gets benefits. Sorry about your false narrative.
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