[FC_Associate]

So I want to be very clear that based on extensive reports I've read in the press, and anecdotes that have been shared online, what krapp said definitely goes on, but no, personally I have never witnessed that.

There are two main reasons why it's possible that I've never run across such cases, the most logical one being that I've worked primarily in a Delivery Station and not a Fulfillment Center. From what I've experienced the Delivery Stations are, for lack of a better term, not run as "efficiently" as the FC's, so the metrics that are used to track employee performance aren't quite as well quantified. There is still obviously a lot of performance tracking with regards to rates, but due to the less efficient and structured layout of the DS, there seems to be a bit more leeway given.

Also, I think I've been extremely fortunate with the management that I work under and they seem to take worker safety and the overall work environment very seriously. I can't imagine any managers at my station writing anyone up for taking bathroom breaks, and definitely not for handling a bloody nose. Again, just to be clear, I'm not at all refuting the accuracy of those reports, issues like that have definitely occurred in Amazon warehouses, but the environment at my warehouse seems to be significantly more worker friendly. I think this is probably due to our station managers' oversight.

Also, I've only been working at Amazon for slightly over one year, so it's possible that they have been making genuine progress on these issues.

[krapp]

I think the truth of the matter is, Amazon's network is big enough to allow a significant amount of variance in employee experience (despite Amazon itself being culturally adamant about reducing variance as much as possible.)

Some workers do wind up camping in their cars and peeing in bottles to make rate, most don't. What people wind up complaining about tend to be exceptions rather than the rule, but those exceptions do exist.

[Applejinx]

If being pilloried for that kind of management behavior costs Amazon sales and effectiveness, it's a weakness that must be stamped out exactly as much as it has to.

Progress is a loaded word. If you said that Amazon has been doing serious optimization on that stuff, I'd call that more accurate. Bear in mind that part of the pressure is 'don't get PR-worthy nosebleeds or have to pee all the time'; in no way is this an effort to make workers comfortable or complacent.

It's just that having people fall over dead, or getting punished for nosebleeds, or pissing in bottles to make quota, are such bad PR that they have to be optimized away. You can't go THAT hard. There's a limit to how hard you can push before it starts to look bad, so you end up having to be just as grimly competitive about the details of work environment.

Anyone thinking Amazon is trying to maximize worker suffering is a fool: there's a point where it becomes a liability, and they will optimize until it's just on the safe side of 'horror story'.

[jancsika]

> I can't imagine any managers at my station writing anyone up for taking bathroom breaks, and definitely not for handling a bloody nose.

What exactly is the policy on bathroom breaks?

[FC_Associate]

So just to give you a little background info, the DS I work at runs 24/7 using multiple shifts. The bulk of the work is done by the night shift which usually runs from around 11pm to 5:45am. This is the largest shift with 150+ associates and the one that is under the most time pressure. Packages have to be unloaded from trucks and make their way through the warehouse on a conveyor belt system to be stowed in bags that the delivery drivers pick up in the morning. The main duties consist of unloading the trucks, diverting the packages down different lanes, picking the correct packages off the moving belt and placing them on a rack, and then stowing the packages into their appropriate bags located on shelving units. Each one of these steps is done by a different person. I'm providing some extra info here so you get a feel for how the warehouse runs. Basically anyone leaving their post even for a few minutes will result in packages not being properly sorted/stowed and the conveyor belts getting backed up and potentially jammed.

The policy at our station is that if you need to go to the bathroom when not on break or lunch, you need to tell either a line lead, shift assistant, or the people working next to you so that they can cover your post while you're gone so things don't get backed up or packages don't end up spilling on the ground. That's pretty much it. I've worked the night shift before and drink large amounts of water so I could rarely make it through a shift without using the bathroom one or two times in addition to the times I went while on break and lunch. It was never a problem, we would just cover for each other.

[fcthrowaway]

(I've worked in an FC for over a year. I'm an L1, not a PA or manager.)

Most functions in FCs are "direct": they have rate expectations that are automatically tracked. Every minute you're in a direct function counts toward your rate. You can go to the bathroom whenever you need to, but it'll lower your rate. (Some functions are "indirect", meaning that they don't involve use of any digital tools and so can't be tracked.)

"Time off task" is also automatically tracked. If you go some amount of time without scanning anything -- I think it's five minutes -- that'll show up on your time. Managers know that people have to go to the bathroom and usually won't make a big deal out of it, but if you take an unusually long time in the bathroom you might get written up. TOT writeups are supposed to be automatic but I think managers have some discretion.

I think I was written up for a bathroom break before -- I'm not sure, since my FC isn't very good at delivering feedback -- but I was in there for half an hour, so it was sort of understandable.

There haven't been issues with bathroom breaks where I am, but there's only one floor. The site in the story with associates peeing in bottles apparently had multiple floors, with bathrooms only on the bottom floor. It'd be difficult to take a bathroom break while maintaining the expected rate and low TOT at sites like that.

I think rate expectations are consistent across the network, meaning that managers, or even site leads, can't adjust them to account for things like distance to the bathroom.

In short: you won't get written up for taking a bathroom break, and you can just go to the bathroom when you need to, but you might get written up for low rates or high time off task, and you might end up with low rates or high time off task for going to the bathroom if it's far away or you take a long time.

[freeone3000]

So, in short: You might get written up for taking a bathroom break if the bathrooms are far away from where you work?

[fcthrowaway]

I'm basing this on the articles about it. I've never personally seen it happen. I've seen people duck out to the bathroom to take phone calls and they don't seem to have run into any trouble over it; but where I work, the bathrooms aren't far from the floor.

If you have to go down four stories to get to the bathroom, on the other hand, it'd be pretty hard to maintain the rate, and if you don't maintain the rate you'll probably get written up for that.