[nicpottier]

"Desk jockey does manual labor and his feet hurt, story at 11"

I worked the graveyard shift as a picker at Amazon back around '00. Back then Amazon was so nervous about anybody introducing a bug in the site that all software engineers were put to work either at warehouses or as customer service agents during the holidays. I worked customer service one year and picked for two years, both times during graveyard shifts. This involved flying out to the middle of nowhere from the Seattle headquarters and living out of a hotel.

Honestly, it was a lot of fun. Seeing those parts of the operation was fascinating, and Amazon encouraged you to look for inefficiencies and offer solutions or think about how you could fix things once you got back behind a keyboard.

Our shifts were exactly the same as the full time workers, but they were faster than us, especially at first. Your feet do indeed hurt and you do indeed walk a ton, but that is more because you've been sitting on your ass for 12 hours a day instead of actually using your body.

Yes, you are a mechanical turk in the strictest sense of the word, being dispatched by your hand scanner to go find something and put it in a cart, but it isn't hard work, just a bit boring. If you take it seriously and get good at troubleshooting shortages, then you start getting to do things that require a bit more problem solving, but even the really menial stations aren't terribly bad.

In short, this is just a bunch of whining that manual labor is hard work and not terribly engaging. The conditions themselves are plenty good, hard to imagine them being better while doing the same job.

They are nothing, nothing at all like the conditions any number of people work every day to manufacture your shoes, t-shirts and electronic equipment. You get to move around, you aren't on an assembly line, the work is varied in its environment.

So shut your trap and get back to picking, there's product to get out to customers.

[kolektiv]

There are some rather key differences though don't you think? I imagine as a reasonably valued software engineer you weren't likely to face disciplinary action or loss of employment for not picking fast enough, thus negating a huge cause of stress/anxiety. You also had the knowledge of a definite finite term of employment followed by more relaxing/agreeable work, another rather significant difference.

You also talk about troubleshooting shortages and getting to do things that require problem solving. It sounds from this article (and others like it over the last few years) that this kind of thing, if even still available at all, is not likely to happen to your average seasonal employee.

The fact that other people have it worse in various sweatshops around the world is hardly relevant, or particularly edifying. We are quite capable of seeing problems as a matter of degree I would hope.

Your comment comes across as a little like the CEO who spends a day on the factory floor and proclaims that he had a marvelous time and everyone treated him wonderfully. Unsurprising, but hardly enlightening...

[nicpottier]

We were definitely measured the same as everyone else and had the same targets, though obviously didn't face the same repercussions. The targets were hard at first but once you got the hang of it nothing terribly difficult.

It is manual labor, I don't really understand the arguments against. Yes, it is work, yes it is boring, but so it being a gas station attendant. The people I worked side by side with seemed happy enough.

Maybe I lack empathy, but geez, I actually did it for a while, and you and the other respondent didn't... so maybe another option is that the article is a bit sensational and it isn't as bad as it is made out?

Sore feet and that it is boring and are his primary complaints.. really? This is something to get up in arms about?

[Mikeb85]

Have you ever worked manual labour? Like a real labour job?

When the recession hit, I was unemployed, but got a decent paying construction job from a friend. It involved lifting a hundred pounds at a time, working in dangerous areas (near elevator shafts, on the edge of a 45-story office tower, under cranes) in cold weather (up to minus 40 degrees celcius), and with plenty of dangerous equipment (cranes, concrete pumps, excavators, etc...). The typical work week was 70 hours of gruelling physical work, with even more hours available if you wanted them (and some people would take as many as 100 hours per week).

And that job was quite mild, compared to all the oilfield jobs people take up north, where the weather is consistently much colder, and the hours even longer.

If working at Amazon was so terrible, there wouldn't be 5000 people employed there. Or the demand for jobs there would be so low, the wages would be much higher. But let's face it, there's much worse jobs even in our western countries.

[DanBC]

I've had menial jobs. For what they were - menial work to earn a bit of money - they were great. The bullshit on assembly lines is present, but it's different to the bullshit you get in offices.

Good employers can make this kind of menial job a great place to work for many people. Bad employers can very quickly ruin it.

> You also talk about troubleshooting shortages and getting to do things that require problem solving. It sounds from this article (and others like it over the last few years) that this kind of thing, if even still available at all, is not likely to happen to your average seasonal employee.

Yes, bad companies don't listen to their employees. When someone sits at a machine for 8 hours a day, moving a widget, pushing a button, and putting the widget in a box for someone else, that person knows a lot about that process. They can tell you about the lighting or the draft or the position of the bin or the seat or how stuff piles up too fast for them or how they're left waiting for product.

Find these people. Reward them for their insight. Apply those tweaks.

[panacea]

Empathy redundancy detected!

"Yes, you are a mechanical turk in the strictest sense of the word, being dispatched by your hand scanner to go find something and put it in a cart, but it isn't hard work, just a bit boring."

Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'soul' in a non-religious sense). Studies have shown that sort of stress causes heart disease over 'good stress' (you're manning the Very Important controls).

"If you take it seriously and get good at troubleshooting shortages, then you start getting to do things that require a bit more problem solving, but even the really menial stations aren't terribly bad."

But what if you're not very good at problem solving (quite possible if you're working in a warehouse)?... you being a human with very real needs doesn't stop because you can't 'get serious and solve problems'.

Quite honestly... from your comment, I can only deduce that you are an asshole with an inability to imagine yourself in other people's shoes.

[nicpottier]

The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice.

I worked there, it wasn't that bad. The article is sensational.

[VLM]

"they have choice."

My take on reading numerous articles on the topic is the design of processes and management style is oriented around removing all possible choices from the employees as a stereotypical primate dominance ritual. Agree, disagree?

A management style designed to make people unhappy so they leave.

I have worked at places with call centers where this was a stated goal... pay after 4 years is excellent, of course working conditions procedures and policies are specifically designed so no one lasts longer than 6 months. There is a HN blindness to this because it takes a programmer a couple months to get up to speed so managing Ruby programmers this way would be pretty idiotic, but for low skill jobs where actual training is about a day, getting rid of them before they get too expensive is a "valid" although inhumane management technique.

My gut level guess is something like they don't pay benefits of any sort for the first 90 days, so management goals and bonuses are oriented around making people so uncomfortable that almost all of them are gone by 89 days.

[panacea]

"The employees aren't in jail, they aren't slaves, they have choice."

Care to outline the choice they have (you forgot the "s", as belies your worldview)? What are the choices outside of jail, slavery or the work conditions described in the article?

I suspect that many of them can't get another job and they need to feed themselves or dependents like children.

"The article is sensational."

If you disagree with the article, why would you give it such a rousing review?

Yep... you are a Grade-A fuckwit.

[pc86]

I flagged and downvoted both of your comments because there is absolutely no reason to resort to intentionally misunderstanding the poster's intent and petty name calling. It's not worthy of a forum where people supposedly think critically about the material presented. This isn't the comments section of some hack political blog.

[panacea]

Whilst I appreciate you outlining which buttons you clicked on this website, perhaps you could engage with the discussion and present your view? There are mechanical-turk computers behind the scenes to interpret your button pressing.

[pc86]

Despite your lack of respect toward anyone else in this thread, I felt I owed you at least an explanation of why I did what I did.

[nicpottier]

Fuckwit? Asshole? Seriously?

You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN?

You don't know me, so lay off the ad-hominem, this isn't the forum for it. We apparently disagree on what kinds of choices people have in the Midwest. We are coming from different places in our experience, and I happen to think I hold the edge on this particular topic.

Let's keep it civil though ya?

[panacea]

I apologise for the name-calling. (Particularly the egregious terms I used... and it's no excuse that in my circle of friends we use them in conversation, but subtleties are lost in translation, even amongst English speakers)

My broader point is this (if you care beyond taking offence at the language I have used), people desperate for a job to feed themselves and their dependents, should not have to subjugate themselves at the feet of Amalgamated Internet Co. in order to live a fulfilling life... and saying 'it's a bit boring but suck-it-up stranger' doesn't display any empathy.

However your feelings are entitled to be respected?

[nicpottier]

I wasn't asking you to respect my feelings, I was simply asking you to engage in a discussion.

I get where you are coming from, I really do, I just don't think this is the Big Evil Megacorp (TM) you are looking for. Yes, being a full time picker wouldn't be my first choice as a job, but that goes for a lot of jobs out there, many of which I did for a time.

Not all jobs are fulfilling, not all jobs are fun, really only a tiny fraction are. As "knowledge workers" we have the incredible luxury of having jobs that have incredible flexibility and are engaging. But most jobs have to pay you because nobody would voluntarily do the work otherwise, and ya, that's called work.

The Amazon warehouses are just that, warehouses, where shit gets picked, put into boxes and shipped. To me, they seemed fine, no more or less bad than I expected. I think some people are better at coping with that kind of job than others, my brother did the same stint one year and went berzerk, for me it wasn't so bad, I found some form of fun in it.

It isn't a super amazing fulfilling job where you belch unicorn rainbows after every shift, no. But it isn't some forced labor camp either. The testament to that is that Amazon sent off its own super hippy, liberal and educated workforce to witness it year after year.

I have empathy, I'm just pointing out that an alternate reality might be that this reporter spent two weeks investing in this article and then left and had to write something.. so he did. It is a lot less interesting to write "Amazon warehouse work is boring but gives you good calf muscles" than it is to go on about mental illness.

PS. I can tell you if you cared about mental health, working as a software dev during those days was WAY more stressful than any warehouse job. Pressure cooker to the extreme.

[eli_gottlieb]

>You can disagree, that's cool, we can have different opinions, but aren't we supposed to strive to a slightly higher level of discourse on HN?

I would prefer to strive for a slightly higher level of actual empathy and morality on HN rather than tolerate the "Fuck you, got mine" attitude you're displaying.

[Mikeb85]

> Would you like to be a permanent 'mechanical turk'? As in... you had zero choice in the matter and no chance to change things ever? That's not 'a bit boring'... that's soul crushing (and I mean 'soul' in a non-religious sense). Studies have shown that sort of stress causes heart disease over 'good stress' (you're manning the Very Important controls).

You have choice. To work there or not to.

By the way, welcome to pretty much every construction job ever. And depending on your priorities in life, it's not necessarily soul-crushing. The ability to leave your job at work when you go home every evening is quite under-rated...

[sentenza]

No. With current economic circumstances, many have the choice to work there or to not work at all.

In construction jobs you have steadily-changing tasks and work in fresh air/the sun. It might be more physically straining, but it is certainly healthier for your body and mind than working as a human robot at Amazon.

Also: Nobody is complaining that working at Amazon is not the greatest job on the planet. The scandal is that it would take so little effort on the part of Amazon to significantly improve the working experience.

We wouldn't tolerate a sweatshop operating in the western world. So why do we continue to tolerate Henry Ford style assembly line work?

[VLM]

"The scandal is that it would take so little effort on the part of Amazon to significantly improve the working experience."

I have observed bait n switch as a labor force management technique... lure in "good" workers by promising awful pay and benefits not, but 4 years in its pretty awesome. Then make actual conditions, procedures, and policies such that everyone is fired or quits by 6 months in.

Used to see this a lot for health insurance. Nobody gets insurance for first 90 days, coincidentally everyone is fired for cause or quits in disgust less than two months in.

A business can save a lot of money that way. Not saying its right, just explaining why a business would intentionally boost their turnover rate or refuse to make the simplest change to lower their turnover rate. Its not a bug, its a performance eval oriented bonus rewarded feature.

[Mikeb85]

> In construction jobs you have steadily-changing tasks and work in fresh air/the sun.

Here that means you work in minus 40 degree C weather...

And steadily changing tasks? Have you ever done any stints in construction?