
Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks - vezycash
http://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/undercover-author-finds-amazon-warehouse-workers-in-uk-peed-in-bottles-over-fears-of-being-punished-for-taking-a-break-amzn-id8258070.html
======
rland
Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000
different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2
days?

Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability
to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely
self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more,
at lower prices, with more convenience.

I wonder how much of the stuff in those warehouses is utter garbage that gets
bought and used just once.

~~~
Dylan16807
We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies
for reasonable working conditions.

~~~
phil248
Why would Amazon pay one more penny than they have to? To win a nice guys
award? To get a warm, squishy feeling inside?

There is precisely one solution to this problem, and it is us electing leaders
who change the rules in favor of the working masses, and enforce those rules
mercilessly against exploitative employers.

~~~
pjmorris
Why would anyone with sufficient money and organization to support a candidate
support one who would change the rules in favor of the working masses?

~~~
newfoundglory
Not everyone is a sociopath.

~~~
saas_co_de
Just everyone with power

~~~
jessaustin
It's a process of selection...

------
notheguyouthink
Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to
be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I
know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees
so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly.

It's really sad, regardless.

~~~
kelukelugames
Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do.
Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how
their stocks vest.

I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude
dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad.

I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the
best. An investor is great. An employee not so much.

I worked at Amazon in 2005 and was a customer before that. But I can't support
Bezos anymore because he negatively impacts how people are treated. It's not
on par with Nike's sweatshops in the 90s, but I still canceled Prime and
stopped buying things from Amazon.

~~~
kajumix
Judging from some of the comments here, software engineers working in Amazon
must either be stupid or irrational to continue working there, given the
market for software engineers. Amazon is a highly successful company with
significant anticipate growth still to come. All that success doesn't come
without talent. So maybe not stupid, maybe just irrational? Tech companies in
general, and Amazon in particular, are highly data driven and people are
constantly challenged to make design choices and decisions based on data--they
are being constantly asked for hard evidence on why a certain choice is better
than another. In a way they are optimizing for rational people in their
recruitment. Could it be that they are more rational than average? Could it be
that they are qualified to look at their work experience and weigh it against
the compensation, and make the choice to instead go work for Microsoft, or one
of the many tech companies around the Seattle area? Maybe they are all just
masochists?

(Disclosure: I am a software engineer in AWS, and I love my job. Sorry, can't
speak for non-tech jobs. Opinions are my own.)

~~~
spenczar5
At least one reason is that the stock has done _so_ well. A typical software
engineer hired 4 years ago is incredibly well compensated at Amazon because of
this.

Consider a mid-level software engineer hired 4 years ago, on April 16 2014,
with a salary of $100k. A typical stock grant at hiring for a mid-level
software engineer in 2014 might be $400k over 4 years, backloaded so most of
it comes at the end; on April 16 2014 the share price was $323, so the grant
would have looked something this:

    
    
      Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @ $323 = $50k  = $150k total comp
      Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @ $323 = $80k  = $180k total comp
      Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @ $323 = $120k = $220k total comp
      Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $323 = $150k = $250k total comp
    

But the share price has gone through the roof since then, so things look more
like this:

    
    
      Apr 16 2015: 154 shares @   $383 = $59k  = $159k total comp
      Apr 16 2016: 248 shares @   $625 = $155k = $255k total comp
      Apr 16 2017: 371 shares @   $901 = $334k = $434k total comp
      Apr 16 2018: 464 shares @ $1,440 = $668k = $768k total comp
    

That mid-level, totally normal software engineer is making _more than $750k
this year_ because the stock price has gone up so much since 2014. They're
likely to put up with a lot of bullshit to get that kind of financial security
- that's not just a down payment on a house, it can be the whole thing in cash
in the east side suburbs, with great school districts.

Amazon (and Seattle in general) could be in big trouble if the stock price
turns around. I don't think that's likely, but it's kind of scary to me.

~~~
techsupporter
Are those numbers real? As in, does (did?) Amazon really do $400,000 in stock
grants for routine (I don't mean that to sound harsh, I just mean "not as a
super-exceptional process to land a world-famous developer") software engineer
hires?

If they are, holy shit. I thought the meteoric rise in housing prices around
here was almost entirely due to the influx of people compounded by this
region's seeming inhospitable allergy to building housing stock at anywhere
near a reasonable rate.

But, damn, if your table is even within 80% of reality, I am floored. No
wonder it's virtually impossible to rent or buy anything for a "realistic"
(for me, and I make a pretty good income, or so I thought) price anywhere
between Edmonds and Auburn. The rest of us, even those employed in the
technology industry, simply cannot compete with that kind of cash on the
barrel.

~~~
spenczar5
Yes, this is typical, more or less. Amazon tends to pay with a low base salary
and high stock component. What I described would be somewhere between “pretty
competent developer” and “tech lead on a team of 8,” not anything unusual like
hiring a superstar principal engineer.

------
TaylorAlexander
My fear is that the future of work for most people is not unemployment, but
shitty jobs like this.

My feeling is that in order to avoid this and prosper, the people need to own
the robots that do all the work (Marxism heyy). If robots provide huge
productivity gains, then they will provide those gains for their owners. If
it’s the big corporations that own them, they will see the gains. But as long
as people are treated like machines, they will be left out of this prosperity.
Instead, if the people own the machines collectively, then they can enjoy the
productivity gains themselves as a group.

What do you all think of this?

~~~
noonespecial
But I _do_ already own some of the robots. I have Amazon stock in my 401k.
That's what "the people owning the robots" looks like.

What you're getting at is that there are many people right now who are too
poor (and are going to be too poor) to ever own any part of the robots.

This century's great debate is forming up to be whether or not we should give
them some anyway even though they can't "earn" it for whatever moving value of
earn society is currently accepting.

~~~
baby
In a few centuries students in history classes will look back and try to
understand why we let our people die in the streets.

~~~
piracykills
I don't think so, reading real statistics on this kind of thing instead of
alarmist and politically slanted headlines paints a very different picture of
how the world is doing.

[https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-
poverty](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty)

~~~
toomuchtodo
As global average quality of life trends upward, the American lower and middle
class are dying quietly in the streets.

[https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-
statistics/o...](https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-
statistics/overdose-death-rates)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/12/21/5720803...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/12/21/572080314/life-expectancy-drops-again-as-opioid-deaths-surge-
in-u-s)

~~~
wutbrodo
So you're thinking that people in the future will wonder why we weren't more
parochial in our sphere of concerns? More precisely, they'll be morally
shocked at the notion that we were too close to treating all humans as of
equal moral worth, instead of prioritizing those that are located closer to us
geographically?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware that most moral systems have somewhat-
principled reasons to prioritize those that are geographically closer to you.
This is intended more to illuminate that side of the argument than as a full-
fledged suggestion for how to set our priorities. But the claim being
discussed here, that the future will wonder why we let people die in the
streets, is still bizarre to me in the context that you're framing it in.

~~~
Dylan16807
You act like we're putting in enormous efforts overseas to improve life, when
we really aren't.

~~~
wutbrodo
No, I'm not. You're projecting your overly simple-minded model of the economy
and the world onto me.

~~~
Dylan16807
toomuchtodo pointed out we're not doing enough about a problem that exists
locally.

You argued that thinking globally is more important than thinking parochially,
which is fine by itself. But it's totally unrelated to what toomuchtodo is
saying _unless_ we were taking global action in lieu of local action.

So I assumed you meant that, because it's critical to your comment being
relevant.

If you didn't mean that, then your argument falls apart. toomuchtodo is not
arguing for being parochial, they're arguing that we should be making it a
priority to fight this problem _at all_.

------
Pezmc
If everything is based on performance metrics alone, surely there's a feedback
loop here? Employee A starts peeing in a bottle, so their performance numbers
go up, then at the end of the week they have better performance numbers and
everyone else's targets are increased to be more inline with employee A. So
more people start using bottles and taking shortcuts and the problem just
increases over time!

~~~
progval
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)

------
menacingly
I tend to personally view things from the owner's point of view. I also know
that once the popular narrative has bitten down on the story of a successful
company running slave factories, they won't let go. Whether these are
exaggerated or isolated cases doesn't matter, there will be story after story
until Amazon makes some show of changing practices.

However, I know there's another side. At some point, a company the size of
Amazon begins consuming all available oxygen. I don't know what the tipping
point is, but I know workers in some areas have about as much choice in where
to work as I do in cable providers. That's obviously undesirable, because
without a competitive labor market, Amazon is in practice able to treat
employees however they choose, because the one emergency brake built into the
loop is gone.

I wish there were some simple way to codify regulations about employee
treatment once you become as powerful as a small nation that don't also
encumber 150-employee plastic tubing manufacturers. At that level, pure
laissez faire is desirable to me, because you do have options as an employee,
and no reasonable case can be made that you've got to bog down your employer
in a regulatory mess. Then, once you've got some single digit of the GDP in
resources, you can be expected to operate with increased oversight and
expectations, as a tax for the opportunity cost your mere presence visits upon
other firms.

If that inhibits growth of megacorps... well, that's OK.

~~~
Spooky23
A big part of this problem is that the warehouse operations people de-risk the
impact and accountability for these problems to the bodyshops that fulfill
these roles. Companies like Amazon love temporary workforces because they have
big capital investments in fulfillment centers that they cannot walk away
from, and an employee workforce would attract union mobilization.

IMO, the way to attack this is to increase the cost of temporary employment by
taking away tax and other privileges. There should be a cost borne by the
employer for the flexibility of temporary workforces. That would discourage
the practice at companies like Amazon and have a lesser impact on SMB.

~~~
wombatpm
There already is. They pay more on an hourly basis for temporary workers. The
body shop gets their cut first. Body shop charges $17/hr, pays $13/hr

~~~
Spooky23
The body shop adds value by taking on compliance costs and risks. Amazon is
pretty well run, I’m sure the margins on the staffing company side are as
tight as they can be.

------
atrexler
Long-haul truckers have been doing this for decades for the same reason-- they
don't have time to pull over and use the restroom-- and no one is upset about
that. I'm sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where similar
norms are expressed.

Edit to add: I'm not endorsing the practice in any industry at all, just
pointing out that its not a unique problem to Amazon. My comment would have
been better phrased "why aren't more people upset about that?" It IS still
definitely a problem!

~~~
jrochkind1
wait, you're sure there are many industries, white and blue collar, where
workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement?

Really? In the U.S.? You're pretty sure about this, eh? Many industries?

I'd be curious to hear an example of _one_ industry where "white collar"
workers routinely pee in bottles as a job requirement, official or unofficial.

~~~
philbarr
My dev team are all forced to use the same bottle to save time. The one who
tops it off and has to go off to empty it is docked pay.

~~~
louisswiss
My dev team each have their own bottle. It's the most expensive bottle on the
market and is provided/cleaned/maintained for free as an employee benefit.

It is an IOT bottle, connected directly to the employee's primary work
station/laptop. Cleaning/emptying of the bottle is automatic and triggered by
employee engagement (eg LOC written/pushes to Github). It can also be
triggered manually by the team lead.

Employees who wish to take the bottle home/on vacation with them may do so
(same trigger rules apply).

Since implementing our new bottle infrastructure, we've been able to acquire
several new key hires from companies where employee benefits aren't taken so
seriously.

Furthermore, assigning the emptying of the bottles to our management team has
helped balance the company and improve morale significantly (now that we've
switched from a unilateral to bilateral flow of excrement).

------
stillsut
If you work in a latino painting or landscaping crew, tough guy stuff like
this is expected and socially enforced. Or say Alaskan fishermen. It's one of
tradeoffs you make for an uber-bule-collar job. But these jobs also have
benefits that others don't have: when you leave the job site, you don't have
to think about the job (like teachers do) and your skills and experience don't
lose relevance (like IT) and you don't have to suffer fools (like service
staff). But yeah - the notable tradeoff for these jobs is you get valued (and
devalued) by your physical productivity and reliability.

------
otakucode
I am honestly quite surprised that Amazon warehouses haven't experienced a
wave of workplace shootings. They're really a recipe for how to construct a
place primed for them. During the 1990s there were several high-profile
workplace shootings at US postal offices. Originally everyone presumed it was
just isolated incidents, mentally ill people, etc. But in the years that
followed, once people had calmed down and the situation could actually be
analyzed, the truth was quite different.

The shootings had a cause. Those post offices had paired human beings with
automated machines and slowly increased their expectation of performance of
the humans to match the machines. They cut breaks, they expected humans to
keep up with the machines (the machines would sort mail, for example, and kick
out things its OCR scanners couldn't recognize for a human to deal with), and
they made it clear that the humans weren't valuable employees... they were an
annoying inefficiency in the system that hadn't been optimized away yet.

That puts people under immense pressure. And while some people might be able
to handle immense pressure, it is fundamentally incorrect to expect large
groups of people to handle it. Large groups will have people who will crack.
This is as certain as gravity, and those who seek to ignore it just as
ludicrous.

------
wenc
It seems that everyone is assuming that the allegations in the article are
true, and are commenting based on that assumption.

But are they true? Can someone corroborate?

p.s. the reason I ask is because things are often more complex than a simple
narrative would have you believe, and it's worthwhile thinking about what's
actually going on rather than just taking in a narrative without questioning
it.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
Moreover, Amazon is a global company with 500,000+ employees. Painting the
entire company with this brush is poor analysis.

If this portrayal is representative of this distribution center, it could be
the result of a general manager whose incentive bonuses motivate him/her to be
strict about how pickers spend their time and grant strikes even for
legitimate medical excuses.

Or it could be true that all of Amazon is this way. In that case, however,
this one circumstance is insufficient to draw that conclusion.

~~~
sn41
I suspect it is a pervasive part of Amazon's work culture. They bought Whole
Foods, IIRC, and there were news articles about how that went:

[http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/whole-foods-inventory-
syst...](http://www.grubstreet.com/2018/02/whole-foods-inventory-system-
reportedly-making-employees-cry-at-work.html)

~~~
wenc
The problem identified in the article seems to point to the OTS inventory
system, which was a Whole Foods initiative. Amazon doesn't seem to know much
about it (which may partly be the problem), but it isn't evidence against
Amazon per se.

------
LinuxBender
Doesn't this affect more than the employees? If they are peeing in a bottle,
shouldn't they sanitize their hands after touching their package so they can
safely handle our packages? Should I be inspecting the inner contents using a
black light?

~~~
matte_black
They shouldn’t be pissing in a bottle period, they should be taking a break,
they are just scared to. No one is forcing them to pee in a bottle.

~~~
LinuxBender
Oh I totally agree. I'm just suggesting that perhaps this also affects the
recipients of the packages.

~~~
matte_black
You know how many nasty germs a package comes in contact with even before an
Amazon employee touches it and long after it’s shipped? _Trillions_ , with a
t.

~~~
LinuxBender
I don't think that makes it safer to touch the package after peeing in a
bottle. Employees are required to wash their hands after using the restroom. I
believe that state law may even require it.

------
xivzgrev
Amaazon says bathroom breaks are not timed. That is probably true. But that is
not what the article is alleging. Rather they need to reach a certain
productivity level within a given time period, and using the bathroom counts
against that apparently. And if goals are set based on previous employee
performance than what if that person also skipped bathroom breaks? Maybe total
breaks should be timed over a longer period of time. So if today you need to
shit your lungs out that's ok then it averages out with more normal breaks
over the next few weeks.

------
checkdigit15
> Another said: "The target grows every year."

Whenever I see examples of impossible-to-meet goals I'm reminded of reminded
of this classic "I Love Lucy" bit [0] with the chocolates on the conveyor
belt.

"Speeeed it up a little!"

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPzLBSBzPI)

------
bertil
Amazon in general, like Uber, considers that warehouse employees and driver
are just a needed adjustment until robots take over. They have the
consideration that Google/Waymo has for the people filling in “Is this a Stop
sign” Catpcha. Thinking of it as sweat labor is not false, but it won’t
convince the company change.

If you think of it that way, you understand better how Amazon product managers
and engineers are OK with the treatment. Also part of that vision: those
employees benefit from constant iteration of the work conditions, from Bezos’
initial suggestion to get knee pad to help filling in boxes (rapidly replaced
by the far better option to get tables). All the pain is just a step in the
process that has not been automated yet, and the “handful” of people
“temporary” suffering now are just there to provide training data for the
order of magnitude more orders to come when running around, climbing on step-
ladders, will be automated. And, in fairness, a lot of it has, or is about to:
Amazon has robots to carry shelves around, raising platforms, etc. They are
generally not used at scale yet, but teams are actively working on it.

I’m not saying that to justify the company’s callous take, or pain their plan
as a delusional grandeur, but to explain how the stress is part of the
process: to reveal what hurts. As far as I can tell, all employees, especially
desk-dwellers, are asked to do shifts in the warehouse to build some empathy.
It’s far from perfect and seem to hide the reality of family life for the de-
facto full-time workers -- but accusing Amazon of having inhumane condition is
missing the dynamic angle to it.

I believe there is a massive mis-match between how employees see their service
and the efforts so many employees are putting in; I’m not convinced that you
can reach automation faster by having humans run around and learn from their
mistake. I would be a lot more comfortable with the experiment is participants
where excited by the perspective of automation rather than working poor, but
I’m not in charge of the company, so it’s hard to grasp exactly what could be
done. I believe that warehouse employees with more free-time, more initiative
and the ability automate themselves would automate faster than what Amazon is
currently doing, but that’s just speculation.

~~~
djhworld
> you understand better how Amazon product managers and engineers are OK with
> the treatment.

Or do they really care?

~~~
bertil
The closest example I can imagine is, the same way medical professionals care
about you, or maybe surgeons more than others, or maybe pre-clinical bio-
scientists: most of the time, not really. They have their own paperwork, debt,
office rivalries, etc.

They do when you are ‘interesting’ (you very much _not_ want to be
‘interesting’) but they actually care about fixing your problem. They probably
care more when they see you, just like Amazon employees care after they have
been at a warehouse. It drives them to work on their project that will address
one small pain-point -- but they can’t care too much, just because their fix
takes so much time, if they cared, it would crush them. Both product managers
and medical professional have to respect proper, long, tedious testing
procedure to make sure their solution works as intended.

I think few people measure explicitly the amount of that bureaucratic
detachment (Chaplin, Kafka, Ionesco did) and even less see how it is necessary
to progress.

------
Consultant32452
What's so special about Amazon in comparison to the Chinese factories where
those goods are manufactured? Are we just upset because these people are
geographically closer? Or is it nationalism; Americans/Westerners are too good
for such treatment? Racism?

~~~
philwelch
I used to think it was some sort of nationalism, but I think it's mostly
because making sure all Americans are treated well is a much more tractable
problem than worrying about the welfare of literally everyone in the world.

It is conceivably possible for every American to have adequate food, housing,
and medical care, to work in safe and humane conditions, and so forth. Even
that seems crazy and utopian to some, but there's a plausible-enough plan that
people see it as a solvable problem.

Once you take a global perspective, though, you realize that one of the most
cost-effective ways of preventing human suffering today is to buy people in
malaria-infested regions insecticide-treated mosquito nets. That's kind of
overwhelming to think about. Warehouse workers have to pee in a bottle, but at
least they aren't dying of malaria. And let's say we manage to eradicate
malaria, or at least contain it enough that we can move on to the next-lowest-
hanging-fruit, and you still have to worry about access to clean water, or
having their children murdered/kidnapped by the local warlord or rape cult, or
the effects of dirty open-pit mining (particularly as overseen by the local
warlord or rape cult), or the cultural practice of mutilating the genitals of
infant girls, etc., etc. The problems of the world are just so big and so
complicated and so multi-faceted that the natural emotional reaction is just
to get overwhelmed and give up, and that doesn't help _anyone_.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> It is conceivably possible for every American to have adequate food,
> housing, and medical care, to work in safe and humane conditions, and so
> forth.

It is conceivably possible for every human - given the current available
resources.

~~~
Consultant32452
The global GDP per capita is about $10k/yr. Depending on what you mean by
"adequate" housing, medical care, safe work, and humane conditions... it might
not actually be possible. I think if you use first world standards, you'd have
a hard time achieving that even if you could magically redistribute all of the
globe's economic productivity.

~~~
philwelch
Also, if you actually want it to work out, you first have to remove all the
tinpot kleptocrats and replace them with halfway responsible governments. This
doesn't get attempted often, but this was attempted with Iraq, and the attempt
cost 2.4 trillion dollars and didn't yield sustainable results.

------
cbhl
Having to go down four flights of stairs to go to a bathroom is ridiculous.

I wonder if this is an unexpected side-effect of automating warehouses.
Normally, bathrooms are required by OSHA, but the relevant code appears to
dictate only the number of bathrooms required by the number of employees on a
site[0].

Adding bathrooms to a building is an expensive retrofit; I can't imagine this
situation getting better without regulation.

My inclination would be to try and lobby congress to require bathrooms within
X feet of employees on every floor, or require Y bathrooms per Z square feet
of space. (But what about edge cases? What do construction workers do in high
rises?)

[0]
[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-2017-title29-vol5-sec1910-141.xml)

------
JustSomeNobody
Typical retail. You're given goals that continue to get higher and higher.
Some places give you a handful of goals but the math doesn't work out so you
can't ever reach them all simultaneously. This is by design so that they
justify paltry raises and/or firings. The only way to play the system is to
stay aligned with whatever your immediate report feels are the ones to focus
on.

------
Cenk
Link to original story (as far as I can tell) at The Sun (urgh), it has more
photos: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6055021/rushed-amazon-
warehous...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6055021/rushed-amazon-warehouse-
staff-time-wasting/)

------
ggregoire
How long before Amazon replaces all the warehouse workers with machines? 5
years?

~~~
aylmao
If they're going to be replaced by robots soon, isn't that a good reason to
not fear spending on them, since they are a short-term cost?

~~~
IncRnd
Nope. That's exactly why money isn't spent on people. There is no reason for
Amazon to invest in them.

I'm not a fan of people thinking they will lose their job for taking breaks,
but why would Amazon invest money in something that may go away in 5 years?
They'll invest in the R&D of the replacement.

~~~
aylmao
I see what you mean, and I hope you mean it in the "playing devils advocate"
kind of way, because implying the most reasonable thing to do is what makes
most business sense is what's unfortunately wrong in this country.

~~~
IncRnd
Yes, most definitely I was pointing why Amazon's calculus is to not invest in
people. I was not saying that people should be worked like cogs in a machine,
where you try to go on the cheap without oil for as long as possible.

------
truculation
What's the typical walking time to the toilet in a large warehouse? Where do
the relevant employees keep the bottles (e.g. are they attached to their legs
underneath trousers? If not how do they avoid CCTV?) Are break periods
mandatory or optional?

~~~
didibus
Ya, I do believe a FC warehouse job sucks pretty bad, but for some reason,
this particular article seems strange. The journalist is clearly trying to
find sensationalist material for his book. I'm not sure how much I can trust
his sources.

~~~
truculation
That may well be but my questions are genuine questions (I'm curious).

------
Demoneeri
I don't understand how managers at amazon can believe this is okay and that it
won't blow off in their face.

~~~
dspillett
_> I don't understand how managers at amazon can believe this is okay_

They probably don't. They have stringent targets for their team to meet in
order to get their bonus (or not get promoted over, or not get moved to a
worse area, or...). The pressure is passed down the chain.

 _> and that it won't blow off in their face._

Maybe they expect to have moved on before that happens? Or simply feel that
have no choice because of that downwards pressure and not being able to afford
to risk losing the job (a morally corrupt job pays the mortgage better than no
job at all does).

------
chiefalchemist
Obviously, I wouldn't call this slavery. But in terms of the effect on the
employees, it's __in some ways__ getting close.

Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company?

There's something wrong when we (at least in the USA) are said to be
approaching but workers (albeit in the UK) can't stop to pee. All this at the
hands of the richest man in the world?

~~~
progval
> Do we have a word for this type of relationship between worker and company?

Exploitation of labour.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour)

~~~
chiefalchemist
Ok. But that's more or less a verb. How about a noun? Words matter. We need a
word.

------
nabla9
That's the future of the low paid work.

US poultry workers wear diapers on job over lack of bathroom breaks – report
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/poultry-
work...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/12/poultry-workers-wear-
diapers-work-bathroom-breaks)

------
saint_abroad
It seems they don't allow warehouse workers "degraded mode" with "performance
targets based on previous worker performance." If a storage array were
rebuilding I think most engineers would cut it some slack.

Not meaning to be flippant but I guess the difference is that with stateless
processing you get disposable machines. Reminds me of Moon (film).

------
noir_lord
I stopped buying from Amazon a few years ago, the constant background noise of
the way they treat their staff.

When I was young I worked in warehouses and it was hard, tiring work _but_ the
management by and large treat you like a human being.

We occasionally use Amazon at work (not my choice) and very often I can get a
better price for something from aria, scan or ebuyer anyway.

------
chandmk
I used to work in a factory floor. Having a job at this factory used to be one
of the nice things in the town. For the fear of being driven to work too much,
workers refused to increase the thru-put beyond a union limit. They used that
as a tool for bargaining for more pay. Observing bathroom breaks became the
responsibility of supervisor. There were many missed daily targets, which
became a regular discussion point. But in the end the entire thing was pushed
too far. This, coupled with the top management inability to run the factory at
a reasonably profitable state, finally lead the shut down. Ultimately it ended
up hurting the workers more than the top management. Majority of top
management found jobs elsewhere, and most of the workers ended up not having
any jobs. This story merely reflects the constant struggle we are witnessing
for generations.

------
JWLong
Okay, people here need to get out of their bubbles. This is the same with most
warehouse/assembly line jobs.

Folks here are shitting on Amazon because it's relevant to their everyday
lives. Walmart does the same stuff. I worked in one of their warehouses,
loading trucks for a summer. These situations are not the exception.

------
curtis
How does this compare to other warehouse jobs? My impression is that warehouse
jobs almost universally suck.

------
tomc1985
Why aren't more people on Amazon's ass for pushing their people so hard? This
sounds preventable simply by setting production standards to be in line with
the environment provided.

Yes, there are important bits in here about tech. But this sounds like a
classic case of management abuse

------
RandomCSGeek
The main issue is with demand-supply difference. There are too many people out
there in need of blue collar jobs, and this means companies like Amazon have a
chance to push the criteria to get the job much higher, as long as it's legal.
This happens in other sectors too. Here in India, there's oversupply of
candidates in almost every field, with the exception of those which require
highly specialised/costly knowledge(eg: PhD in AI, neurologist), so a lot of
companies exploit people by making them work for long hours and at a very low
salary.

------
nickthemagicman
Why dont they just wear Adult Diapers and really improve their productivity?

------
coldtea
"Changing the world", one bottle at a time...

~~~
geodel
Or maybe it is beta testing of new Amazon SBS aka Simple Bottle Storage®.

------
basseq
Let's say Amazon leadership is appalled at these conditions. Management by
metric is working insofar as it goes, but you really didn't know how bad it
was several layers down.

How would an organization identify something systemic like this? E.g.,
identifying that unexpected consequences had popped up and you'd created an
environment where people were afraid even to speak up?

------
amelius
Perhaps I'm missing something, but why don't Amazon's well-paid office workers
(e.g. IT workers) show more solidarity?

------
rodionos
Here's the largest Nescafe plant in the world, located in Southern Russia.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzxjMxKUvIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzxjMxKUvIg)

Check out some of the jobs on offer:

18:15 - the coffee tasting job

22:30 - the optical controller job

The latter one is crazy. The video doesn't make it clear why it's not
automated.

------
bb101
Bezos realistically has about 30 to 40 years to enjoy his position in the
world and then will go the way of everyone else. If one believes in karma, in
a future life he may yet get to experience the fruits of the world he helped
to create.

------
hnbits
Meanwhile in Jeff Bezos's bank account:

[https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7](https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7)

------
kevin_thibedeau
None of these people work for Amazon. They are all Integrity Staffing
employees. It is up to IS to follow federal labor laws and Amazon's hands are
"clean".

------
_bxg1
Just one of the reasons I avoid giving Amazon money.

~~~
BtBfs
I've started cutting my Amazon usage too. It's difficult because I've become
dependent but I can cut the delivery part for most products.

~~~
_bxg1
I pretty much only use Amazon as a fallback, when I need to buy something that
I just won't find in any other store, online or brick-and-mortar.

------
ataggart
I'm curious to know these workers' next best employment option, the one
they're forgoing to work at an Amazon warehouse.

------
laythea
Hang on a second. Isn't the magical quality about life, is its ability to
adapt?

If the world is becoming full of this kind of job, we need as individuals to
reject it, and adapt to other forms of income. Off course, if you let the
corporations treat us like this, they will.

And they are not at fault. It is us at fault for accepting it. We must not
accept these forms of income. Easier said than done, I know. But, who said it
was easy? Its like being in an abusive relationship. If you accept it, it will
continue!

~~~
leggomylibro
Of course, it's so easy - there's no apprehension of the fallout from your
decisions, no lingering self-doubt, no fear that maybe you contribute to the
problem and self-advocacy might amount to petulance, no implicit duress from
the question of where your food and shelter will come from.

I guess it might not be a bad metaphor, but I gotta say, your advice seems
facile and sort of in poor taste from my point of view.

You're exhorting people to stand up and say 'this is not okay', but that
additional burden shouldn't have to be borne solely by the people who are
already shouldering the worst of the situation's negative externalities,
should it?

~~~
laythea
Please see my reply below.

------
partiallypro
I've never heard stories like this, but I have heard stories (there's a
distribution center a few miles from where I live) of workers stealing sex
toys from bins and using it in the bathrooms at work. This is both sexes.

Amazon treats their floor employees horribly, but (and this is good/bad) are
hiring people from low rungs of society, so they probably feel they -can- take
advantage of these people. They are sometimes the only job in town.

------
moreorless
Amazon warehouse workers should consider moving to China and work at the
factories where they will be treated better.

------
Jach
What do the women warehouse workers do?

------
amyjess
I have a friend who used to work at a fulfillment center.

In December, she took a week of medical leave. Last month, they
_retroactively_ denied her leave and then fired her for having a negative UPT
balance. She'd worked there for years.

It's an awful, abusive company, and even though Trump's reasons for going
after Amazon are the wrong reasons, I hope he successfully gets them shut down
anyway.

~~~
balls187
She wasn't covered by FMLA?

~~~
amyjess
I don't know the details.

She also told me that a couple of her other coworkers got fired the same way,
and she and a couple of her ex-coworkers were talking about how it's something
Amazon does periodically. Apparently that's how they cull people management
doesn't like if they don't have a real reason to fire them.

Edit: Here's a writeup by somebody else this almost happened to.
[https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/harassing...](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/harassing-
the-sick)

Edit again: Another
[https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5pegzc/amazon_wrong...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5pegzc/amazon_wrongful_termination_of_employment/)

------
zealsham
Did we ever get pass the slave era?

------
himom
I’m curious how far away bathrooms can be and how building codes come into
play.

~~~
jws
They have palette shifting robots running around the warehouse. They should
just put a port-a-potty on one and let the workers summon it with a Dash
button.

------
TheForumTroll
Wow, keep this up and soon working for Amazon will be as bad as making
iPhones!

------
tapatio
Do what you gotta do to get ahead, including sleeping on the factory floor.

------
thomasjudge
Well I for one am going to stop ordering bottles from Amazon..

------
joeschmoe3
How similar is an amazon and a factory job from the past?

------
baxuz
Lol USA 🇺🇸

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

------
hnbits
er

------
zelon88
> Amazon said it didn't time workers' toilet breaks...

That means they set really high targets for middle-managers and then let them
get creative with the rules.

> ...and set its performance targets based on previous worker performance.

That means they cherry pick their best performing employees and set global
standards based on the top n%.

> The company said it provided coaching to help people improve...

That means they write people up when they can't meet performance standards or
quotas.

> ...and used "proper discretion" when it came to sick leave and absences from
> work.

And that means they write people up when they don't show up.

> The company also said it provided on-site occupational health and
> physiotherapy support...

They do that because real doctors and PCP's are way more costly to the
insurance plan.

> as well as legal,...

That's when HR puts together a meeting with a lawyer who tells you quitting is
stupid because of the NDA.

> ...financial,...

That's when an employee asks for a raise and HR sends them to a meeting with a
financial consultant who tells them "You don't really need a raise, you need a
budget!"

> ...and workplace guidance.

That's where they teach you not to drink water so you can meet your quotas.

~~~
perseusprime11
According to Bezos, there are two types of decisions- 1) type 1 - where Bezos
does not time workers' toilet breaks, and 2) type 2 - where he lets middle
managers to create their own rules. It's always Day 1 :)

~~~
iopuy
I'm not sure I understand this comment. Day 1? What are you referencing?

~~~
kelnos
It's a Bezos thing. The idea is that every day is "Day 1". Just because you or
your company has been around for years and years or that you've hit a major
milestone, you can't rest on your laurels. You need to approach every day as
"Day 1" with regard to your attitude toward innovation and moving quickly.

------
Karishma1234
I have a very simple solution for this. Whenever people checkout on Amazon
give them an option to tip people in the originating warehouse.

------
rectang
We can't. Labor and capital need each other, but they are forever at odds.
Good wages and working conditions can only be won through negotiating from
strength. Modern America favors capital. Elections have consequences.

~~~
nordsieck
> Modern America favors capital

The universe favors capital because capital is more mobile than labor.

~~~
vm
This is changing in the software world.

Software gives "labor" more scalability and leverage than ever before.

~~~
rectang
This is one of the reasons I feel good about contributing to open source. It
boosts the prospects of at least some workers, while at the same time offering
great value for employers, for industry, and for society at large.

------
gaius
One company I worked for 10 years ago (as an engineer) had signs up in the
call centre telling staff there not to pee in the bins. Apparently this is a
common thing in call centres. This is in the UK.

------
bitmapbrother
You may want to check the seal on your next order of Mountain Dew from Amazon.

------
asimpletune
This is totally normal

