I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento • Hacker News Board

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#191

Post by jkaplowitz » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

giaour wrote: post #170

wool_gather wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if that's the path we're going down...is telling someone they can only be sick for 10 days in a year treating them like a professional adult person in the first place?

You can take an unpaid leave if you need more. If you have temporary disability insurance through work (and I would imagine most US software developers do), you can file a claim to compensate you for lost wages due to a medical condition.

I've never in my full-time tech industry career had government-mandated disability insurance with a maximum benefit anywhere near my actual earnings, and voluntary plans were not offered at most of my smaller employers. Additionally most disability insurance has a nontrivial waiting period that only covers cases where it's a single absence lasting weeks or months.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#192

Post by nameismypw » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:17 AM UTC

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission.

A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#193

Post by jkaplowitz » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #166

chrsstrm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "improper" mean and who gets to decide what actions are improper? Paid days are paid days and just because they have a certain name doesn't change a thing. Has anyone ever been accused of faking a vacation? Of course not, because that would be ridiculous. But since sick days are called sick days all of a sudden you need to prove you're bedridden or else face consequences? That's absurd. Treat your employees…

Sick days and vacation days typically have different notification requirements- in most places that had them I've worked at, it was 2 weeks for vacation and asap for sick leave. Vacation time could be denied if, say, the job involved time sensitive equipment or safety related tasks (I.e. nursing) and others had already requested the time off. Abusing sick leave- depending on the job- has very real consequences for yo…

Confirmed. I'm a manager right now, and I get emailed to approve vacation days but I only have on-demand visibility into my team members' personal and sick days. Those last two types are auto-approved if the employee hasn't run out of them, since nobody gets to choose when they're necessary.

All three of these paid leave types are limited in number of days per year at my current employer, despite my preference as per another comment for paid sick days to be unlimited. I don't make those rules here.

However there are labour laws in force which protect the right to total (mostly unpaid) sick leave for 26 weeks out of every 12 months, including rights to return to the company afterward. (Special cases allow different totals, sometimes even two years for things like a minor child dying. And yes there are government-paid sickness benefits here in most long-lasting sick leaves.)

I agree that those kinds of statutory long durations are pretty different from the kind of sick leave I think should be unlimited, but having to care about 5 vs 10 vs 15 days total per year is not conducive to a healthy workplace, absent reason to suspect fraud.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#194

Post by jkaplowitz » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

giaour wrote: post #174

WalterBright wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is improper to take sick leave if you're not sick. It wouldn't be improper if it is labeled PTO. I.e. it depends on how the policy is written.

You're supposed to use sick days to take care of a sick dependent, too. Most single parents I've worked with always take all their allocated sick days because they use them when they're sick or when they have to stay home with a sick kid.

That definition varies by jurisdiction and (where not legally mandated) by company... But yes, it seems fair to allow sick time to be used for that purpose too instead of requiring them to spend vacation time.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#195

Post by SmirkingRevenge » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #21

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…

That University disconnect is powerful and cuts across issues. I remember hearing a freshman lawmaker talk about transitioning from other fields into politics. The first thing campaign advisers did was cut all references to advanced degrees from her website, replacing them with stories about how her grandfather was a farmer. 30 Rock's Duffy--a caricature of someone unrelatable--described his politics as "Fiscal liber…

> I read a political attitudes survey a few years later that contrasted beliefs of constituents with representatives. It found that Republican constituencies are far more sympathetic to large government programs and redistribution than their reps, and Democratic constituencies are far more supportive of morality-based restrictions and social regulations than their reps would suggest.

> Maybe most of the population is far more like Duffy, but education operates as a filter, making you either passionate about fiscal responsibility from econ classes, or passionate about social freedom and tolerance from liberal arts classes, or some mix of both.

That reminds me of the research this group is doing/has done, which is somewhat related to your points here. The basic upshot is that most people really are moderate, and share more views in common than we tend to appreciate.

https://perceptiongap.us/

Disclaimer: I've only skimmed that stuff, so I don't vouch for it, but its interesting

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#196

Post by amazingman » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

nameismypw wrote: post #192

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission. A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. At “worst” it is a center-right publication, and if you can’t see the value of such a publication existing then you should probably question your own epistemology.

Re: the “cement milkshake conspiracy”, the Portland police’s official twitter account posted a warning about cement milkshakes. For a (short) period after that, it was entirely reasonable to mention it as a real possibility.

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Quillette pieces (~50/50 for me), it should be obvious that it is a legitimate, even valuable publication. If you’re having trouble seeing this, perhaps you’ve been caught in a social media echo chamber.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#197

Post by Aloha » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

nameismypw wrote: post #192

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission. A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

It seems more to have a libertarian bend rather than a populist alt-right one. So citation please.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#198

Post by nameismypw » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:33 AM UTC

amazingman wrote: post #196

nameismypw wrote: post #192

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission. A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

Quillette is not an alt-right publication. At “worst” it is a center-right publication, and if you can’t see the value of such a publication existing then you should probably question your own epistemology. Re: the “cement milkshake conspiracy”, the Portland police’s official twitter account posted a warning about cement milkshakes. For a (short) period after that, it was entirely reasonable to mention it as a real p…

Quillette is strongly associated with "the intellectual dark web," which is associated with the alt-right. Quillette publishes prominent alt-right individuals. Several articles on the front page, including the one you mention, favorably portray alt-right individuals.

You seem to be familiar with them, so I think that you're aware of this, to be honest.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#199

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #197

nameismypw wrote: post #192

It doesn't seem appropriate to discuss a Quillette article without mentioning that it's an alt-right publication. We must not normalize it, and I strongly encourage people to flag the submission. A preliminary search will turn up plenty of reprehensible authors and plenty more reprehensible articles. Posts like these are low-key attempts for Quillette to legitimatize itself.

It seems more to have a libertarian bend rather than a populist alt-right one. So citation please.

[deleted]

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#200

Post by autokad » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 4:41 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #185

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…

> 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-class people, the company creates more customers I've never accused a piece of content like this of being a shill, but it's taking some mental gymnastics to convince myself that a person could really believe this.

why, its not far from the philosophy of Henry Ford, thus completely plausible.