Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse • Hacker News Board

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#61

Post by fredgrott » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

zemo wrote: post #48

token_throwaway wrote: post #42

This job sounds shitty but have you ever spoken to someone in a domestic role? A postal employee? A trucker? A janitor at your office building? Kitchen staff at a restaurant who do not even have time to take a piss without dropping the ball, let alone timed pee breaks? Lots of jobs are hard. Extremely hard. And often, jobs that are very very hard pay hardly anything. There is a two-way transaction happening here, tho…

this is extremely, extremely tone-deaf. > As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately. child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor, it stopped because of laws. The free market does nothing to guarantee that working conditions are livable or humane. Any suggestion to the contrary is at best naive,…

not really..come on either you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income or take no risk and go for that low paying warehouse job. Tell us all what risk did any one take in getting a warehouse job?

Gee life is hard...really?

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#62

Post by jjeaff » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #28

Asooka wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why can Costco afford to treat their employees humanely?

Costco: 184k employees[0] Amazon: 591k employees[1] I think you can also argue that a happy Costco worker = more sales, as they help customers better. May be harder to make the case that if a guy putting stuff in a box is happier, the end customer is any happier. 0 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/284430/costco-number-of-... 1 - https://www.inc.com/business-insider/jeff-bezos-amazon-emplo...

Costcos average customer makes more than 100k a year. Their average purchase is more than $100 and price per item is $10+.

They are basically a luxury goods store and can afford to pay employees more.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#63

Post by simion314 » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

token_throwaway wrote: post #42

This job sounds shitty but have you ever spoken to someone in a domestic role? A postal employee? A trucker? A janitor at your office building? Kitchen staff at a restaurant who do not even have time to take a piss without dropping the ball, let alone timed pee breaks? Lots of jobs are hard. Extremely hard. And often, jobs that are very very hard pay hardly anything. There is a two-way transaction happening here, tho…

Same logic could be applied 200 years ago, work 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day , if you don't like it go and die.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#64

Post by davidddavidson » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

heinrichf wrote: post #7

atonse wrote: post #2

Is it just me or is Amazon turning out to be even more evil than Walmart ever was? It's just cuz they're an "innovative" tech company, that we let them get away with it?

NPR podcast episode touching this question: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/kuow/audio/2017/11/PRIMED_Episode4_0.... (Is Amazon your guilty pleasure?) https://www.npr.org/podcasts/557820907/prime-d

And this radiolab episode: http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#65

Post by innagadadavida » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

zemo wrote: post #48

token_throwaway wrote: post #42

This job sounds shitty but have you ever spoken to someone in a domestic role? A postal employee? A trucker? A janitor at your office building? Kitchen staff at a restaurant who do not even have time to take a piss without dropping the ball, let alone timed pee breaks? Lots of jobs are hard. Extremely hard. And often, jobs that are very very hard pay hardly anything. There is a two-way transaction happening here, tho…

this is extremely, extremely tone-deaf. > As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately. child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor, it stopped because of laws. The free market does nothing to guarantee that working conditions are livable or humane. Any suggestion to the contrary is at best naive,…

> child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor...

No it did not, it just moved overseas. It is hard to beat the free market -- it just finds the most economical way to get things done, it does not care about human plight.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#66

Post by peterwwillis » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #31

peterwwillis wrote: post #13

"My own story of how I became a human robot could not have been darker. Shifts began in the gloom at 7.30am and ended at 6pm, long after the sun had gone down." Oh, heavens. That almost sounds like a high school teacher's schedule. "Two half-hour breaks were the only time off my feet" Kind of like working in a supermarket? "toiling for up to 55 hours a week" The horror?? "[the warehouse] is so vast that just walking…

Is 5 minutes absurd? I worked at random factories in the day, 5 minute walk to the crapper was about right. Now the difference was I didn't get fired because my productivity went down .1%, which is the problem with the hyper data Amazon warehouse worker...

Yeah, that is the main problem. If it takes you even 10 minutes to get to the crapper, fine, as long as the employer is willing to compensate you for that. It's unethical to force workers to choose between taking a crap and keeping their pay or their job. You can't just choose not to take a crap.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#67

Post by beejiu » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

gwright wrote: post #60

Asooka wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being willing, people literally have no choice. It's either starve and be homeless or work this really shitty job. We should regulate the industry so our economy doesn't have to run on brutal human misery. If that means Amazon can't deliver your package in 8 hours, but rather in 2 days, then so be it. Human life comes before profits.

From a public policy standpoint, I'd rather provide some assistance to people working part-time or for low wages than to provide 100% assistance to someone who is entirely unemployed. Unfortunately many attempts to regulate the workplace result in fewer jobs and thus more people who need 100% support. One example of this is the effort to raise the minimum wage which, not surprising at all, has resulted in more incent…

The evidence does not support your view (at least in the UK). http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP217.pdf Even if it did, there are other policies like Basic Income that solve some of these problems in a sensible way.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#68

Post by jjeaff » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #45

user5994461 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costco doesn't deliver millions of package a day for free to the door of their customers, does it?

Maybe Amazon should retire the one-click same-day offer as well, if it requires this level of human misery to fulfil. Personally I've never received a package in less than two weeks and I still shop at Amazon since they have the best availability and prices.

There is no additional labor involved in shipping a package in 1 day vs 7 days. It's just that the stores that take 7 days to ship operate Perpetually behind schedule. To get products out in 1 day, you need enough slack to handle the times when things get busy so you don't get behind. There is no inherent need to abuse employees to do that.

I have an online store and we always ship within a few hours of receiving the order. It's not hard at all. After it's shipped, it's up to the carrier anyway.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#69

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

fredgrott wrote: post #61

zemo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is extremely, extremely tone-deaf. > As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately. child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor, it stopped because of laws. The free market does nothing to guarantee that working conditions are livable or humane. Any suggestion to the contrary is at best naive,…

not really..come on either you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income or take no risk and go for that low paying warehouse job. Tell us all what risk did any one take in getting a warehouse job? Gee life is hard...really?

If there is risk involved, then there are quite a few people guaranteed to lost - and worst off then those warehouse workers. Otherwise it would not be risk, right? Are you even sure that expected payoff is worth it in agreggate? (E.g. if we don't end up with much worst overall economic situation if people would follow your advice)

You talk about "taking risk" is if it would be solution to social problems. It is not.

Re: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse

#70

Post by zemo » Mon, Nov 27, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

fredgrott wrote: post #61

zemo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is extremely, extremely tone-deaf. > As long as people are willing to do this job for this amount of money, it will probably not get better unfortunately. child labor didn't stop because parents stopped being willing to sentence their kids to labor, it stopped because of laws. The free market does nothing to guarantee that working conditions are livable or humane. Any suggestion to the contrary is at best naive,…

not really..come on either you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income or take no risk and go for that low paying warehouse job. Tell us all what risk did any one take in getting a warehouse job? Gee life is hard...really?

> you want to take a risk and make something and sell it to get higher income

no, almost nobody does that. People who work in an Amazon warehouse have no option to take a risk to make something, they are selling their labor because it is the only way to feed themselves. Almost nobody has the ability to "take a risk and make something". Your comment shows a complete ignorance of how the vast majority of people experience the world. The vast, vast majority of people in the world do not control the means of production or have the ability to do so, they sell their labor because they have no other choice.

This attitude, that everyone being exploited is doing so because they made a choice is endemic to our industry and it is the literally reason that our industry is increasingly seen negatively by those outside of our industry. People who work in Amazon warehouses did not one day decide or not decide to take a risk: the vast majority of them are working any job they can get to avoid going hungry.

If you make something and sell it, you are in control of the means of production; you are not selling your labor, you are selling a product. People who work in an Amazon warehouse are not selling a product, they are selling their labor. The vast, vast majority of people on Earth sell their labor.

you are defending inhumane working conditions. You are defending subjugation in the name of business interest.

This attitude and people like you make me sick of the software industry. I am disgusted by how common the attitude of utter indifference is in our industry.