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911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

businessinsider.com

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Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#21

Post by sykic »

bantunes wrote: post #12
jrnichols wrote: post #2

189 calls over a 5 year period across 46 different facilities, and the original article even notes that many of those were not work related at all. It seems to try to lean towards "Amazon warehouse jobs are causing people to think about killing themselves" but the opposite could also be said - Amazon was able to engage these same employees with suicidal ideations and get them help. Only one seems to have actually kil…

"It's this isolating colony of hell where people having breakdowns is a regular occurrence," former Amazon employee Jace Crouch told the Daily Beast. An anonymous employee told the Daily Beast that the company treated its workers like "robots."

Instead of mentioning 911 calls the article ought to have been about the working conditions and have more in depth interviews with people like Jace. The reporter probably didn’t have time to do such a piece and Business Insider probably doesn’t think it’ll be worth the investment to do such a piece. Instead we get an article that detractors can embrace and supporters can point out its obvious flaws.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#22

Post by ctrl-j »

walrus01 wrote: post #11
jrnichols wrote: post #2

189 calls over a 5 year period across 46 different facilities, and the original article even notes that many of those were not work related at all. It seems to try to lean towards "Amazon warehouse jobs are causing people to think about killing themselves" but the opposite could also be said - Amazon was able to engage these same employees with suicidal ideations and get them help. Only one seems to have actually kil…

I wonder if the 911 call rate is any higher than the general non working population as a whole, sitting in private residences on couches. 189 calls / 5 years = 37.8 calls per year 37.8 calls / 46 warehouses = 0.82 calls per year, per warehouse Now assume for a moment, this is probably a low estimate, that a single warehouse has a peak day shift population of 75 persons... One of the things I have learned first hand,…

> Whether they're in a office of a company that rents two floors of a 350,000 square foot office tower in a downtown of a major city, sitting on their couches in a single family home in a suburb playing videos games on their xbox, attending a music festival, literally any imaginable human activity.

This is not 189 total 911 calls - this is 189 calls for emotional distress.

Personal experience dictates that on-the-job suicidal thoughts are vastly diminished compared to netflix/xbox suicidal thoughts. When you are actively engaged and distracted, you are less likely to be wrapped up in self-destructive thoughts.

The best comparison would be do find numbers of on-the-job emotional distress calls from Walmart, McDonalds, UPS, or other large employers. I have no idea how Amazon compares, but 189 over 5 years intuitively seems high.

Compare apples to apples if you want to compare.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#23

Post by sykic »

tomnipotent wrote: post #9
avgDev wrote: post #3

More reasons for me to stop using Amazon but.... this is pretty interesting for me and I am not sure how to feel about it. On one hand I feel like they exploit the least educated and relatively poor people. On the other hand I think the only reason they are getting bad press is because they are a large corp. I have worked at many small businesses over the years and did physical work. I was treated like garbage by mos…

> More reasons for me to stop using Amazon but 189 calls over 5 years from 600,000+ employees (and many more that have come & gone) and the article didn't even bother to compare that against the general population. Bad reporting and conclusions. There's no news here.

You are right that there isn’t much of a story with regards to suicide at Amazon warehouses but there is a story with regard to the general working conditions at its warehouses. I guess mentioning suicide is good business from an entertainment/news aspect but this article is not helpful in terms of helping bring to attention the bad working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#24

Post by legitster »

I have a friend who works in an Amazon warehouse and asked him about it:

"It's fine. Pay is decent. I get to do a lot of walking, which is nice. I'll probably look for something more long term."

I asked him about all of the horror stories and stress I've read about:

"You work in an office. Are you saying there isn't any stress or bad bosses or horror stories?"

Point taken. They have 200,000 warehouse employees. On average, the experience will be 'meh'. Just like most jobs.

But I am more troubled about how this article conflates stress and mental health, and the thin insinuation that contemplating suicide is a normal response to a bad workplace. As if one can be a workplace upgrade or job transfer away from eliminating pain. Or that people in good jobs don't deserve to feel bad.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#25

Post by Mtinie »

Spooky23 wrote: post #16
Mtinie wrote: post #10

> The Daily Beast noted that its report was "not evidence that Amazon staffers experience suicidal episodes more often than other American workers, in or out of a warehouse." And the rate of suicide in the United States is on the rise — the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimated that there were 1.4 million suicide attempts in the US in 2017. I wish BI (or better yet, The Daily Beast when they ran the or…

Be careful about burying this in stats without context. Of the 1.4M attempts, how many are expressed at work in the context of working conditions? People handle different kinds of stress in all sorts of different ways. How many threats of suicide are made annually? Way more than 1.4M. In the context of taking away agency from employees, serious suicidal threats are one extereme expression of stress. I’d be curious ho…

You're right. I was sticking with the numbers The Daily Beast included as an attempt at a comparison. I also challenged the numbers by stating the "1.4M" number appears to be only attempts; a narrower definition vs. the "calls about emotional distress or suicidal thoughts" referenced, re: Amazon. Do statistics exist which translate these 189 calls into a number of actual suicide attempts? Hopefully the answer is "0".

The follow-up questions you offer are equally interesting, thank you.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#26

Post by elicash »

legitster wrote: post #24

I have a friend who works in an Amazon warehouse and asked him about it: "It's fine. Pay is decent. I get to do a lot of walking, which is nice. I'll probably look for something more long term." I asked him about all of the horror stories and stress I've read about: "You work in an office. Are you saying there isn't any stress or bad bosses or horror stories?" Point taken. They have 200,000 warehouse employees. On av…

Everything is about degree. Nobody in my office has ever called 911 due to something like this. I have no idea where this rates in comparison to other warehouses. But also it's hard to measure because maybe Amazon calls 911 to report this where other companies wouldn't -- similar to Apple calling an ambulance over people walking into glass doors just to protect themselves.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#27

Post by tumetab1 »

jrnichols wrote: post #2

189 calls over a 5 year period across 46 different facilities, and the original article even notes that many of those were not work related at all. It seems to try to lean towards "Amazon warehouse jobs are causing people to think about killing themselves" but the opposite could also be said - Amazon was able to engage these same employees with suicidal ideations and get them help. Only one seems to have actually kil…

«The Daily Beast noted that its report was "not evidence that Amazon staffers experience suicidal episodes more often than other American workers, in or out of a warehouse."»

This articles is just click bait and slander.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#28

Post by legitster »

elicash wrote: post #26
legitster wrote: post #24

I have a friend who works in an Amazon warehouse and asked him about it: "It's fine. Pay is decent. I get to do a lot of walking, which is nice. I'll probably look for something more long term." I asked him about all of the horror stories and stress I've read about: "You work in an office. Are you saying there isn't any stress or bad bosses or horror stories?" Point taken. They have 200,000 warehouse employees. On av…

Everything is about degree. Nobody in my office has ever called 911 due to something like this. I have no idea where this rates in comparison to other warehouses. But also it's hard to measure because maybe Amazon calls 911 to report this where other companies wouldn't -- similar to Apple calling an ambulance over people walking into glass doors just to protect themselves.

How are you sure? Talk to someone in HR and you may be surprised how many ways that people can lash out or cry out for help.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#29

Post by bredren »

legitster wrote: post #24

I have a friend who works in an Amazon warehouse and asked him about it: "It's fine. Pay is decent. I get to do a lot of walking, which is nice. I'll probably look for something more long term." I asked him about all of the horror stories and stress I've read about: "You work in an office. Are you saying there isn't any stress or bad bosses or horror stories?" Point taken. They have 200,000 warehouse employees. On av…

It is hard for me to imagine that Amazon warehouse jobs are much worse than other warehouse jobs. This reminds me of Tom Wolfe's telling of the character Conrad Hensley (of Oakland, CA) in A Man in Full. His warehouse job was pretty bad and he was on the ropes.

Re: 911 calls from Amazon warehouses show emotional distress and suicide threats

#30

Post by nikofeyn »

tomnipotent wrote: post #9
avgDev wrote: post #3

More reasons for me to stop using Amazon but.... this is pretty interesting for me and I am not sure how to feel about it. On one hand I feel like they exploit the least educated and relatively poor people. On the other hand I think the only reason they are getting bad press is because they are a large corp. I have worked at many small businesses over the years and did physical work. I was treated like garbage by mos…

> More reasons for me to stop using Amazon but 189 calls over 5 years from 600,000+ employees (and many more that have come & gone) and the article didn't even bother to compare that against the general population. Bad reporting and conclusions. There's no news here.

in what world is this no news? these aren't just statistics on employees who happen to work at amazon. these 911 calls were reported to be placed while at work. what other places of work is it common for employees, while working, to experience such emotional distress that they need to call external emergency services?
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