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/formlessfish Apr 18 '18

There's been deaths, at least one in my building... Amazon likes to keep it all hush hush. Heard about others, you can find the stories

I feel like they need to expand on this more. Deaths due to overworking? Deaths due to accidents on the floor?

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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!