
Seasonal Associate - kawera
https://longreads.com/2018/12/13/seasonal-associate/
======
cafard
One winter in the 1970s, I got a job over the winter break as a stockboy at
Montgomery Wards. The chain referred to all its employees as associates. Once
Christmas was over, I looked at the schedule for the next week, and found
myself not on it, ergo presumably... dissociated. I thought it an odd way to
let me know, but in any case I would not have continued to work when school
resumes.

For that matter my father earned the money for the engagement ring he gave my
mother by working evening hours as a holiday-season mail handler for the
United States Post Office. That would have been about 1952. He may have been
on break from graduate school, or he may have been employed by the Geological
Survey.

I don't object to there being seasonal jobs. I do object to them being the
model for employment in general.

[edit: corrected typo]

------
nimbius
I work for an auto-repair chain in the midwest, and my bosses have repeatedly
insisted or suggested on hiring "seasonal associates" to help around the shop.
The most cringe-worthy and condescending reference to them came from a general
manager who once called them "santas helpers" in a presentation.

Everyone puts off auto work until they need to go somewhere over the holidays
and either relents to the shop time (and the shop rate) or is towed off the
highways after an accident or breakdown during holiday travel. holidays and
post-holiday are our most stressful and busy time in the shop. You need to
tune out the Michael Bublé in the front office, pay extra close attention to
detail, and try to stay sane.

What people forget about places like Amazon is they are a shop floor. You
might not have tire mounting machines and drill presses, but you have fork
trucks and conveyors. You are in an industrial setting, and if you'd like to
keep your fingers and toes, you should never rush the work.

In my professional opinion there should never be room for a seasonal worker in
a shipping warehouse. You either have enough capacity to perform safely or you
do not.

~~~
freehunter
>You either have enough capacity to perform safely or you do not.

Honest question, in this situation if you need 1000 workers during the holiday
season but only 200 during the rest of the year, what do you do with those 800
extra workers for 11 months? Retail is inherently seasonal, that's why Black
Friday exists and why during Christmas my packages are delivered from a U-Haul
truck instead of a UPS truck. So if you're not using seasonal workers, do you
over-book your warehouse for 11 months, or under-book your warehouse during
your most profitable season?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Honest answer: You reallocate non-fulfillment staff to fulfillment during
crunch periods.

> In Final Holiday Push, UPS Grabs Its Accountants to Deliver Packages

> Parcel giant works to clear problems caused by surge of e-commerce orders
> coupled with tight market for seasonal workers

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-final-holiday-push-ups-
grabs...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-final-holiday-push-ups-grabs-its-
accountants-to-deliver-packages-1514040922)

Not much choice in the matter when unemployment is at historic lows. If you
can avoid the AMZN fulfillment sweatshop as a seasonal contract worker, you're
going to.

~~~
freehunter
Then who is doing the accounting work? If accountants are so expendable
(especially if they're expendable at the peak of tax season), why do we have
extra accountants floating around?

------
Waterluvian
That was powerful.

I once spent weeks packing donated children's toys and also spent a while in
an auto plant. And there's this awful feeling I had at both. I would describe
it as the place being contaminated by depression and if you stay too long
you'll succumb to it.

These fulfillment centres are like Chernobyl in that sense. It all looks
normal: there's merchandise we see at home, there's other people, there's
music, there's employment. But it also just feels like you've entered a
foreign environment that isn't capable of sustaining healthy human life.

I felt it again just reading this story. That urge to fight and cry is a sign
that you're being exposed to too much contamination.

We need to get the humans out of there and send in robots to do that work.

~~~
badpun
My family member has been working at an auto plant for over a decade now. She
does not seem depressed. She is grateful for the job (had to use personal
connections to get it) and would be scared of the thought of robots replacing
her.

~~~
matt4077
I believe Amazon has built a somewhat more dreadful work environment than
traditional factories.

First, it seems like they have optimized every last detail to the point where
people are robbed of their individuality. If your wrist watch tells you when
to pee, that leaves traces not just in your underwear, but in your psyche.

Second, traditional blue-collar work came with a social support network,
build-in. There was a sense of belonging that can be described as anything
from “class consciousness” to just the typical camaraderie of working a job,
any job, with the same team for years. Amazon actively works against this
when, for example, working against the formation of unions. They also
inadvertently prevent it through their reliance on temporary work, and rapidly
changing assignments, work procedures, etc.

~~~
ataturk
People have choices. You don't have to be a beat down slave all your life. You
can revolt. It's just that the will to revolt hasn't risen in recent times.
But it would be interesting to see it happen again because I simply can't see
how contemporary culture can continue a whole lot longer.

What I basically found out trying to "retire early" is that there are the
"high" paying career jobs in offices and everything else is $10-$15/hr. crap
work. There is barely anything in between, mirroring what is happening to the
middle class--it is being hollowed out so that there will only be rich and
poor and nothing else. Places like Mexico are already like this. It is sad and
completely avoidable, but oligarchs and autocrats don't want it that way.

So revolution it will be. Only a matter of time and hunger.

~~~
badpun
What about skilled trades? Electricians, carpenters or plumbers (esp. self-
employed) must be making more than $10-$15/h.

------
Mandeponium
She seems neurotic. The job may be soul crushing, but a 3 month temp position
is hardly something to get worked up over. And the confrontation she had with
her coworker was just painful to read. I guess she's never worked on a team
with disagreeable people before.

------
AcerbicZero
{ I worked at an airport for a subcontractor of UPS one winter, around the
holidays. On the one hand, it was an awesome job for someone who loved
airplanes as much as I did (do). On the other, this was in Montana, and
spending 3-4 hours every morning before school unloading an airplane's worth
of packages, and then loading them into other smaller aircraft, in the ~0F
weather plus 30mph windchill was pure misery. We were just tools, used to
unload awkwardly sized containers full of packages onto a conveyor, and sort
those packages to the right aircraft. Somehow this (in 2004) was still cheaper
to use humans for, rather than some sort of automated barcode scanning
system....but it was ~7.25 an hour in Montana, and for a HS student, that was
good money.

Its not the same kind of repetitive mind numbing work that this article
describes, but it was just as full of unexplained pitfalls, with the added
benefit of being on a freezing cold active runway. I ended up losing that job,
after a few months, which in retrospect, was probably a good thing for my
education.

------
vonseel
I immediately noticed an unusual (to my ears) usage of the phrase "down to
you" in her article: "it’s not down to you ... it's down to others.". Where
I'm from in the states, we usually say "up to you" to mean something isn't
one's choice. Is this another odd difference between American and British
English?

------
zackmorris
Required reading - The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair:

[https://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Dover-Thrift-
Editions/dp/04864...](https://www.amazon.com/Jungle-Dover-Thrift-
Editions/dp/0486419231)

This is the book that led to food safety reforms after the dangers of meat
packing plants were revealed to the public. With the loss of unions in the US
and around the world, social darwinism is back in full force. Unions may or
may not be the answer to the problems facing humanity today, but the
discussion about how to form a more equitable economy is long overdue. And the
irony of listing the Amazon link for this book is not lost on me!

Edit: I remembered another required short read:

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
thecosas
Anyone else notice that one of the places you can order the book is... Amazon?

------
chriselles
I have no idea what it’s like as a seasonal associate at Amazon today.

But I do know what it was like 20 years ago.

A genuine mixture of chaos, frustration, hard work, and passion trying to
build what’s next.

Chaos was ever present with a large team of dedicated Problem Solvers.
Associates who understood the system well enough to solve anomalies.

Frustration largely came from the incongruence of trying to keep customers
happy while trying to hire new associates that allowed us to “average up”(each
hire improving the overall average).

Hard work was constant, but it was achievable for anyone in mediocre health or
better. The biggest issue was the overtime. We did run mandatory overtime for
all associates that was challenging, but doable. Exempt management just worked
silly hours, it’s part of why I eventually departed on good terms post Holiday
madness.

Seasonal Associates were referred to as temps back then.

They were all sourced from a single temping agency Integrity.

Often times just a mob of warm bodies, numerous temps discovered to be
intoxicated, and a few times armed.

Shifting from paper pick lists to handheld scanners was a big change.

I guess you could call it early human/computer interaction that allowed
individual metric measurement to be scaled.

An earlier poster’s reference to Taylor’s Scientific Management is
interesting.

Amazon’s reputation in Operations being harsh originated 20 years ago when it
scaled from a small team of true believers to a large enterprise of regular
human beings.

We fired people quickly and decisively like an assembly line.

Amazon Operations then, and I presume now, is not suitable for someone who is
physically unfit or unhealthy.

Which when looking at the unsuitability of such a high percentage of young
people being unfit for military service(obesity epidemic), leads me to believe
that many who choose to work at Amazon are physically unsuitable due to
lifestyle choice.

Where is it all going?

I would love to see a flattening of consumer spending to avoid the need for
seasonal hiring, but that’s unlikely, especially, with the introduction of
Amazon’s truly artificial holiday stress test Prime Day.

The very early folks like myself benefitted enormously from the low wage
gamble we took in exchange for Amazon stock options.

More recently, the upside in compensation and stock units is far more limited,
although promotion prospects within the company are considerable.

There just isn’t the profit per employee with Amazon as there is with Google,
Facebook, Microsoft, and Netflix that is often confused and conflated by
labour advocates.

I just remember us all making fun of Walmart and being like the Rebel
Alliance. Now it’s portrayed as the Galactic Empire a mere 20 years later.

With all the great humour/satire around “Red Shirts” and evil minions in
Venture Brothers, I wonder if we will see any satire around Amazon inspired by
dystopian stories like THX1138.

Happy Holidays to all, especially those seasonal workers moving all of our
Chinese made consumer goods from A to B.

