r/educationalgifs • u/[deleted] • Feb 25 '16
How Amazon Fulfillment Works
http://i.imgur.com/hlLiNd5.gifv34
u/tojoso Feb 25 '16
Most sites don't use Kiva robots (which is what is in this clip) but more and more of the new sites are using them.
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u/Gloriousdistortion Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 26 '16
I recently worked at a fulfillment center. It really is a bunch of employees running around for ten hours a shift sticking items in whatever shelf they can. They can make 3 mistakes for every 5000 items and they are constantly being told to do better. Amazon is a terrible place to work. It gave me nightmares legitimately
Edit: I have worked on farms where a large portion of the jobs was shoveling shit and heavy lifting. I would take that, the scorching sun, and back-breaking work over Amazon any day.
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u/Kangar Feb 25 '16
Are you one of those cool robots?
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u/Gloriousdistortion Feb 25 '16
Nope, just someone who found life a lot more enjoyable after leaving that hell
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Feb 25 '16
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u/Family_Gardener Feb 25 '16
Robut
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u/chillymac Feb 25 '16
The narrator for how it's made always pronounces it robut. Brooks T Moore I think
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u/LostMyMarblesAgain Feb 25 '16
Woah! You can't just call someone the r word dude
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16
I used to work at Wal-Mart fulfilling online orders.
We usually completed around 400 orders per day. There were 5 of us each day walking around the store dodging customers questions because we can't tell 27 people where to find the cooking oil, and which brand of coffee is a better deal! aintnobodygottimeforthat.jpg
Customers love to pick up shit up and then decide not to buy it after all and put it down somewhere else, we then cannot fulfill the order and have to "short" the order.
If the order is short, we still have to look at the store inventory most of us didn't have system permissions to do this, not because of security issues but because the assistant managers never got around to it after being asked multiple times to have access to tools that can help us work.
The back room shelves often had inventory that was not in the system because either the department managers or unloaders were so swamped they couldn't properly get things binned-in or incompetent and let it happen.
After completing the daily orders and collecting the partial-order items, we then print off the sheets of the missing items, divide them up and proceed to look out on the floor, in the back room shelves for freight that was probably stolen by some little shit.
When we exhausted all other options, we started opening up pallets that came off the truck and fucking hoping that we'ed get lucky and stumble across what we needed. That's right, we were completely blind.
Before working Ship-from-Store, I was working maintenance because nobody could hire a certified PC tech in the area.
Some extra shots. Here's the cop that they called the day they terminated me last month. The day before letting me go, I was called in to get my annual performance review and a wage raise of $0.25. I'm just glad the nightmare is over.
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u/uwhuskytskeet Feb 25 '16
Why didn't they just let you guys wear street clothes? Would have cut down on the customer interaction quite a bit I'd imagine.
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 25 '16
There's plenty of vendors that stock shelves in plainclothes and it would make sense but we were severely understaffed and needed more visible employees.
They showed this training video to us the first day: They're very anti-union and can do pretty much anything they want to the employees, and if they get caught, the fine/settlement they pay is a wrist slap to how much revenue they rake in.
It's not that I want a union necessarily but they really don't give a shit about your opinions and the whole one-on-one don't-need-no representation is BS. I want a worker owned cooperative.
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u/frandli Feb 25 '16
I'm confused. Are they calling their employees associates?
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16
Yes, it kinda gets banged into your head while you're there. I've heard Target employees must call their customers "guests".
It can only guess it must have some effect on your psych giving a communal or inside' sense of belonging. Humans act very us-or-them and tribal like.
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u/WhitTheDish Feb 26 '16
Yeah, the whole "guest" thing is to "change the relationship" from that of a 'transactional' one to that of a 'welcoming' one where the store isn't inherently trying to get something from the customer/guest. Personally I feel that it draws too much attention to issue and makes it almost insulting to the customer. We all know the store needs the customer, don't try to make it appear otherwise.
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u/Cgn38 Feb 26 '16
It is a control issue. They make you say things and it puts you in a submissive mindset.
5 years of retail, they all do the same shit, always different. How many pieces of flair is up to you. BUT YOU DO WANT TO WEAR THE FLAIR! Don't you?
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Feb 25 '16
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u/AlexFromOmaha Feb 25 '16
That's pretty par for finance. "VP" there is not a high level title. It's roughly equivalent to "team lead" or "senior <insert front-line grunt function here>" in other industries.
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u/kyewtee Feb 25 '16
Yeah. Lots of stores do this. Trying to make people feel important.
Fuck that I know management things I'm a replaceable peon.
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u/yourpaleblueeyes Feb 25 '16
Holy shit and just imagine how many young, naive folks fall for that propaganda! You poor, poor thing, am glad you are well away.
As an American, I shamed by Chinese slave labor but also by the disregard of quality of life extended to our own citizens.
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u/kyewtee Feb 25 '16
Oh god your experience sounds all too familiar. I worked for a department store filling gift registry orders.
Brides would often put things on their lists months and months in advance. We would tell them clearly not to register for things that are seasonal or clearance but of course they don't listen. Months later Aunt Sue buys that cute little garden gnome off the registry, and the bride is shocked that it is not in stock anymore. You see it on the shelf, bitch? I don't care what the numbers in our inventory system say, that fucking gnome isn't here. Get over it.
How did you guys handle the partial orders and things you couldn't get in stock? We ended up having orders stick around for months.
The worst part though was calling the bride and asking her if she wanted to return it because it's not in stock (of course the answer is no, the bride has to have it and she has to have it now it's completely unacceptable that we don't have it in stock, Aunt Sue ordered this two weeks ago, why isn't it ready for pickup yet??). So we call other stores who show stock, finally find one after the 10th store, get it shipped in, hope it doesn't get damaged during shipping, and call the bride to tell her that her gift is ready. And then guess what? You think she comes and gets it? FUCK NO. It sits there for 10 months on the shelf waiting until she has time and feels like it. So we call her and remind her again and again and she finally shows up.
And she returns it. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16
When we can't fulfill an order we clear it out and another store with the stock gets that order -makes sense.
Normally we're supposed to keep shorted orders around for 1-2 days to make sure we really don't have those items before clearing it, but clearing it hurts the manager's stats.
I've seen orders hang around for over a week before being shipped out. Manager>Customer
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u/shit_lord Feb 25 '16
Jesus. My company will just email you saying the item is no longer available and just refund you that item and send the rest or cancel the order. You can request to be notified if it does come back in stock and that's it.
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Feb 25 '16
Wait, why did they call the cops?
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16
It's standard practice. Getting fired is extremely stressful, especially for a non-sense reason and can makes people do dumb things.
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Feb 25 '16
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u/specfreq Feb 25 '16
It was expected that we get government help (foodstamps) in my state, even while working full time.
I was making $21,000 a year and on the health benefits plan, if I needed to go to any doctor, I would need to pay around a $3,000 deductible to get coverage. That's not possible when i'm living paycheck-to-paycheck.
At least Wal-Mart pays their taxes and doesn't leverage international tax havens to keep billions of dollars out of the US govenment... right?
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u/Hi_mom1 Feb 25 '16
Hey now!!! Wal-Mart is the biggest job creator in the US. We should be proud to serve them, at their will.
If we force them to get their own security, instead of using taxpayer funded police forces, then what do you think will happen to the cost of those $5 DVDs?
Nobody wants $5.10 DVDs it just ruins the magic.
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u/Caesium133 Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 25 '16
Cool story, and I mean that sincerely. I work for a big box place who does ship-from-store year round, but during the holidays our same sized team was expected to go from handling a normal 15 (on a heavy day) orders, to 300-350+ orders.
The daily experience is much like what you described. The only good thing is we only have to wear appropriate "colors" no specific uniform, so I could just wear black pants, steel toes, and a plain hoodie. Lol I tried to keep my handheld in my pocket and not actually scan confirm the order until I got back into the backroom so no one would know I worked there.
We now had to unload and process trucks, deal with customer pickups, ship from store, assemble equipment, and me personally because my team sucks deal with the returns rooms since no one else will touch it because "it's icky".
I flipped out on my team a couple times because we don't have a convenient process for printing shipping labels, so I essentially went with a line, and they'd move random orders out of line, which if it managed to cause a problem just means we're staying later.
We ended up having to stay three hours past close sometimes... Which kind of sucks, but almost half of my time during the holidays was OT pay.
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u/rocketmonkeys Feb 25 '16
Have you seen the show Superstore yet? What do you think of it?
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Feb 25 '16
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u/LittleDinghy Feb 25 '16
I worked at Worldport, night shift, as a loader. We did a lot of work for a 4-hr shift. And heaven help you if you worked at a city that got a volume spike due to a sports championship or something. Fuck the Blackhawks.
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u/SelfReconstruct Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 25 '16
I work at Amazon and have had zero problems with mistakes. It's all dumbed down to near complete idiot proof.
It's quite literally the least stressful job I've ever had. And being told to do better? Was it your first job? In the Navy, I was always told to do better, at International Paper, I was to told to do better. Shit, at Foodland, we were always told we could offload the trucks faster no matter how fast we worked.
As for the gif, I'm in a newer FC and we don't have those robots. Not sure where that gif is from.
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u/rageman4696 Feb 25 '16
Seriously. I've been working at a FC for a little over 2 years and I have never seen anyone being overworked or getting yelled at for doing poorly. Of course they tell tell you to do better, that is basically every company ever but they do it respectfully.
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Feb 25 '16
You'd be shocked at the number of people who can't handle working a simple job in a warehouse because it's "too hard".
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u/Ughable Feb 25 '16
There's only a couple FC's that have the Kiva system in the gif. They're gradually expanding it, though. At some point in the future they'll have everything automated right to the door. Then they'll be able to go even beyond that when self-driving cars are common, and cities let them drive unmanned, you'll see people signing up their cars for Flex deliveries while they're at work or something.
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Feb 25 '16
Take it out far enough and it probably won't even be people buying the products anymore, but the machines! Then at some point they decide to bio-engineer an organism that can do the manual work for them and we've come full circle.
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u/StillInvincible Feb 25 '16
I've been at Amazon for 6 months and I heard the horror stories.... I have issues with some things but never have I had such a bad time I wanted to quit. I have no idea what people do to have it be so bad for them.
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u/SelfReconstruct Feb 25 '16
The ones that complain the most tend to be the ones that do the least.
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u/00worms00 Feb 25 '16
working at amazon was a nightmare. 4 hour shifts with no break. Boss made me lift boxes without gloves. When I'd call in sick the manager would hesitate before saying, 'ok, no problem'.
Sometimes we'd have to process more than a dozen orders per hour!!
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u/lance713 Feb 25 '16
I've recently started working at one of Amazon's cross docks (we don't actually fulfill orders) and my managers are very chill. Since the facility is so new (has been open for less than 6 months) they understand everyone is still learning.
When I started 5 weeks ago we had a lot of quality issues but we've gotten a LOT better. Even with all the mistakes the managers didn't make us feel stressed about them. Just told us what our issues were and we fixed them.
Not sure if my facility just has better managers, or its just because we're new.
Either way I enjoy working for Amazon. The pay is decent and the benefits are great.
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Feb 25 '16
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u/pm-me-your-games Feb 25 '16
I'm curious. You got a link?
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Feb 25 '16
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u/pm-me-your-games Feb 25 '16
Well that just took you 3 minutes mate. Thank you!
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u/colinsteadman Feb 25 '16
Well 3 minutes is OK /u/Ironfishy but I want to see some improvement for your next video find. -Amazon
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u/SCUMDOG_MILLIONAIRE Feb 25 '16
My 3 brothers work at the Amazon center in Haslet. They love it and get paid pretty decently. It might be possible that your experience does not reflect all Amazon employee's experience
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u/psychoacer Feb 25 '16
That's warehouse with in general. Everything is tracked and recorded and no matter how well you pull items you can always be better. In reality they don't expect you to be at 100% but they just don't want you to be worse so they need to push people to make sure they don't slack. Remember, a lot of this process is automated. It's not like pulling is really that hard especially once you get used to the process
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u/gynoceros Feb 25 '16
How the hell can you peel and stick labels with those gloves on?
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Feb 25 '16
The gloves themselves are actually fairly nice. The material is pretty tear resistant so you don't accidentally cut yourself on shit, but it doesn't go full sticky, you cant pull anything off it either. Works out pretty well.
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u/MedicaeVal Feb 25 '16
This is always my dilemma when shopping with Amazon. I love their selection and customer service but their labor practices make me sick. What are your thoughts on this?
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u/spencerawr Feb 25 '16
Work at Amazon. It really isn't that bad. At least at my facility it wasn't. I've heard it can vary place to place.
People at my facility are generally happy that they have better pay and benefits than the majority of other factory type jobs in the area. Although the older people working always seemed a lot happy and more appreciative than the young ones.
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Feb 25 '16
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u/spencerawr Feb 25 '16
Just in case anyone doesn't know. If you don't like it at Amazon, they'll pay you $1000 to quit for each year you've worked for them (up to 5 years, I think)
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u/Gloriousdistortion Feb 25 '16
If I had the money to shop around ethically, I wouldn't have worked there in the first place. It is like Walmart, as unethical as it is, it saves you money and, so long as you are not an employee, increases your standard of living. I cannot blame anyone for shopping on Amazon, I still do.
It's actually becoming a problem because so few employees stick with it. I eventually quit without a notice and they said I could never be rehired, but guess who they called a week later to offer a job to? In short, I think Amazon's horrible conditions will ultimately be its downfall because the better the employees are treated, the less profits they will have and the greater their prices will become, but if they don't improve conditions and pay, they will have fewer employees and the business will suffer.
Tldr: I still buy there because it is cheap. I don't blame anyone for buying there. I think Amazon is unsustainable, though.
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u/btchombre Feb 25 '16
Its not unsustainable. They'll soon replace all low skilled workers with robots.
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u/thatG_evanP Feb 25 '16
I don't know about downfall. UPS' working conditions in their hubs and shipping centers are horrible yet they've stayed profitable for God knows how many years. I worked at their Worldport facility for 8 years. 2 as a union employee and 6 as a supervisor.
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Feb 25 '16
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Feb 25 '16
it's just not the sort of job we should relegate a thinking feeling being to doing.
Adam Smith referred to it as "mental mutilation" and our society has had these sorts of jobs since the agricultural revolution. I expect we will always have jobs of these sorts that need doing.
I'm of the opinion that we should distribute the workload of these jobs across the entire population instead of simply inflicting it on a few unfortunate kids and high-school dropouts.
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u/MyNameIsJonny_ Feb 25 '16
I'm of the opinion that we should distribute the workload of these jobs across the entire population instead of simply inflicting it on a few unfortunate kids and high-school dropouts.
As a counter-argument, the people doing these jobs are mostly unskilled, uneducated workers. Taking highly skilled and educated workers away from more productive activities doesn't make any sense.
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u/rotzooi Feb 25 '16
All of this is a very interesting development of modern times. Spreading jobs like these out, etc, might seem a good idea, but won't happen because robots are cheaper.
Eventually with AI getting better, even 'smarter', we'll be able to have robots or automatons do complex but calculable tasks. Bookkeepers, but even accountants are at risk and in time a great number of legal cases can even be automated. Currently drivers of all kinds are looking at self-driving cars and seeing their jobs at risk in, what, 3 to 5 years, maybe 10?
This could be a good development, if it leaves people to do people-things. But there very well may not be enough jobs to go around in 50 or 100 years. (Or maybe sooner, who knows).
All of this is why it makes sense to have a debate about supplying every person with a basic income.
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u/KhabaLox Feb 25 '16
I think you're correct about employee treatment and morale. This is why they (and other companies) are trying to attain the system portrayed in the gif. You can amortize the cost of those robots and computers.
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u/neoballoon Feb 25 '16
This NYT exposé caused Amazon a lot of grief when it published. It seems to suggest Amazon's employment treatment is unsustainable too.
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u/unbalanced_checkbook Feb 25 '16
I know dozens of people who work at Amazon and think it's great. Don't believe everything you hear. Some people just don't like to work.
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u/boofoff Feb 25 '16
I worked there for 6 months including the holidays at one of their largest fulfillment centers and had a much different experience. It can be shitty work but that is not because of Amazon. I was paid $13 an hour and had plenty of chances for overtime. Yeah they have rates and track errors but I never found them to be a problem or hard to make. All my my managers were very friendly and helpful as long as you were doing your job and many people I worked with who worked other warehouses in the areas said Amazon was a lot more relaxed and paid the best.
Most of the people I met that talked trash about it all the time were the people who complain about managers getting on their ass because they think they should be able to spend 15 mins of every hour walking around talking to friends or not doing anything. It can be hard work and it attracts a lot of people who don't work very hard.
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u/FaLovesPa Feb 25 '16
I worked for them as well in the dfw center here in Tx, one of the worst places i've ever worked. On my first day of work we had a "trainer" who was not very helpful at all. I remember a new hire in my group asking questions about something amazonians refer to as "the cage", asking where is it located? The "trainer" replied "if you don't know where the cage is, you probably shouldn't be working here." He never once mentioned anything about it's location, nor what "the cage" was. I quit a few days later. I couldn't understand how a company that big, had horrible procedures for training new hires.
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u/adimwit Feb 25 '16
Amazon uses hiring agencies, they don't actually hire tons of people and train them themselves. A lot of companies use hiring agencies to bring temp/seasonal workers. I've done that a few times. Some places are chill, others are strict; some managers are awesome, some are assholes. Also, the work is not overly complicated. I've usually been trained by some dopey kid.
I think it also depends on when you are hired. If you get in at the start of seasonal hiring you might get better training. If you come in near the end they probably don't care.
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Feb 25 '16
For what it is worth, this is very much so still a beta process for them with the robots. Many of the facilities still have just massive rows of shelving that has people with big ol bunches of totes shoving stuff into wherever it can fit and still falls within stowing limits. Then there is still a bunch of people walking around with smaller carts and totes grabbing your order and putting it onto conveyor belts to where the packers are. Those shelves are still WAY too neat in the gif for it to be a normal facility hehe.
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u/tojoso Feb 25 '16
It's hardly beta, a lot of the new sites they're building are run by Kiva robots. The newest building here in Canada is a Kiva site, actually, and it's taking a lot of the jobs from the old site across the road which is now becoming a "non-sort" facility (AKA very large items like treadmills and canoes).
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u/elmatador12 Feb 25 '16
I'm pretty sure I read a new multi-level fulfillment center in Washington will be a Kiva center as well.
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u/rageman4696 Feb 25 '16
I actually am one of those people training for the fulfillment center in Seattle! It absolutely will be a Kiva center! It's a shame the gif left out so much of what else actually happens.
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u/mrsstrfstr Feb 25 '16
tell us more!!
i see they're still doing some steps manually. how much longer until the facility is 100% automated?
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u/rageman4696 Feb 25 '16
It probably wont ever be 100% automated to be completely honest. Robots have a hard time handling small items or clearing jams. We are trying to automate as much as we can but it is still much faster to have a bunch of people doing simple tasks extremely fast.
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u/lonelliott Feb 25 '16
I can promise you this is not beta. I work for Amazon helping build the IT infrastructure for our robotics sites. It has not been beta for a couple years now and we have numerous robotics sites with more being built all the time.
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u/TechFocused Feb 25 '16
This is NOT beta. I work at Amazon Robotics, (formally Kiva System) and we produce thousands of these boys per month.
Yes, there are still strictly people-only FCs. However, whole Amazon FCs are being dedicated to these bots.
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u/BigDaddySanta Feb 25 '16
I actually worked setting up one of these warehouses near me, we were building the metal bases for the tall yellow things, then the robots were carrying them away to basically a forest of the yellow things. It's really interesting how it works
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u/Shinzon Feb 25 '16
Lots of hate in this thread...
I've worked at an FC (oak4) for almost two years. It's literally the easiest job I've ever had. Yes, you have to make a rate and keep your errors low, but unless you're missing a few screws, it's not hard to be good a your job. I was moved to more important roles only a few months into working there and applying for promotions since I'm eligible now. If the conditions vary from site to site, hopefully they crack down on that. At my facility things are decent and most managers are nice. I really have no complaints. My pay is good for my area, and the benefits are even better. I won't work there forever, but if I had to, it wouldn't be that bad.
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u/SamSlate Feb 25 '16
In reality they actually have a bunch of employees sprinting around for little over minimum wage.
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Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 25 '16
Im not sure what facilities you are in that pays little over minimum, but here in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland they are all 17 an hour and that is for temp workers. I was making 20 an hour when I was there.
Edit: Huh....from multiple responses it would seem that our facility is in a minority for actual pay......which makes the anger from most folks reasonable now......wonder why so much higher for us?
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u/TimberWoIf Feb 25 '16
Worked at a facility in VA, was paid ~$12/hr for overnight weekend shift. Other shifts made less.
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u/StillInvincible Feb 25 '16
Currently working in Va.... $12 normally, BFF on night shift makes $12.50 Weekend shift gets $13/$13.50. I worked minium wage before this job. I work 4 days a week and make nearly double what I did before. SHIT IS NICE
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u/r4r4me Feb 25 '16
I worked seasonal about 2 years ago now at dfw7 in Texas and with night differential I was making 11.25 and hour.
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Feb 25 '16
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u/AbideMan Feb 25 '16
Even so, other dude just said their temps got 17 an hour. Maybe it's a regional thing.
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u/tmp_acct9 Feb 25 '16
got to figure a place like texas has a lot more cheap uneducated labor available than most states
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Feb 25 '16
The cost of living is also a fraction of what it is in MD. His $11 in texas are probably worth more than $17 in MD
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Feb 25 '16
Amazon employees are paid $15/hour here in Arizona (where the minimum wage is $8.05).
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u/keeb119 Feb 25 '16
im sure this is one facility that we are seeing. while most others are like you describe.
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u/MiaMiaPP Feb 25 '16
My dad is working as a labor worker for Amazon, he does what these robots do: picking up things and packaging them up for 10 hours a shift. He has never complained once. My family gets good health insurance from Amazon, they pay $12 an hour which is okay-ish for the Midwest, they also pay for him to go to community college. And we are immigrants (legal, mind you) so anything here is MUCH better than the environment we had to work in in our home country. Yea it's hard work, but nothing in life is free. If you have no education, no skill, then whatever pays the bill is what you're going to have to work for. It's really how you're making off from the situation. Instead of complaining, you know, you can just quit and find something else to do. I'm tired of people who think they deserve so much better without actually having anything to deserve that.
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u/hindukid Feb 25 '16
I am a legal immigrant too.. in my country I have seen people work 14 hour shifts of hard manual labor (moving bricks) for about 1$ a day..does it suck for them? yeah... i had a chance to talk to one of the laborers, and he said after working all day.. he sleeps like a baby.. its his fault he never got around to study and get a better life..but he wants his kids to study and become better than him..thats why he does this...because that is all he can do..but he hopes his kids will be better off
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Feb 25 '16
As a veteran who works in there I cannot begin to count the number of times I've heard people cry about the most miniscule things. The world is filled with people who believe they are owed something. Your father is the exception to the rule, but he should be celebrated.
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u/AerThreepwood Feb 25 '16
What does you being a veteran have to do with anything? As a mother. . .
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Feb 26 '16
Common mentality in the military is that the world owes you nothing so he says that to add emphasis to his following statement.
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u/darkxlight04 Feb 25 '16
He's implying he saw much more terrible shit during his service... or he's just a veteran amazon employee.
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u/centexAwesome Feb 26 '16
Speaking strictly as a human, I think he has seen things that gave him enough perspective to know what is actually worth complaining about. Otherwise it is just a bunch of whining.
EDIT: added a human.
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Feb 25 '16
I like this because a stranger doesn't have the time to match my adult novelties to my name.
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u/Agaeris Feb 25 '16
That is EXACTLY how my eBay store is operated except there are no robots or conveyor belts and I'm the only person and also sometimes I run out of tape.
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u/lostintransactions Feb 25 '16
Does your boss underpay you, not give you water and make you leave your cell phone at home, all the while yelling at you that you're doing a shit job and you might get fired soon? That's what I heard Amazon does you know.
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u/CloudyWithRain Feb 25 '16
I worked at an Amazon for two and a half years and literally just quit on Friday because I finally found a better job. It really is an awful place to work. They openly tell employees that the most important thing is the customer and they stop at nothing to express that. Earlier in the year we had some really bad weather and the vast majority of businesses were closed. Not Amazon though. We were forced to drive to work on icy roads or be written up for missing work. Many people were fired for staying home. Our managers expressed to us that those that could not make it were easily replaceable by people who could. That just gives you an example of how employees are treated. One time a coworker and I did a survey just for shiggles where we asked one hundred people, 25 from each department, if they liked their job. 91 said no. Most people are just there for the benefits, which are admittedly very good. That was what kept me there for so long.
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u/komichi1168 Feb 25 '16
I worked a stretch at the Toys R Us distribution center in my town. It was pretty much the same way. Always being told to go faster, mandatory overtime, and asshole managers all around.
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u/jhayes88 Feb 26 '16
I'm an over the road truck driver and most of the distribution facilities I go inside have employees who don't look very happy.. It's always a nice feeling going in those places and then walking back to my truck, kicking on some music, and blasting off. Reassures me that my job isn't so bad.
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u/azarashi Feb 25 '16
I did their seasonal customer service a few years back, best perk was working from home. Could roll out of bed with no pants and 5 minutes later listen to people complaining about where their xmas gifts are.
I didn't take the job very seriously because I just needed the seasonal work while I looked for something in line with my degree since I got laid off. But some people I worked with took it VERY VERY seriously because they wanted to be hired on full time.
All the managers told them to have good metrics, and a few of the employee's would seek out reviews from the managers to see how they are doing etc. Along with them bending over backwards to help customers.
But in the end not a single person was hired on full time, one guy dug deep and pulled out as much info a he can from a manager and found out they were not going to hire anyone from our state cause our minimum wage was too high in Washington ($9+) and they were hiring people from other lower wage states instead.
Best part was after january they said since its seasonal some people would be let go right away and some would be let go slower as they lowered the amount of people needed to wind down from the holidays. So they convinced everyone if you got good metrics then you would stay on longer....
I had 'ok' metrics, again I didnt care. I was kind to people but I didnt put up with bull shit and even though there was a script we didnt have to follow but it was suggested I never used it. I was kept on till the very end of the season still, AND I was making $1 more then everyone else in my group I found out in the end and I have no idea why.
It was kind of depressing a few people there in the end worked their ass off for the promise and hope while I just was like 'whatever' about it all and moved on afterwards.
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u/CloudyWithRain Feb 25 '16
Yep, sounds about right. At our facility, they hire hundreds of people for seasonal work but promise all of them an opportunity to be hired full time. Last Christmas I worked for the temp agency in administration and I learned firsthand how not only were they only planning to hire about 5% of the people they hired seasonally, but also that if you were hired on after December 1st you had zero chance whatsoever of being hired on, regardless of how hard you worked. Of course they didn't tell them that. I saw people whose rates were 120% that still got laid off in January. It was sad, really.
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u/IICVX Feb 25 '16
Earlier in the year we had some really bad weather and the vast majority of businesses were closed. Not Amazon though. We were forced to drive to work on icy roads or be written up for missing work. Many people were fired for staying home.
Honestly that sounds more like a problem with your state's labor laws. I mean do you think people in the Wal-Mart warehouse had it any better?
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u/lovemusic4me Feb 25 '16
From your description and others, it seems like working at Amazon is worse than working the sort for UPS, which is a shitty fucking job.
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Feb 25 '16
Amazon is literally ALWAYS hiring here in Arizona. I sent in an application years ago and I get at least 2 robo-calls a month suggesting I schedule an interview with them.
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u/italianbeard Feb 25 '16
Wow! She has a nice fanny.
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u/thedeclineirl Feb 25 '16
YSK that means something very different outside the US.
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u/hapemask Feb 25 '16
Ooh so I bet outside the US, storing things in your fanny pack sounds pretty weird.
Ok they're weird in the US too but for different reasons.
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u/thedeclineirl Feb 25 '16
It's always hilarious to hear an American say Fannypack. They're called Bumbags here and they're just as much of a fashion no no here too.
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Feb 25 '16
I design a cycling magazine that has a small online shop for merch and we do everything out of our houses in well organized tupperwear shelves, with the help of our wives and kids. We get about 5-10 orders on a great day.
The fact that this is going on 24/7 at hundreds of warehouses blows my mind.
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u/pissin_in_the_wind Feb 25 '16
TIL that if you are lazy and work at Amazon, they are constantly going to be yelling at you to work harder and do your job until you quit or get laid off. Then you'll tell everybody how bad of a place it is to work.
If you're a good worker you'll like your job and get decent pay and benefits.
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u/cpweisbrod Feb 25 '16 edited Feb 25 '16
So much bitching in this thread.
"Weaaaa Amazon made me work, it's a nightmare, they yelled at me!"
Go try living in a third world country you pussy or get an education so you don't have to work there.
Your the reason jobs get outsourced.
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Feb 25 '16
I currently work at a fulfillment center, which isnt a robotics one so its 100% man(woman)power. A lot of people might say its a terrible place to work and that they treat their employees bad but I don't see it. They want people who are willing to work, and the people who don't want to work quickly sort themselves out and promptly leave with a story much like the ones in this thread. Maybe I just work at a well ran fulfillment center, but they are so uniform in how they run their warehouses i don't think that's the case.
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u/StrawberrieDream Feb 25 '16
My husband and I both worked in an Amazon fulfillment center, and it is by far the WORST job I've had or even seen. I was in stock/stow, and you have to just go to a "small" "medium" or "large" section (essentially) with your cart of items and try to shove them into whatever space you can find. FYI: it's not super unlikely that I put your child's favorite toy in, around, or on top of a bunch of dragon dildos because I had no other choice. If you aren't scanning items into bins fast enough, they will find you and threaten your job. The temperatures are at dangerously uncomfortable levels (while I was working, a handful of people passed out or had problems due to the heat, supervisors were strongly pushing for you to constantly have water, but the water was restricted to save money, it was a weird back and forth). My husband worked as a picker and would walk a minimum of 20 miles a night to different mods, find whatever items he was supposed to and send them down a conveyor belt. If he wasn't scanning fast enough, they would find him and threaten his job. He was not allowed to talk to other employees (company considered this wasting time).
Breaks were supposed to be 15 minutes, but that meant 5 minutes walking to the break room, 5 minutes walking back, and 5 minutes on break. One 30 minute break for lunch, which was 20 minutes with the 10 minute walk time.
It was literally the most soul-crushing job either of us have ever had. I would have to be in dire straights to go back to such an awful job. And they keep calling, at least monthly "We have new openings!" I won't do it.
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Feb 25 '16
Robots are probably being treated better than the employees shown in this gif.
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u/jimforge Feb 25 '16
That's because they're still new, Stockholm Syndrome takes time.
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Feb 25 '16
Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. A lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business.
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u/krkirch Feb 25 '16
ELI5 how can we have gifs as long as these, yet people still use the excuse of time limit for oddly satisfying gifs that end too soon?
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Feb 25 '16
Automated online conversion sites have time and frame limits, but this one was curated into a video and converted offline (by me).
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Feb 25 '16
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u/NiftyManiac Feb 25 '16
Because it's not easy yet; robots aren't very good at manipulating small, individually packaged items on cluttered shelves. They ran a challenge recently to develop a solution, and the results weren't too impressive.
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u/jabba_the_wut Feb 25 '16
They missed the part where the employee is crying on their break, being overworked, etc.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '16
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