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I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

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Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#71

Post by seibelj »

klenwell wrote: post #60
seibelj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. This is the precise type of commentary that is extremely off-putting to me. I consider myself a critical reader and what you wrote is the type of argument I immediately dismiss.

Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Yet I still think this piece is largely disingenuous claptrap. Kevin Mims is not a moderate voice. He's a unique voice. A white man "in my sixties" with bylines with NPR and the NY Times who works a second job at a small bookstore and still finds time to turn ou…

The article was about how exposes describing Amazon warehouses as urine soaked hellscapes were gross, fantastical exaggerations and the vast majority of employees are in reality happy working there.

In regards to all of the anti-union stuff, that is an entirely separate issue and unrelated to the article. You can hold two ideas in your head at once - that Amazon is a safe, decent place to work while understanding that Amazon, and nearly all major corporations, prefer their workers are not unionized. I think the article was a great explanation as to why Amazon warehouses are actually nice places to work, which is the opposite of nearly all other commentary. I like the counterpoint!

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#72

Post by ishjoh »

hackermailman wrote: post #30
seraphsf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops”. ( http://archive.is/W6ABE ) The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job. If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer…

I saw a documentary once on a slum in Kampala, where they interviewed a guy living in the slum who's job it was to clean out the public toilets there. He claimed it was one of the 'best jobs', because he was paid on time, given a uniform/gloves to wear instead of having to buy one himself, set his own hours, and the labor was not back breaking agricultural labor in the open sun all day. He also remarked he was able t…

That's very interesting, I don't suppose you know the name of the documentary?

I wonder if the biggest reason he didn't hate his job was the gratitude from other people. One of my first jobs was stocking shelves on the graveyard shift at a grocery store, and the 1 hour or so before the store closed I would occasionally help shoppers find things, help take heavy things to their car, or help them reach items high on the shelf. A sincere thank you always made the 7h of mind numbing stocking go a lot faster.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#73

Post by ishjoh »

brownbat wrote: post #5

I especially liked the points about how often we vary our criticism of journalism based on the topic. Reminded me a lot of Gell Mann amnesia, which I catch myself suffering from a little too often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

I didn't realize this had a name, thank you for the link!

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#74

Post by goldcd »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #52
vharuck wrote: post #47

I like the author's take on warehouse work, probably because it squares with mine. I went to high school with almost entirely white peers, was going to college without having to take on any loans, and I got the warehouse job because my dad worked in the offices. I met people who lived in completely different environments and believed completely different things, and it was awesome. One thing I don't agree with: >If B…

Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company. When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many people shot up and said "can we start taking them right now?" Before they had even worked a day! PTO days are accurred by hours worked. For me, it's ~6 hours per 15 calendar days. You think you're entitled to PTO having worked 0 hours?...

PTO is a very strange concept for much of the world.

I'm in the UK and get work full time and get 25 days holiday to take, plus the national/bank holidays.

If I'm sick I take a sick day. If I take a significant number of sick days, I'll be asked to produce a note from my doctor confirming that I'm sick.

If I get really sick, then myself and my employer both contribute to insurance that (I think, not checked for a while) gives me 75% of my salary until I'm well.

It's not quite a socialist paradise - but the general idea is that if you're an employee, there is a collective system that doesn't punish you for being ill.

Vacation days are for vacation.

I do work for an international company, so was interested to note on my portal (where I can check my benefits) - a new metric of "15 unused sick-days" had appeared... ..maybe my hay-fever is more debilitating that I thought...

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#75

Post by panpanna »

klenwell wrote: post #60
seibelj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. This is the precise type of commentary that is extremely off-putting to me. I consider myself a critical reader and what you wrote is the type of argument I immediately dismiss.

Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Yet I still think this piece is largely disingenuous claptrap. Kevin Mims is not a moderate voice. He's a unique voice. A white man "in my sixties" with bylines with NPR and the NY Times who works a second job at a small bookstore and still finds time to turn ou…

> This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda.

I read the article twice. First time it felt balanced (or at least an alternative view). Then I asked myself what happened to all the crap we already knew Amazon was pulling and read it again. This time it felt more like a shill.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#76

Post by lotsofpulp »

joe5150 wrote: post #70
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company. When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many people shot up and said "can we start taking them right now?" Before they had even worked a day! PTO days are accurred by hours worked. For me, it's ~6 hours per 15 calendar days. You think you're entitled to PTO having worked 0 hours?...

entitled? PTO is part of my compensation, of course I'm entitled to it.

As MuffinFlavored wrote, not unless it is accrued.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#77

Post by vore »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #50
vore wrote: post #7

The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the cause of him losing his job due to automation: >Just about every job in my sortation center could probably be done by a robot. In fact, it amazes me that Amazon hasn’t simply automated the entire facility. [...] If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working…

> It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction. Be that as it may, agitating f…

That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation, then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#78

Post by frereubu »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #49
frereubu wrote: post #3

As David Runciman has pointed out in his book How Democracy Ends and on the Talking Politics podcast - https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2017/71-how-demo... - if you could only ask one question of someone you'd never met before, which would give you the best possibility of guessing whether they'd voted for Brexit, it would be whether they went to university (Remain) or not (Leave). He argues that, in the UK…

Firstly, this is factually incorrect. The biggest predictor was age, not education. Up to age 24, there was a huge preference for Remain. Up to age 35 there was a slightly smaller but still significant preference. Over 65 the preference swung the other way. Education was significant, but not decisive. But in fact the dirty secret of all politics is that democracy is decided almost entirely by the C2 political class.…

I'm willing to be corrected on best predictor of Brexit voting, but even if that's the case, as you say, education was a significant factor, and I think contributed hugely to the blindness of the political class.

Your analysis of the various classes (which has a whole other discussion attached to it) comes across as pretty patronising. The idea that the result was caused by "herding" C2s uses metaphors of cattle that are pretty demeaning, as if Bs aren't subject to similar forces with different aesthetics.

It also negates the idea that they have a real beef with the establishment, which I think they do. They may be voting against their own interests on the issue of Brexit, but in the service of a big, satisfying "f__k you" to the people who've shafted them in the name of "balancing the books" while bailing out their City mates. I'd feel pretty aggrieved if I saw City boys swanking around while my right to incapacity benefit was challenged again and again.

I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence. But I can't think of many organisations who would meet that standard, and I have direct experience of white-collar jobs that are more soul-destroying than the work described in the linked article. Even Amnesty International was hemorrhaging staff because of a toxic work environment while they were running that "protect the human" campaign.

What I found useful about this article was that it gave a sense of perspective from someone who does this kind of work for a living. Did those journalists interview anyone like this? (Not a rhetorical question - I haven't read the book by Bloodworth, but I'm skeptical given the tone of the excerpts I've read that it would fit his narrative.)

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#79

Post by kbenson »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #56
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. I was once in a HR seminar where they welcomed you to the company. When the woman said "we get 19 days PTO a year", you'd be surprised how many people shot up and said "can we start taking them right now?" Before they had even worked a day! PTO days are accurred by hours worked. For me, it's ~6 hours per 15 calendar days. You think you're entitled to PTO having worked 0 hours?...

For vacation days, your point makes sense to me. For sick days, people don't get to choose when they get sick. Someone can just as easily get sick on day 1 or 2 of a job as on day 401 or 402.

I've seen and heard about many different sick pay schedules because of this. From ones that accrue like vacation and PTO from zero as hours are worked, ro ones where the days are all allocated on the first of the year to be used (I assume pro-rated for mid-year hires) to ones that are a hybrid where some portion of the yearly sick days are allocated at the beginning of the year and the rest are accrued. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and probably a lot of interesting behavioral nudges in each scheme that affect different types of work in different ways.
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