
The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager - arsn_lsnk
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/20/18103516/black-friday-cyber-monday-amazon-fulfillment-center
======
rchaud
"Amazon never trained us in how to communicate with associates. We weren’t
trained to be understanding of their struggles or communicate with them. It
was all about mechanics."

I wonder if part of the reason a military vet was hired for the floor
manager's job was the expectation that they'd act like drill sergeants towards
the employees, while the tracking systems acted as a real-time sword of
Damocles-type apparatus.

~~~
drharby
No, its not. They picked up military vets because they understand the nature
of communicating and effecting mission needs when they are performed under
difficult circumstances.

No one active duty yells at people like a drill sergeant outside of a training
environment, except marines bc rah

~~~
MRD85
Anecdotally, I've been in the Army close to 10 years now and I cannot recall
the last time I heard yelling in a non-jovial or non-combat manner. I've also
had multiple experiences where people were stunned after I how I reacted in
difficult circumstances. I can definitely see how certain employers would
value these traits.

~~~
SpecialistEMT
Sorry you've been in the army

~~~
MRD85
I see people have downvoted your comment but I sort of agree with the
sentiment.

I grew up in a rural town to working-class parents who hated me spending time
on computers and wanted me to get a trade. I'm now 33 and halfway to my CS
degree that I should have finished 12 years ago. The Army has been good to me
but it's not the life I should have lived.

Even growing up rurally was hard. I was a very intellectual child and rural
areas aren't the best environment for that i.e. family that actively squashes
your interest as opposed to encouraging it.

------
xt00
Let’s say the workers unionize as the guy they interviewed suggests, what is
the result? Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t
have to work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system.
It’s quite possible that it would be better for the workers in that case but I
do wonder if amazon could bypass a lot of these issues by just saying that
people can’t work more than say 4 days a week during the rush season. So they
end up hiring more workers to get the job done but people can’t complain that
they are being overworked. I mean I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories but I
wouldn’t be surprised if Walmart wasn’t silently cheering all the Amazon hate
and pro union talk for their fulfillment centers..

~~~
nickpsecurity
"Basically they will push to change the system so that people don’t have to
work as hard, it’s harder to fire people and have a seniority system."

Costco is a union company that's like a walk-in version of Amazon warehouse
invented before Amazon. They pay workers well, give them bonuses, and so on.
Company makes around $100 billion a year.

If trying to imagine unionized Amazon, walk into a Costco noting how the
workers perform and at what stress levels. Better yet, if about vote with your
wallet, just buy stuff from Costco and similar companies instead of Amazon to
maintain and create more great jobs.

My company is a union company, too. We outperform the competition. They try to
poach us all the time, too. The contract allows management to take action
against lazy or disobedient employees _if they can prove it_. Their continued
employment is totally due to terrible, ineffective management. All they gotta
do is write their name on a piece of paper they present to those workers
several times to fire them. Instead, they write up good, compliant workers
over technicalities but ignore bad workers that argue back more. The lazy,
weak managers get stuff done on paper that way. Although very common in union
shops, I virtually never see anyone talk about the management angle on bad
employees hard to get rid of.

The other issue is managers backing friends/family, who they buy drugs from,
sleep with, and so on. Lots of political backchanneling over the most
ridiculous stuff in these big companies. The sales teams are even crazier most
of the time but theyre professional bullshitters with incentives to be
aggressively outgoing. So, no surprise Im always hearing crazy stories about
ex-employees. ;)

~~~
Kephael
Amazon is a non-union company and they have almost single-handedly destroyed
physical retail in the Western world. Amazon has created immense value for
consumers and shareholders, Jeff Bezos would not be the richest person in the
world if Amazon was not good at what they do. Costco hasn't innovated in
decades, if it all.

~~~
tmd83
Is that a good thing for real? From what I heard Amazon no longer will have
lowest price on things. So essentially isn't this a big bait and switch
strategy. I do thing in the long run Amazon's near monopoly on things will
come back to bite customers as they will destroy the competition. The example
of co-mingling of stock is one example. So much customer harm and fraud and
they still do nothing because customers still buy from they for comfort. Any
smaller company would have destroyed doing that.

------
unreal37
"Jeff Bezos is obscenely rich, and in any moral society, he would not have
that much money."

There's the rub. Buried near the bottom.

The guy thinks people should not be allowed to be too rich.

~~~
sergiosgc
> The guy thinks people should not be allowed to be too rich.

Or the fact that people get that rich points to a systemic flaw in the system.
Bezos earns 4 million per hour, no matter if he's asleep or awake. It's pretty
wild to assume he personally creates that much value. The only other
justification is that society is distributing wealth in a skewed fashion.

The fact that capitalism is the best resource allocating framework we found,
for managing society, shouldn't prevent us from discussing its flaws.

~~~
throwaway5752
_" Bezos earns 4 million per hour, no matter if he's asleep or awake"_

That is false. It was based on the appreciation of his Amazon stock at a
cherry-picked moment in time. He's probably been losing millions per hour
lately. In reality, his total compensation is less than $2M and his salary is
less than $100K.

------
cloakandswagger
This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties:

\- Expects workers to work compensated overtime during a busy period

\- Tracks worker performance

\- Expects people to take only their scheduled breaks, and writes them up if
they're MIA for 30+ minutes

\- Requires workers to show up and work during their scheduled work hours

The humanity! And this poor guy, working a non-specialized manager position
attainable with just a high school degree, was only paid a meager $80,000 a
year!

More seriously though: the caterwauling over Amazon's cruel and unusual work
conditions is getting a little long in the tooth. I had more sympathy when
it's peeing in bottles and passing out from heat exhaustion, but if the above
is extent of the complaints now...get over it?

~~~
grardb
How could you possibly come to that conclusion?

> The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse
> experience at Amazon.

> . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just
> never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day.

> Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an
> additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.”

Working 12 hours per day with a total of only 1 hour of break time, split into
three smaller breaks – and all tracked to the minute? And no lunch for
managers?

> The associates work 10 hours a day, the managers 14 to 18. It’s mandatory
> overtime, the hours are not voluntary, and they are all on your feet.

Do you really think this is acceptable?

To be honest, I'm quite sick of the general attitude on HN towards Amazon. I
get that it's convenient and usually cheaper than its competitors. But let's
not pretend that the way they do business is morally acceptable. It isn't.

This is absurd. Instead of trying to convince yourselves that it's Not That
Bad, why not vote with your dollars and support businesses that treat their
employees better? From what I can tell, most people reading HN have the means
to do so.

(Edited to better follow HN guidelines.)

~~~
intopieces
Will you be more specific on the moral aspect here? Because from the article,
it seems like the individuals working in the warehouse are compensated at a
rate they agreed to (not being cheated of wages), are safe (no unsafe work
practices are revealed here), and are given clear guidelines about their work
tasks and standards (not being fired for discriminatory reasons).

I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, so I will not make any flippant
summaries of your post. I just want to know what Amazon would have to do to
become moral: how long should the breaks be? How should they modify their
performance policies? Etc.

~~~
johnchristopher
18 hours of work is unsafe whatever the job is.

------
pbalau
hmm...

> The former Amazon employee, a US Air Force veteran, requested anonymity for
> fear of professional repercussions.

> [...] I was at a fulfillment center in California from [redacted] to
> [redacted].

> I was an [redacted], inside a new facility that had about 1,000 associates.

Isn't this a lot of info given away?

/edit: in case the original article does the same

~~~
chickenfries
Why would you point that out?

~~~
choot
To demonstrate their anonymity statement is rendered useless when you go
through the other data in the article.

~~~
oh_sigh
You're assuming some data hasn't been delicately fudged in order to anonymize
the source. Maybe he worked there between August 2016 and September 2017.
Maybe is a Navy, not AF veteran. Maybe he isn't a he at all. Who knows?

~~~
Kaveren
Isn't that worse than just not revealing personal information at all? Fudging
dates could be quite bad in particular if it were to become apparent that
policy changes were made after the supposed time period.

I don't find that the military information was valuable, it could've easily
been left out, and the veteran question the author posed could have still been
asked if it were rephrased.

~~~
oh_sigh
Yes, when it comes to anonymizing a source, releasing no information is always
better than releasing any information, even if that information is a mix of
truths and falsehoods. But, releasing a mix of truths and falsehoods or less
specific/more generalized truths can only be equally as bad as releasing all
specific truths, but it may turn out to be much better. Saying your tenure was
September 2016-August 2017 might match 20 people at the company, one of which
is your source. Fudging your tenure to August 2016-September 2017 might match
20 people, but not your source. Saying your tenure was 2016-2017 might match
1000+ people, including your source.

There are trade offs in all of these methods, but I don't see them as being
particularly wrong if you want to provide color to your story without
materially affecting it, and can be confident that you aren't helping to
identify your source.

------
onetimemanytime
>> _The former Amazon employee, a US Air Force veteran, requested anonymity
for fear of professional repercussions....I was an area manager, inside a new
facility that had about 1,000 associates. I oversaw the packers, managing
about 55 associates. My salary was $80,000...I said I wouldn’t accept anything
less, since I had a master’s._

Oh yeah, anonymous.

People want their packages the next day or before Christmas. Amazon is paying
them overtime and more for Black Friday. I mean this is the job, like a job
that requires you start at 12am. Tiring sure, but weigh the pros and cons and
make a decision. Amazon has no problems finding workers, or else they'd pay
$30 an hour

~~~
rchaud
> Amazon has no problems finding workers, or else they'd pay $30 an hour.

There isn't a market solution for every problem. Labor rights abuses are
rampant in apparel manufacturing. Are those problems "not serious" enough
because people continue to pursue employment there?

~~~
defertoreptar
Don't you fault the country's laws and enforcement of laws for that? USA has
strict labor laws surrounding child labor for example.

If Amazon is doing things legally, and we're not happy, then we need to be
upset with Congress, if anyone.

