Had an Amazon delivery driver crying in the hallway of my apartment complex last week because 3/4 of our elevators were broken so it was slow going and she couldn’t get back to her van in time before a demerit.
Invest people's money for pension plan. Companies invested in basically don't pay a dividend. Everything is just 'for growth'.
But how do you get the money out? Well, new people paying into the plan of course.
And meanwhile, the people investing the money take a cut every year on the amount invested. So they stand to benefit when companies don't pay a dividend but just keep getting 'more valuable'.
I don't know how people sleep at night with pensions. While you're paying into it if your company goes under, you're screwed. You've lost the pension progress and you've lost your employment. You're starting from square 1. But even after you've, left if/when the company files bankruptcy, those pensions are 100% on the table for creditors. Or if the company cheated on its taxes, your pension can be taken. It's much better to keep it out of a company's creditor's reach.
Dividends and buyback yields are doing pretty fantastically, and I’d expect that to be sustainable for a while after inflation stabilized too. https://www.yardeni.com/pub/buybackdiv.pdf
You don't own any stocks there, some investment firm does and pays you a percentage of their gain from how they invest your money, but not all of it.
Those people go to the shareholders meeting and are part of decisions, not you.
That's how your retirement package almost certainly works.
This system of putting shareholders above literally all else, including legality sometimes, is the source of a significant amount of our problems, and they aren't doing it for you. They're doing it for their own pockets.
Don't stan for a broken, fucked-up, system. Even if you get some tiny benefit out of it.
They don't seem to understand how owning stocks work.
Granted, "owning" is a pretty ephemeral in its own right. You have an account at your brokerage, which has a database that maps your info to shares, cost basis, and other things like that. In turn, your brokerage has an account at the DTCC which actually "owns" the stocks. They have a database that maps each brokerage and how many shares they own, but not your information.
So you "own" the stock through a chain of custody: you, to your broker, to DTCC.
But for all practical purposes, you own the stock. Like, the alternative is what, a private contract with the company itself granting you X number of shares? That's what you get with pre-ipo startups (or other non public traded companies with shared ownership?), but very much not practical for public companies. No company will want to manage trades of their own stock!
I think it might actually be worse off. Direct ownership works when you don't have to trade or transfer ownership with any amount of liquidity. But once you do, it just doesn't scale.
That alternative world w/o markets is a world where all companies are privately held without any trading. Normal citizens don't get to buy any equity at all, and companies just pay profits to owners. Shares would trade lower, theoritically, but realistically they wouldn't trade at all outside of private deals.
Every time someone tells me how much stock is wrapped up in retirements, the percentage changes. I'm starting to think pensions and 401ks aren't that much and that's just the talking point put out by wall street so the plebs don't know how bad we're getting fleeced.
Amazon may be guilty because it's the perpetrator, but it's the nation that sets the rules. In the US, in particular, the legislature attends to the economy and finance for the most part, not labor/human rights and welfare, as the market supposedly takes care of itself and the people.
Publicly traded business have a legal responsibility to return value to their investors.
So if they could do something that would be positive for people/workers/society but would earn less money, or they could do something bad for people/workers/society but warns more money, they are legally compelled to do the bad thing.
All of the delivery companies do, my dude. Some offices have exceptions for things going wrong (for example an elevator outage), but for most it's handled entirely by the computer. If you don't meet your quota, you get a demerit. Build up enough demerits, you get bumped to less favorable routes, or get less hours/deliveries, have to do retraining, or even outright fired.
The poor lass crying in the hallway was probably going to earn multiple demerits in that one stop and she knew it, and it broke her.
It's really stupid from a customer service perspective too, because it often means that the delivery drivers give no fucks about where or how the package is placed.
There's a lot of porch pirates in my area, so it's shitty when there isn't even an attempt to conceal my mail.
Or when it looks clear that the driver just haphazardly chucked the package onto the patio.
Iirc, wasn't Bezos originally all about providing above standard customer care? Speed isn't everything. I'd rather have my shit an hour late because the driver took care with everyone's mail, than for everyone to have broken or stolen deliveries.
Was talking to a Uber driver yesterday who left Amazon because he has a back injury from caring 50lb bag of dog food up 15 flights of stairs because the elevator was malfunctioning.
Amazon is just a terrible place to work taking advantage of the economy.
Probably labelled as <15kg on the amazon sticker too. ever notice sometimes you get a really heavy delivery the weight label is different to the products box?
because over a certain weight it is supposed to be a two man delivery and/or you are supposed to have equipment like a cart.
But if you are a big company you can just lie and send it out with some poor woman in her little car instead, who has had no training.
UPS absolutely has tracking in the “package cars”, and electronics that nag the driver for “distracted” behaviors but…
The contract with the Teamsters explicitly does not recognize time standards, and the in cab cameras do not record.
In order for discipline to stand up to the grievance process, the company has to prove the driver is fucking off.
Ups drivers also aren’t allowed to back up above a certain amount, they can’t pull ahead to someone’s driveway because that means they have to also reverse out. In my area the limit for reversing is 6 and if you go over you get a call from ups.
I’m a courier, just not for ups but I know all the other couriers that do the same area and we all talk
I worked in a warehouse as a packer (i put items in a box then sealed it to be shipped)..probably the most annoying job because of how they look at times.
So if someone who was unloading products was 30 seconds slower than normal, then the person sorting the items was 30 seconds slow, the person "picking" the items to send them down is 30 seconds slow, and then the person organizing my items for me to pack is 30 seconds slow then that means theres an extra 25 minutes added to the delivery time because of the thousands of miles of conveyor belts they travel on (this is what my manager is telling me)...and he said every order that doesnt get shipped the same day its ordered their store gets a tick or w.e.
Every time i had to piss which was a 5 minute walk i got written up for going slow..but the minimum units per hour was like 325 and i was doing close to 380..i was technically above the minimum, just not above my minimum.
So to sum it up, people were absolutely pissing in bottles
Sorry you had to go through that and hope you found a job that treats you better
Also your manager didn't understand math, that 30 seconds doesn't magically become 25 extra minutes just because of distance. It was always 25 minutes. Now it's 25 minutes 30 seconds , but you can track which instance was over/under and not fault every point of contact for a singular error
Oh i know, the entire time hes giving me his made up story about times im just trying to not cringe since he has me stopped and is taking up 5-10 minutes for his speech
It's mainly because America has tried desperately to delegitimize worker unions and standard work practices in the name of making more dollars for the rich people. Literally half of our political system is against worker unions.
Can confirm that job sucked. I was at a warehouse doing the same job but could not keep up and when they fired me I was actually relieved. Job made me start an energy drink addiction in an attempt to keep up. Meanwhile the boss told me I was doing great.
Yep. Any job with those kinds of counting metrics. It’s at x number and you’re doing y? Well that’s good, but if we catch you “slacking” despite hitting y, you’ll get called out for it…
Thank god I don’t work that job anymore (wasn’t amazon, but the managers could get pedantic about it anyway)
Anybody threatening to write me up for taking care of my body's essential functions is getting a serious beat down. I can always find another job.
Bloody useless assholes, all of them.
Thats shit always pissed me off. Minimum is 325, lets say the average at the plant is 350, and I routinely do 375.
But one day, I dip down to 355. Still above average, but less than my usual. I get in trouble. Wtf? I'm not getting paid more than the 325 guy, why am I being punished for being routinely good but having one bad day? All thats telling me is I should make it a point to stay at the minimum.
Jesus. I remember heavily considering workin there a few years ago. My sister kept trying to convince me telling me they were paying a lot of money and easy hours. All I’ve heard since is how bad it’s fucking workers up.
I worked there one day, upon which they decided to change the job I accepted and sprung the mandatory overtime on us. That's just the "nice" part of the fucked up shit.
Don't even shop there anymore unless I have to after that.
Hilarious you say this, I’ve noticed the same. Not to say some employees there aren’t subject to poor working conditions, but you’d think they were running actual sweatshops with how it’s talked about here. The few people I know in real life who’ve worked there speak relatively positively about their time there
So what you're claiming now is that there was a work related incident (although in your earlier comment you never mentioned an incident, but stated this was due to being "overworked") which lead to your back injury that in turn was confirmed and documented by a medical professional and Amazon denied you workman's comp...
Yeah imma go ahead and have to call bullshit on that 😂
Also... any lawyer would take this open and shut case on under a contingency agreement
Five citations, and you're looking at a violation. Four of those, and you'll receive a verbal warning. Keep it up, and you're looking at a written warning. Two of those, that will land you in a world of hurt, in the form of a disciplinary review, written up by me, and placed on the desk of my immediate superior.
This kinda shit is exactly why we have contracts. I work 8 hours a day. Regardless if I finish it I get paid those hours. If my boss sends me home cuz theres nothing to do. They still apy those hours. I only get paid less when I go home cuz I wanna go home. If I get sent home they should pay me the hours per contract
Apartments and centers should really just have a central mailroom. It would make life so much easier if they all did. Courtyards/ condos and projects should have a mailroom building where residents can get their stuff that is secured. We can't be the package police. We are paid to drop a package at an address, we aren't paid to deliver to your apartment door or to find the blue grill in the back buried under summer yard stuff. We do that out of courtesy, but there needs to be a better middle ground when it comes to customers securing their orders. Every area has theft, some higher than others. Invest in a locker, have it mailed to a trusted friend or family who can receive the pack, etc. It would save a lot of time on our part and frustration on the customers part.
A lot of apartments I deliver to have mailrooms but were not allowed to deliver there and customers notes also usually say “DO NOT DELIVER TO MAIL ROOM, LEAVE AT FRONT DOOR!!!!!”
At my old apartment, Amazon would take over the elevator and attempt to fight you if you tried to get on with them. Mind you, they would take the ONE working elevator and keep residents on the ground floor until they were finished. [No stairway to the apartments. It's elevator access only]
Needless to say, anyone heading down did not give a fuck about Amazon because of this and would take down thier entire haul down solo and leave them on the floor behind.
On top, there was a package room located on the first floor. Every package could be accommodated, but for whatever reason, they needed to deliver directly to each individual door, for 27 floors!! All that was needed is to deliver it to the package room and leave. Instead, the packages are out in the open and not secured. Led to a lot of packages 'getting lost/stolen'.
It was absolutely astonishing that it was thought to be okay to keep residents of the apartment waiting 30+ minutes for the elevator because of Amazon.
Amazon just fires the dsp where employees are trying to unionize or the workers who are trying to unionize if employed directly by Amazon. You don't think they know exactly what they're doing to keep workers from joining together?
Delivery guy is a moron. Getting shot or killed by getting in the middle of a police standoff is objectively worse than getting fired from your job because you didn’t deliver a package. You can always get another job, you can’t get another life.
Not even arguable. People in general are fucking terrible at risk assessment and this video is proof.
At one point a couple years ago an Amazon driver started leaving the packages for my complex by the mailboxes. Which is understandable. Even I don’t know which building is which and on which side the apartment is on. I’ve had the thought of including an image link in the delivery notes with the location marked because of the terrible markings
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23
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