[tsotha]

I worked at a company developing the warehouse management software. This was back in the mid '90s, but we didn't have a single customer that ran his warehouse like the one in the article. Picking is a crappy job, and everyone knows it, so pickers weren't expected to move too fast. If you showed up to work for a few weeks as a picker you'd get promoted to another position. Most of the people who got hired were ex-cons and drug addicts, so only about one in three lasted more than a day or two.

I don't know if the industry as a whole has changed, or if the place the author worked is far on the bad end of the spectrum.

[DanI-S]

I would guess that the current economic climate provides an incentive for management to push workers harder than before, since there's a greater pool of replacements and a worse fate awaiting those who can't keep up.

[winestock]

Some time ago, a commenter on a blog called Advice Goddess wrote something apropos to what you've written:

"Competition isn't always an impetus to improve. Sometimes it's just impetus to fuck harder."

[hristov]

The economy changed. The mid to late nineties were the years of the Clinton relative prosperity when unemployment was low jobs were not that hard to get so one could not treat people like shit, especially in low level jobs.