Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
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Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#2From the article
A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set
number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the
scanner beeped."
"We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we
might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said.
Welcome to the future.
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#3I worked as a picker for a few days in a large distribution facility in my home town when I was in high school; this was over 20 years ago. They had rails everywhere through the complex which seemed to do nothing; when I asked what that was, they explained that they, together with the biggest IT company in NL, made software and robots to do our work automatically. It would be put in production the next year. It hasn't still. Why are humans still doing this work? Surely this can be automated, especially as companies have been working on that idea for well over 20 years, probably more?
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#4From the article A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the scanner beeped." "We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said. Really reminded me of this : http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Welcome to the future…
Goddamnit, why do the nasty predictions for the future have to arrive early while the nice ones are always late?
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#5I worked as a picker for a few days in a large distribution facility in my home town when I was in high school; this was over 20 years ago. They had rails everywhere through the complex which seemed to do nothing; when I asked what that was, they explained that they, together with the biggest IT company in NL, made software and robots to do our work automatically. It would be put in production the next year. It hasn'…
>Why are humans still doing this work?
They are cheaper. And it keeps them occupied.
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#6From the article A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the scanner beeped." "We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said. Really reminded me of this : http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Welcome to the future…
Goddamnit, why do the nasty predictions for the future have to arrive early while the nice ones are always late?
Because everything powered by greed gets fast lane access.
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#7I worked as a picker for a few days in a large distribution facility in my home town when I was in high school; this was over 20 years ago. They had rails everywhere through the complex which seemed to do nothing; when I asked what that was, they explained that they, together with the biggest IT company in NL, made software and robots to do our work automatically. It would be put in production the next year. It hasn'…
"Why are humans still doing this work?"
Given that Amazon is no stranger to technology I suspect the answer is that it simply doesn't make financial sense. I suspect the capex on a standard Amazon shipping center is probably pretty low (lease a warehouse, put in computer systems, hire a crowd of temp workers).
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#8I worked as a picker for a few days in a large distribution facility in my home town when I was in high school; this was over 20 years ago. They had rails everywhere through the complex which seemed to do nothing; when I asked what that was, they explained that they, together with the biggest IT company in NL, made software and robots to do our work automatically. It would be put in production the next year. It hasn'…
> Why are humans still doing this work? They are cheaper. And it keeps them occupied.
Cheaper I understand, however, it doesn't seem very healthy work. I worked with people doing it full time at that time (and apparently not much has changed); most of those had damaged hips from walking the same way behind the carts they pushed for 10-15 years. And I can see why this would mentally affect you, although I must say that most of them actually liked it. I was setting up a software business and was telling about that ; they were just saying 'why not work here, no stress, it's great! never any stress and fixed paycheck'. That sounds different than the Amazon one, but you cannot really do that in NL ; you can set a 'realistic, sustainable minimum' amount of work they have to do, but that differs per person; you cannot fire or reprimand someone for not 'making the beep' if that means you have to walk faster than normal or even run for it. So everyone would be quite relaxed and yet everything gets done with the people happy. So cheaper but unhealthy maybe?
Also; I don't know much about the robots involved and what they would cost and how much prices are going to drop; seeing that humans are wasting quite a bit of space on the floor and have other issues, I'm not sure if it's cheaper? I'm sure Amazon calculates that often though , so I guess it is.
Occupied; I see that as a reason, but that's an issue anyway; we cannot keep doing it that for that reason (and they don't, but as you say). If the work can be done by machines, it will be done with machines.
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#9Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding.
But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly why unions should exist, to counterbalance the inhumane over-optimization and maltreatment of people.
Amazon could probably make work less toxic by hiring 10% more people, but that would make things cost a few cents more.
Re: Amazon workers face 'increased risk of mental illness'
#10Here is another scary read: "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...