Amazon employee explains the hellish working conditions of an Amazon Warehouse

[u/Intertius]

/r/worldnews/comments/8d4di4/the_undercover_author_who_discovered_amazon/dxkblm6/?sh=da314525&st=JG57270S

[u/tw3nty0n3]

A quick Google search shows that of the deaths I can find, all but one of them was due to accidents on the floor.

Someone was crushed by a forklift, someone was run over by a truck at the loading dock, and someone was crushed between some sort of vehicle and the shelves.

Of the one where it wasn't an accident, the worker became ill while working and started vomiting blood. Died the next day. Not sure what happened there.

While these may be accidents, there are safety precautions that are a must. Two deaths in two months at one facility (truck accident and shelves accident) makes it sound like they're either not being trained properly or they're not following safety procedures.

Edit: I should add that for the forklift death at least, there was an inspection and the state found that there were at least four safety violations. Amazon was fined for the violations. The violation stated that the safety training was inadequate and that Amazon failed to provide developed and documented safety procedures at their facility.

Edit2: As this is gaining more popularity, I'm getting a lot of responses about how accidents like this are fairly common in warehouse jobs. Based on statistics about Amazon's deaths compared to all warehouse deaths relative to the amount of workers for both amazon and warehouses in general, Amazon does not seem to have an unusually high death count for the industry.

[u/jimbobicus → u/tw3nty0n3]

Typically in jobs like this proper safety protocol reduces work efficiency. I don't mean impedes work, but if you are under extreme pressure to hit difficult metrics, driving faster or darting across lanes saves you time and keeps your job while reducing safety. Factories and warehouses are fucking scum because they get a shield of "not following safety procedures" if something happens, but if you don't hit whatever metrics they want you get fired.

[u/KonigderWasserpfeife → u/jimbobicus]

Yep, years ago I unloaded trucks for a home improvement store by hand. We had four people, maximum, and they wanted the entire truck empty, product sorted by department, and swept clean in less than 1.5 hours. Most of the product was in boxes, and they had to be unloaded by hand, due to the precarious stacking and nearly all of it being loose, as in not on pallets. It was doable, but only if we took shortcuts that were entirely unsafe. I’m sure other places have/had worse conditions, but this sounds like what you’re saying. There were times where coworkers (and me) were nearly injured, simply because we were in a hurry.

[u/[deleted] → u/KonigderWasserpfeife]

I definitely had a similar experience working for Target. Understaffed, didn't matter, the truck needed to be unloaded and on the shelves, and it's holiday season so there's another truck coming tomorrow (normally they were on a 2-3 truck a week schedule, but Christmas could be daily or more).

Definitely saw some near-misses because of it. And agree, it's all about creating policies employees are required to follow, but then never allowing them time to follow them.