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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

#261
Warehouses, such as the one I work in, have huge cargo bays that are almost always open to receive the back ends of incoming tractor trailer rigs. When these bays are open it is virtually impossible to control the temperature inside the warehouse artificially

When I worked in a warehouse in a northern state, they kept the bay doors closed when there was no truck there, and even when the doors were open, they were covered by strip curtains to help keep the heat in.

Even when it was below freezing outside, it was warm enough inside the warehouse to walk around in an insulated shirt and no jacket (~50 degrees inside, ~20 (or less) outside).

Of course, they didn't do it for the employees, we dealt with a lot of food products that couldn't be allowed to freeze. So climate control even in a warehouse is possible, but maybe not cheap in 95+ degree Sacramento summer days.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#262
post #99
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whi…

typically there's a sick and vacation subset for "PTO". like you get 2 weeks vacation and a week of sick days. Sometimes they're interchangeable sometimes not. It all depends on where you work. My employer only deals in vacation days, sick days are basically "don't abuse it and we don't care" similar to your setup.

here in Germany that's the legal framework, i.e. you have a balance of vacation days (I get like 3 every month when starting a new contract, and after a year I get the whole allowance of vacation days in january).

Sick days are sick days and are not taken from that balance, I think a doctor's not is required after about 3 days of sickness, some employers demand it on the first day.

Also: With a doctor's note, you can also reclaim vacation days when you have been sick. So, suppose you took one week vacation, but you contract let's say pneumonia the week before, you get a doctor's note on your sickness, and neither go to work or on vacation but can reschedule these vacation days.

I do think its a fair system overall, employers are typically large enough to buffer the risks, and I think there is a difference between being employed and being contracted.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#263
post #238
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's penalized on HN the same way we downweight all mostly-political or ideological publications. But such sites do come up with the occasional interesting article, and on HN we care about the article, not the site. Same with Jacobin or something like that.

Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.

I haven't examined their corpus. But actually the worst articles aren't particularly relevant. On HN we're interested in the good articles. Bad sites sometimes produce good articles, and those are the ones we want here. Conversely when a good site produces a bad article, we don't want it here.

Going by article quality rather than site quality works well for HN and has been this way for a long time. We have various penalties for various lower-quality (for HN) sites and various ways to override them.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father once told me that honor is what separates men from animals, and honor is what you do when nobody is looking. We all get to choose who we are. I was also fortunate to attend a university with an honor system, to the extent that exams weren't even allowed to be proctored. Whether you cheated or not was up to you, nobody would know. I appreciated that system, and have tried to live it long after graduation. I…

The honor system should extend to trusting employee's assessment of them being sick enough not to be able to work. No, we don't all get to choose who we are. People don't choose to have depression, or >

The honor system in the university trusted people to not cheat and they did not proctor exams. That doesn't mean cheating was condoned. If two students made exactly the same mistakes on an exam, there'd be an investigation, and consequences if it were found they'd cheated.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define sick. Contagious cold? A rough day with anxiety/depression? Struggling with the side effects of a new medicine? Hung over from a night of partying? If the company’s policy is 10 days, then there is zero reason to negatively judge an employee for using those days.

Just to clarify, your argument is that sick days should be used as PTO, because the term “sick” is impossible to define and therefore meaningless?

I’m actually a big proponent of generous but reasonable PTO that doesn’t require a designation between sick and vacation.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#266
post #263
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.

I haven't examined their corpus. But actually the worst articles aren't particularly relevant. On HN we're interested in the good articles. Bad sites sometimes produce good articles, and those are the ones we want here. Conversely when a good site produces a bad article, we don't want it here. Going by article quality rather than site quality works well for HN and has been this way for a long time. We have various pe…

[flagged]

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#267

Last year, I was interviewed for a public radio show in Europe. There was nothing more exciting for me to be in the spotlight. A week later they ran the interview and it was eerie to hear myself say things I didn't remember saying. I mean, I said it, but I didn't say it like that. At first I thought I was crazy and didn't remember the interview correctly. Luckily, I had recorded the whole session on my computer. I wa…

Every English class I've had growing up in America has a bunch of assignments like this:

1. Pick a topic.

2. Pick a position.

3. Find sources that support your position.

4. Write.

If English were held to the same high standard as the sciences, it would go:

1. Pick a topic.

2. Research sources.

3. Pick your position.

4. Write.

It's not surprising that the people who do the best in English have carried this mindset with them to their job.

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#268
post #263
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if Jacobin published articles on Lysenkoism and denounced rootless cosmopolitans.

I haven't examined their corpus. But actually the worst articles aren't particularly relevant. On HN we're interested in the good articles. Bad sites sometimes produce good articles, and those are the ones we want here. Conversely when a good site produces a bad article, we don't want it here. Going by article quality rather than site quality works well for HN and has been this way for a long time. We have various pe…

Where do you draw the line? People have submitted VDARE.COM links, and, in fact, more of them have survived flagging than not. I assume there's some kind of threshold past which we're not accepting articles no matter what their quality.

Non-racialized Quillette articles, by the way, have mostly served to endumben HN. See, for instance, "Sokal Squared" and "Mathematics Intelligencer".

(Jacobin doesn't belong here either!)

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#269
post #11

Lots of interesting and worthwhile detail, none of which undermines reporting about what goes on in warehouses in which the author does not work, nor does it undermine the argument that paying $30,000 a year for full time work in California is only possible because America maintains a permanent underclass willing to work for next to nothing.

I can kinda-sorta see what you mean by a "permanent underclass", but in what capacity does america "maintain" that class?

Re: I work in an Amazon warehouse in West Sacramento

#270
post #225

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?...

What if you need to take some time off? Your brother is getting married? Or you just haven't had a vacation in a while? You take your PTO now, and you don't take it later. If you leave the company before that PTO accrued it's taken off your salary. Yes! you can take vacation before it's accrued in any normal workplace.

One of the surprises I had when I was first hired and introduced to the benefits package I would be receiving was the fact that not only would I be receiving Paid Time Off (PTO ) but that I'd also receive a paid Vacation time on top of it all. This was a surprise b/c usually you either receive Vacation time that you gain a certain amount of allotted time from the start or you get PTO, or time that accrues over each work week. Here at Amazon we receive both on the first day of employment. Although they both are accrued over time, each Amazon employee starts off with 10 hrs of PTO each year while it will begin to accrue on top of that. - BrianD.J, Amazon FC Ambassador
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