What Amazon will probably say to justify this later: “It’s so we can tell if one of our staff is stealing”
What the article says it’s for: “It vibrates or shocks employees if they sort the packaging wrong”
What Amazon’s ulterior motive probably is: “We can track the pace of their work and if they’re taking a few seconds too long or using their hands to wipe their sweaty brows, we bring it up at a performance review and will fire them for it. But remember that if you whine about this or demand better conditions/wages, we’ll just replace you with robots, so keep working you mindless and invasively-monitored drones“
what the fuck kind of dystopian bullshit
OKAY SO normally I would save my comments for the tags but I have first hand experience working at an Amazon warehouse, and I just have some feelings about this especially as a former employee. They paid decently higher than other places I had worked, so I thought it would be worth it. It is not (I made 11/hr before taxes so like not even that much tbh). On the first day of training we were shown the robots. It was presented in a way that was like “wow look how cool these are ps if you fuck up always remember that you are replaceable with one of these.” Then we were taught how to sort packages. I’m a very very petite person, and there were some boxes that I could barely lift on my own but the supervisors basically stood around and watched as I struggled several feet with a box bigger than myself. It was only the other ‘lower level’ warehouse workers who helped, and one girl was the same size as me. We had legally mandated breaks, which they would often send us late to and call us back early from. On top of all this general poor treatment, if it was seeming too slow (this happened every single day before the big package rush btw) they’d send tons of people home so that they wouldn’t have to pay them. Of course then everyone left behind was stuck dealing with the rush that inevitably happened, but again management didn’t care because it saved them money to pay less people for more work. I got scolded and yelled at on the daily for not working fast enough or because I was carrying only one box at a time, even if it was a massive one. We were judged based on number of boxes scanned per hour, and I was like super slow at maybe 100 an hour I think?? Don’t really remember but most people did 200+ and so I got in trouble a lot. Anyway, TLDR, Amazon fucking sucks and they treat employees like garbage so this is definitely believable imho as a way to further dehumanize and control their workers.
This is why we unionize.
Look, folks. I get how scary unionizing and strikes can be. I’ve both been involved in unions and refused to cross pickets in my life. Back when we had to fight this war the first time, violence regularly broke out against workers striking. Even here where I live.
But that’s what we need to do. It’s our turn to organize and fight for our rights. This is how we reclaim the country that has increasingly swung backwards to the days of moguls and dynasties.
We’ve been here before. No kidding. This? This is nothing new. Even 45, corrupt moron rich man, is nothing new in this world. Bezos, mistreatment of workers, brutal hours and poor pay is nothing new. Think industrial revolution.
The way we won then was by coming together and unionizing. It was organizing and unfortunately, it was risking too. But don’t ever forget, we outnumber them. We outnumber them even with the militarized police and even with their money, and somewhere deep down, they sure as hell know it.
Join a union. Organize your workplace. Fight back. The robots are coming anyway, we might as well organize now so we’re ready to support each other and hold our politicians feet to the fires.
I work for UPS. It is INFINITELY better than Amazon, and there’s one major reason why.
We’re fucking TEAMSTERS.
I don’t like the union and I know they’ve shafted part-timers like me but honest to god? We’re a LOT better off than anyone at Amazon.
It’s not an easy job but they’d rather get you a position where you can fit rather than force you to do one you’ll fail at.
Full time work should entitle someone to enough pay for rent, food, bills, and leisure activities. Full time work for a full life wage. You put in your 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? You should be able to afford the basic shit you need in life, no matter where you work.
pisses me off that this is considered a radical statement.
I do agree with this but from economic standpoint if you are working at a job like McDonalds as someone flipping burgers and making fries you are getting paid for the amount of skill needed for the job. But if its any other job that requires you to have an actual skill that you can make a career out of then yeah you should be getting paid enough to live a standard life.
If you work FULL TIME you should be able to afford to fucking live. No, it doesn’t matter if it’s flipping burgers, these people contribute to our fucking economy and they MATTER. They should be allowed to be alive.
Jesus fucking Christ do you people hear yourselves?
People like this are why we can’t move on to issues like reducing how many hours is full time, or working out UBI.
We’re going to need to do that. Most people just don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline, without a major change to the structure of the economy, we’re looking at large scale permanent unemployment, even in the “skilled” labor force.
Also? Making food is a fucking skill. Running a fast food kitchen is a fucking skill. Operating a drive-thru is a goddamn fucking skill.
I do not know how to do these things. I have a masters degree and I have no fucking clue how to operate a deep fryer or make coffee drinks. I’d probably not be very good at it, because that kind of hands-on, fast-paced work is very hard for me.
But thankfully, there are people who are good at it, so I can do my job, and they can do theirs, and we can benefit one another by putting our skills to use in different areas. People who work in fast food are not less deserving of comfort and security in their lives just because their skills aren’t valued like they should be. That is a myth developed to deprive people of rights.
My friend works as a medical assistant and I’ve worked at McDonald’s and Starbucks. You know there’s a lot of things you gotta learn in this typa job?
Like in addition to it being physically demanding (standing up for 4-6 hours straight, carrying heavy ice/coffee, constantly getting burned by boiling water and an oven, a lot of reaching and squatting (like a lot a lot I lost 40 FUCKING pounds in a year okay this job demands a lot from the body)), there are actual skills required. Also your skin splits from using so much antibacterial soap.
Do you know what temperature different foods have to be to prevent contamination? If it’s a “cold” or “hot” plate?? Do You know how long food can be out before bacterial contamination can happen?? Do you know the difference between say 1% and heavy whipping cream? Can you teach a chemistry class using milk????? That’s p much what you gotta learn to be able to do. My friend who works as a medic was surprised, because I do more in my day than they do, and THEY told me that. They were shocked how much I actually do; I am on my feet more, talking to more people, I have a working knowledge of food germs food born illnesses and chemistry, I gotta do the same shit with sterilizing my tools the same exact way a doctor sterilizes theirs. Etc etc.
There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.
“There’s no such thing as an unskilled job. There are only undervalued skills.”
The most physically demanding job I have ever had was McDonald’s. I am fortunate now to have a different job and advanced degrees and while I do work hard now, I never come home with the same level of physical exhaustion that I had at the end of a McDonald’s shift. Plus I had to go home to the stress of not enough money, which is its own kind of hell.
And anyone who wants to go on about how I made good decisions and got degrees and left the McDonald’s can just shut the fuck up.Yeah, I worked hard in college and grad school, but I also got lucky. Everyone who succeeds in this nightmare hellscape got lucky to some extent. Not everyone does. And I am not arrogant enough to think that my PhD means that I’ll never end up in fast food again. The universe/fate/whatever can be a fickle asshole.
Plus the people I see attacking fast food workers who just want to be able to work and pay their damn bills (what a novel fucking concept) also seem to want to be able to buy their fast food for cheap and not get food poisoning. “Wahwah… Bust your ass to feed us safely but don’t expect compensation.”
So stop giving people shit for wanting to be able to fucking exist.
What people mean when they say it’s an “unskilled job” is that it’s an industry that considers its workforce disposable (quickly replaceable) and can therefore coercively drop wages until they find the minimum tier of desperate people. The more companies do this, the more desperate people there are.
People cannot bargain effectively for wages when “need to be alive” is on the table.
cashier: sorry for your wait. we’re short-staffed today
millennial: oh that’s ok no worries 🙂
baby boomer:
But listen that’s the thing.
We are short staffed almost 97% of the time at my retail job. Because corporate has figured out you can overwork 4 people at minimum wage instead of paying for the 8 people you should probably have to be on the clock.
Baby boomers grew up with stores that were adequately staffed, with workers who most likely had weeks of training for their jobs as opposed to the 1-2 shadow shift training we get now. Also those workers most likely were able to be full time if they wanted. Now retail, except for management positions, is mostly made up of part time workers, because you don’t have to give them benefits. So you have a workforce of perpetually underpaid, overwhelmed, undertrained people trying to do their best all while dealing with an entire generation of people who refuse to acknowledge that the system has changed and the average retail worker has NO control over that change and is being taken advantage of.
Like we got our customer surveys back, and almost every single one mentioned that they couldn’t find someone to help them or we needed more people on register because it was TOO SLOW, but what did management tell us instead of scheduling more people? We need to be quicker on register and call for backup if necessary. Which makes no sense because we can’t call for backup THAT ISN’T THERE.
Y’all my parents haven’t worked retail since the 70s and they absolutely never believe me about the things that happen at work. I explain the schedule for next week gets hung up on the Friday before and they scoff and go “well when i worked at X they had it a month up your manager is just lazy.” No mom, its company policy to only do “two weeks” in advance. They won’t give you a full month’s scheduling in advance cause it let’s you plan for a world outside of work.
Or about the hours, workload or anything. They just assume its an individual’s failing instead of corporate mandate. Or, if they do believe me (that its company policy) they call it ridiculous and point out some survey that argues its Good Business to do (insert decent thing here).As if they think the higher ups don’t know this and are simply ignorant of Good Business Practices. They don’t understand that retail has completely shifted from caring about its employees to squeezing out every penny now instead of investing it for later.
Cause that isn’t how it was when they worked and they just can’t seem to see otherwise.
I think there should be a ‘bring-your-parent-to-work-day’ instead of ‘bring-your-kid-to-work-day’, it would shock so many parents and would probably make them finally realize how much retail indeed has changed in the US.
when i first got hired as a cashier, my manager who had been doing that since she was like 17 in 1975 told me that back in The Days, when you were hired as a cashier in a grocery store it was a) a well paid job & you could get full time work easily b) a respected career choice c) the store closed at 6pm and was closed on Sundays so the hours were a lot more pleasant d) they made you go to cashier school for 2 weeks, which was basically a fake grocery store and you just learned the trade completely before even meeting a customer now its like : you get like 20 hours a week, bullshit shifts like 3:45 to 10:15, a 20 minutes training before being thrown to the wolves, customers tell you you deserve your shitty lowlife job as soon as you don’t thoroughly kiss their ass
The millennial experience is tied to growing income inequality and the indentured servitude of student loan debt
During a conversation with my manager this morning, she mentioned that her manager– the district manager– had told her that “We want people who are passionate about our products. We don’t want people working here if they’re doing it for the money.”
To which the manager (internally, because she doesn’t want to be fired), went “you’ve got to be fucking shitting me.”
Here’s the thing: it is totally possible to do a job for the passion and not be obsessively thinking about the money every minute of every day. In fact, there have been economic studies regarding that very thing.
You know when it starts?
When the employee in question is making $50-75k per year.*
That’s the starting point of financial security. That’s the point when you’re fairly secure that you’re going to have rent, food, and basic living expenses covered.
I’ve worked a lot of jobs over the years. A lot.
I saw the same working as a freelancer– when I charged lower rates, my clients treated me like shit and acted like they were doing me a favor; when I charged more, they respected me as a professional. A newspaper that started out paying me above market wage also treated me very kindly, because they started with the assumption that I was a human being who needs to eat.
In my experience, the employers that insist that your job be your “passion” are also the ones that pay you nothing and treat you like garbage. It’s exactly like abusive people, who tell you that you would put up with their abuse if you “loved them enough”. It’s a way of convincing the victim that they’re responsible for their own mistreatment, which is absolutely fucked up.
Here’s my advice to you:
It is absolutely okay to take a job that doesn’t pay you what you deserve– you’ve got to eat, after all. But don’t think for a second that you have a responsibility to that job. If you see something available that pays better and treats you better, take it and don’t look back. Don’t waste an ounce of sympathy for employers who try to convince you that passion is an acceptable substitute for survival.
If they want you to be passionate about your work with them, they should be treating you wtih the respect they give to people who ARE passionate about their products.
Also: your employer doesn’t own your soul, and can’t ask for it.
what they want, whether they know it or not, is people who can convincingly lie about being passionate.
And there were actually pretty huge differences in how men and women were affected by work. For men the upper healthy limit was pegged around 43.5 hours, whereas for women it was closer to 38.
That difference was made even more dramatic when considering that women are often expected to take care of household, unpaid work in addition to their hourly workload.
Every article talking about this study talks about how bosses can squeeze more labor out of workers, or how workers can squeeze more labor out of themselves, but the reality is that the human brain only has so much capacity to focus on unpleasant tasks, and people generally won’t work more than that without the threat of force (like in manual and service industry jobs where work is easily quantified and workers are being monitored all the time to make sure they don’t slack off; the threat of being fired and losing one’s ability to eat is the threat of force). People in hunter-gatherer societies do about that same amount of work.
The working day isn’t only about productivity, it’s about keeping you busy too, so you’ll have no time do to other things (like study, discover that you can fight back capitalism, organize, things like that).
There would probably be less unemployment if more workers were needed to fill the hours, too
just moving along like everyone else 