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by danielvf 2937 days ago
[edit: 200 vists stat is for UK only. Ignore everything I said here. ]

For scale, Amazon had 566,000 employees at the end of 2017. With 200 trips per year, that’s about one trip per 2,800 employees.

For comparison, US ambulances made about 16.2 million trips in 2003 on a population of 290 million, or one trip per 17.9 people.

If we assume that employees spend 1/4 of their week at work, then while working at Amazon you are 39.5 times less likely to need an ambulance than an average American.

;)

2 comments

You didn’t actually read the article: “ambulances have been called to Amazon's UK warehouses at least 600 times in the last three years“

There are way less warehouse workers in Amazon UK so your calculations are off.

There may be health & safety regs in the UK that require ambulances to be called in situations where they might not be called in the US. (Just speculating, I don't know.)
That number seems unusually high.

Having worked in all the very early US distribution centers(pre automation and now called fulfillment centers) and privy to early UK, German, French, and Japanese distribution operations ambulance calls were less than common, but more than rare.

That was before Amazon hit a headcount of 16k(when I left).

I recall several ambulance calls.

Mostly legit, things like heat/humidity, ankles, pre-existing issues such as obesity/poor fitness, and the rare workers comp lotto attempt.

Typical amazon employees are below 60. Typical ambulance needers are above 60.