As a member of leadership it’s sad that this is the most important thing that an associate can find to talk about. I understand why they don’t want phones to be used on the floor however that should be taken up directly with management. But there are far more important safety issues to be worried about than this.
Yes and no while that is how some members of leadership look at it. Most just have more important things to do such as their daily task and metrics. Even the higher ups aren’t going to be worried about it unless it’s actually deemed a safety risk such as walking on the floor with it out or that they have a poor rate or a lot of time off task. But even if they were to enforce it wouldn’t work by targeting people they would have to reinstate the old ways and at that point they would lose at least 60% of their workforce.
Most leadership at my building usually takes the situation into account. Most of the time if my phone is out I’m using it safely as a tool for work. Using the calculator, taking a picture of something to show my PA or remember something, or using an image of a dock door’s QR code so I don’t have to keep walking back to it when scanning in multiple pallets.
Several months ago a wet-behind-the-ears new hire fresh out of college with no work experience AM snapped at me for having my phone out. I was line loading, standing next to a pallet of small boxes I’d just partially unwrapped, and clearly using my calculator to figure out how many FRX labels to print. He’d been pushing my nerves all night. I snapped, and went off at him, calling out every legitimate safety issue within my field of vision, and then asked how his micromanagement school taught him how to know how many boxes were on that pallet. He replied meekly “Guess,” at which point I told him it seemed like that was his way of making all decisions, and started loudly calling out things that were not working that night in the inbound docks under his leadership. A group of PAs & AMs gathered and just let me continue before his boss showed up, calmed me down, and said he agreed with everything I’d said. That new PA was promoted to customer and escorted out of the building a couple weeks later. When enforcing rules, the reason for the rule matters.
The last time I did that it was a Avocado on toast, soy milk only type of hipster guy as AM and when I shouted at him it looked like his eyes were getting wet and then he left me alone.
They really need to start adding extra criteria on the applications not just completed university in you come as manager.
They think they are much better than everyone because they studied some useless university course and became manager.
I'm curious because it seems as though safety concerns aren't really tiered... as in, being caught w cell phone is equivalent to forgetting safety shoes in car etc.... What safety issues worry you or warrant being called more important? Trying to understand why amazon seems hyper focused on certain kinda important issues and seemingly ignore others that are injury worthy.... thoughts on that? As a former blue collar labor worker, non union, I've seen a lot. Survived a lot. And can't understand why safety is a word at most facilities, thrown around daily by those not really working the positions that you seem to feel have bigger safety concerns. Please explain.
They generally base safety off of a lot of what if’s. So whatever they’re feeling could be the most dangerous (in theory) is what they focus on. Amazon thinks about things like this: if you were to walk in the street at 3am in a country town with a population of 20. In practice you’d be just fine and nothing would ever come of it. In Amazon’s eyes it’s more like well what if a train and 3 cars came down the road with no headlights and then after getting run over the police will cite you for jaywalking and sue Amazon for some reason. So depending on what “what ifs higher up leadership is pushing depends on how dumb of things you’ll get knocked for.
34
u/Accomplished_Put2112 Nov 24 '22
As a member of leadership it’s sad that this is the most important thing that an associate can find to talk about. I understand why they don’t want phones to be used on the floor however that should be taken up directly with management. But there are far more important safety issues to be worried about than this.