311–320 of 475 posts
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It's probably best to avoid California all together.
Amazon has five fulfillment centers in California: Moreno Valley, Riverside, Redlands, Tracy and Patterson. Here are their fulfillment centers nationally: http://www.amazonfulfillmentcareers.com/amazon-fulfillment/l...
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No uniform? The least Amazon could do is send their drivers a hat and a sticker, or something.
NOPE! That could imply that they are employees and we all know that's impossible ;)
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My point is it's a pretty terrible example for you to pick. Baking is not a low-skill menial job. It's certainly not first in line in the "jobs that will get replaced by a machine" domino line.
It's actually a pretty good example because bread making can be completely automatized starting from ingredients mixing, to baking, packing and delivery to your supermarket. yet bakers do not disappear. What's not valid about this example?
They transform. "Bakeries" become just a pick-up point, where you buy bread that was baked in scale (probably in industrial ovens) and delivered to the store. Bakery employees nowadays have less to do with baking than McDonald's employees with frying fries (they still do something to them).
Sounds a lot like LaserShip which Amazon already uses sometimes here on the east coast. Minimally trained people delivering last mile packages using their own vehicle. Results are.... mixed.
I've got a suspicion that Amazon has been trialling/building this in the UK since their purchase of Yodel, perhaps earlier. A number of times some bloke in a car has turned up and delivered me a package. No uniform, no branding. Just a phone running Amazon software. I can't say it's the greatest experience.
I'm not looking for a "delivery experience".
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> What I don't understand, is why I can't pick my delivery slot for free. Because picking a delivery slot imposes a constraint which creates a cost for the delivery provider. > Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job. Most everybody has jobs, but most people I know don'…
> Which would eliminate the freedom of delivery companies to efficiently use delivery vehicles. At present ( in the UK ) most courier delivery fleets stand idle in the evening after being out during the day missing deliveries to people who are in work. And having to call again the next day. It perplexes me why they don't shift their delivery period six hours later to start at 15:00 and end at 21:00. That would cover…
Maybe they feel that even people doing delivery jobs are entitled to be home with their family at the end of the day?
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That is textbook trickle down economics which we have had for several decades, and look where it got us. We have some of the worst income inequality in the world, if not the worst . http://fortune.com/2014/10/31/inequality-wealth-income-us/
Inequality is bullshit. Inequality even starts at birth, what are you going to do about that? the only remedy to inequality as a whole is a Communist Paradise, and God we know that people do not like the idea of everyone being as equally poor as everyone else. Inequality, again, does not matter as long as everyone gets richer, including the poorer ones. Which has been the case. Mass starvations have stopped around th…
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What I don't understand, is why I can't pick my delivery slot for free. Everybody has jobs. Everybody finds it annoying to buy something on line. You never know when it's going to turn up. You have to take a day off, and hope your driver is competent at his job. Why can't you just say "I'll be at home on Thursday after 5pm. Call me on #555-333-9999 if you have any issues". Courier delivers the package after 5pm on Th…
In Poland, one company set up automated package drop points ("paczkomat", portmanteau of "paczka" - package, and "automat" - automaton, machine) in pretty much every big and small city. Couriers deliver packages to them both in the morning and in the evening, and you can pick them up 24/7 with no human interaction required (you get a one-time password via e-mail and text). This is godsend for people who work standard…
0. http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_366591722_2?encoding=UTF8&node=6442600011Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Everybody has jobs" Yes, even the delivery guys who have already been working all day and probably don't want to work past 5pm. There are several alternatives to get custom delivery schedules that work for you, like Amazon locker or Doorman.co.
How about the local post office or your mail box?
And my mailbox is a slot in the door. It's not going to accept my packages for me.
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You seem to be under the impression that baker and industrial bread maker are the same job. They are not. And the latter has long been (mostly) done by machine. This seems relevant: "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right."
> This seems relevant: "There isn’t a rule of economics that says better technology makes more, better jobs for horses. It sounds shockingly dumb to even say that out loud, but swap horses for humans and suddenly people think it sounds about right." Except that it does not make sense at all. Take 200 years ago, most folks were farmers. Take 100 years ago, there were now much more folks working somewhat qualified jobs…
The qualitative difference between now and 100 years ago is that those hipsters gave brains to the machines. The shift to service industries occured because machines replaced human muscle power. The hipsters started with replacing human precision, and now they're replacing human cognitive capabilities. Services sector is not safe.
It's also important to note what kinds of jobs are being created nowadays. A lot of them are "bullshit jobs" - make-believe work or elements of zero-sum-games like (big part of) advertising industry. Work has been disconnected from benefit it brings, we're literally (although usually indirectly) inventing nonsense tasks because we need to have something for people to do and not starve.