Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#491

Post by knieveltech » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #407

knieveltech wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain this "need" for exploitative jobs. Edit: No, I'm serious, I want someone to supply an internally consistent rationale that explains why corporations or society in general requires someone getting fucked over to function.

In OP's parlance, a shit job is an exploitative job. He is saying that through progress there are fewer "shit" jobs, so there are fewer people exploited. It never has been and never will be economically viable to pay a ditch digger the same amount as a doctor. So as long as jobs like ditch-digging exists, people must be "exploited" to fill them.

I don't think this meets specification. "it never has been and never will be economically viable" scans as handwavy, and I've yet to see anyone calling for "ditch diggers" (job automated out of existence by heavy equipment several decades ago, btw) a wage equivalent to what an MD makes. Your assertion, in essence, appears to be that people get paid low wages because low wage jobs exist. That does nothing to explain why a job sufficiently important to require a human being to perform is low-paying and so far nobody has advanced an explanation that takes into account historic levels of corporate profits and income inequality while wages have been basically stagnant since the 70s.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#492

Post by snoman » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

phil248 wrote: post #450

Dylan16807 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.

Why would Amazon pay one more penny than they have to? To win a nice guys award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside? There is precisely one solution to this problem, and it is us electing leaders who change the rules in favor of the working masses, and enforce those rules mercilessly against exploitative employers.

People deride unions, but collective bargaining has also been a very effective solution in the past.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#493

Post by dastbe » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

rosser wrote: post #393

kajumix wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in general, and Amazon in particular, are high…

How professional technologists are treated by their giant tech employer is utterly orthogonal to how lower-skilled, hourly warehouse workers are treated by the same company. Why do technologists reliably chime in with completely irrelevant details of a technologist's experience of working for a tech company, in response to articles talking about how poorly those companies treat their non-technologist staff? What does…

I think everybody is doing this? Looking through the comments and its nothing but people talking about SDEs and other well compensated employees, when the crux of this article and others like it are the issues faced by warehouse workers, which I'm betting make up a large majority of the ~550k workers employed by amazon.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#494

Post by nasredin » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

Lionsion wrote: post #452

gourou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon is incredibly anti-employee They prefer calling it 'customer-centric' > Amazon, Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company

> They prefer calling it 'customer-centric' If they'd like to be actually customer-centric, they can start by implementing a search that doesn't rank counterfeit products with a single 5-star review over real ones with 5000 reviews and an average rating of 4.9. I feel like Amazon's reputation for being "customer-centric" doesn't actually reflect their current practices, but instead it leans heavily on past reputation…

Next you gonna ask for something crazy like "sort by number of reviews" and "consistant UI on product pages"?

The technology is not there yet man!

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#495

Post by athenot » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

ytNumbers wrote: post #347

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teach people not to finance $500 worth of car each month (plus gas, plus insurance, plus maintenance How? Keep in mind, I drive a car I bought for $1700 cash and I've restored and maintained it with my own hands. Most people don't have the time, knowledge, tools, or space to maintain an older car, so a new car with a warranty is a smart move. New cars are safer and more fuel efficient. They last longer than ever befo…

I have concluded that, in the USA, most ordinary folks have, much to their detriment, never heard of Dave Ramsey. https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/the-truth-about-car-payments

He's a mixed bag. Some sound advice, in particular the parts about living within one's means; but there's also things that are utterly unrealistic, like:

> If you were to invest that (...) into a good mutual fund with a 12% rate of return, you would have over $100,000 in 10 years! At 20 years, you would have made $470,000. And at 30 years? That mutual fund would be worth $1.6 million!

Maybe I'm not savvy enough but I have not encountered mutual funds that will reliably sustain 12% over three decades.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#496

Post by evv » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

rland wrote: post #424

Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…

> Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices.

One of my favorite philosophical thought experiments! I'd argue that that society is an organism comprised of several governments/companies which act as the organs.

I usually observe each organ making decisions to optimize its use of money, (or blood in this metaphor!).

It is usually clear that these decisions have net negative effects on us individual humans (cells) in the organism.

But the question remains, when each company and government optimizes for money instead of individual health, is that healthy for the success of society, the broader organism?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#497

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #477

rland wrote: post #424

Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…

And for some reason one can only buy two sizes of socks. For shoe sizes 6-12 (regular) and 12-16 (large). A sock that fits 6 through 12 shoes sizes? Capitalism failure.

Since we're talking about Amazon and you're talking about sock sizes and I remember Alec Baldwin ordering "Bresciani's" on the first Alexa commercials: https://www.amazon.com/Bresciani-Cashmere-Over-Calf-Dress/dp...

In multiple sizes...

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#498

Post by Lionsion » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #63

dawnerd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wondering the same. It’s not like amazon is deeply discounting anything like they used to. Often cheaper to buy stuff at the big box stores - or at least the same price.

But they bring the products to your door...

> But they bring the products to your door...

That's being presented as some giant perk nowadays, but I don't really get the appeal. You're buying something sight-unseen and hoping what you'll get in a few days will match the mental images formed from the pictures. You can't size up the item in person, you don't get an excuse to leave the house, and you have to wait longer. If you don't like it, you have to go through the hassle of boxing it up, printing forms, and finding a post office.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#499

Post by skookumchuck » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #476

throwa_way_ wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth it for me, so I continue to buy stuff on Amazon. If the workers don't like it they can work elsewhere or start their own Amazon.

> If the workers don't like it they can work elsewhere Note that the submitted article is from the UK, where the workers might not be able to work elsewhere, and where they may have had some element of compulsion through the current benefit system to apply for and take jobs at Amazon.

> ...might...may...

Sounds like speculation.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#500

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

ytNumbers wrote: post #347

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teach people not to finance $500 worth of car each month (plus gas, plus insurance, plus maintenance How? Keep in mind, I drive a car I bought for $1700 cash and I've restored and maintained it with my own hands. Most people don't have the time, knowledge, tools, or space to maintain an older car, so a new car with a warranty is a smart move. New cars are safer and more fuel efficient. They last longer than ever befo…

I have concluded that, in the USA, most ordinary folks have, much to their detriment, never heard of Dave Ramsey. https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/the-truth-about-car-payments

"Cash for Clunkers" took a lot of wind out of this particular sail. It crippled the used car market for years, and propped the door wide open for predatory "buy here pay here" auto sellers.

Nevertheless, I haven't had a car payment for so long that I can't remember the last time I paid one. Trips to the mechanic are frequent and costly, but at least I'm not uselessly paying interest.

I'm surprised Ramsey can have a successful national brand saying little more than infinite variations on "spend less than you earn", but there he is, and I guess some people need to hear it like that.