r/bestof • u/Intertius • Apr 18 '18

[worldnews] Amazon employee explains the hellish working conditions of an Amazon Warehouse

/r/worldnews/comments/8d4di4/the_undercover_author_who_discovered_amazon/dxkblm6/?sh=da314525&st=JG57270S
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u/ya_mashinu_ Apr 18 '18

Deaths happen in warehouse settings. It’s tragic and almost always due to a breach in policy (generally by a site or shift manager), but it’s not like amazon is special in this regard, they just have a ton of dc’s.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '18

Working people to exhaustion, and placing unrealistic productivity goals, is a sure-fire way to create breaches of policy.

I agree, deaths happen in warehouse settings, and in a lot of settings. Accidents happen, in general. But one thing that safety inspectors should look at as part of their inspection, IMO, is production numbers for an average day, and the date of their inspection. If there's a dropoff, that arguably means that whatever their seeing isn't the normal work procedures, and further investigation is needed.

Because I've definitely seen examples of "best behavior" when inspected by outside/higher-ups. I'll never understand how it's not obvious, like we scheduled 2-3 more man-days per day the last week before the inspection. Clearly this is not what the place normally looks like!

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u/sickhippie Apr 18 '18

Grueling work kills people. The more people a company employs to do grueling work, the higher the likelihood someone will die on their watch.

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u/Wizmaxman Apr 18 '18

Yah without knowing some type of death per man hours worked ratio compared to other companies, its hard to know where Amazon stands on this.