A relative worked at Amazon’s warehouse, he described it as slightly above average pay for the area with above average benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common, and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime, the easier the job the less they can pay.
Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?
> Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable to take bathroom breaks.
> The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day, burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for the athlete life, including changes to their diets and sleep schedules and making sure they’re not dehydrated throughout the day by keeping an eye on the color of their urine. It also suggests that employees buy shoes “at the end of the day when [their] feet are swollen” to avoid tightness and blisters — advice that will be familiar to distance runners or multi-day hikers.
"Double the amount of serious injuries" - using a metric based on whether you got time off or a change in duties. So if your company is better about making you see a doctor when you get an injury, and better about honoring the doctor's recommendation regarding light duty or time off, your company's number on this metric would get worse.
I see a lot of illegal workers in the ER who get injured at work but refuse to fill out the workman's comp forms - you can guarantee that their employers have a zero rate for serious injuries using that metric
[Edit -
If you're looking to really improve conditions, maybe focus on the workers who don't show up in the official numbers? Reminds me of the old story about the drunk guy looking for his lost keys by the lamppost, not where he dropped them "because the light is better here"]
Good Lord, that's genuinely dystopian. People often say the '70s was too biased in favour of unions, but I can't help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction in the present. Those two paragraphs make me want to retch like a cat puking up a hairball.
>I can't help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction
We are full on into an unopposed neoliberal world order. The pendulum has swung so far in this direction that an alternative or an opposition to this philosophy simply does not exist anymore in the public sphere.
I read an article about the native inhabitants of Australia and their very low rates of heart disease. It turns out that the males walked an average of 9 miles a day, the women 5.
Okay, that actually sounds like it might be healthier than my desk job. And Amazon providing health advice isn't a bad thing, cringey corporate speak notwithstanding. The 2x injury rate and lack of bathroom breaks are the troubling parts.
A friend of mine working at an Amazon center injured himself because he walks 5+ miles per shift. He also weighs like 350 pounds. He’s lost like 50 pounds already so hopefully he’ll get to a weight where he’s not injuring himself before he ends up having to quit.
Amazon isn’t obligated to provide my morbidly obese friend with a job, and he knows that, and he’s doing his best to keep on without destroying his body.
Example: Some routes between Harvard Yard and Long Wharf take you through residential and nightlife areas where a lot of people life, past biotechs, MIT, a few FAANG outposts, over a bridge with great views, across the Esplanade park, past at least a major hospital, financial district, through North End (Italian restaurants), tourist area, and to harbor walk, to sit on Long Wharf and watch the boats and airplanes.
(Separate from walking, a lot of people bicycle here, and you'll see heavy bikes on some streets during commuter hours, but don't beware that bicyclist safety is so-so here. If you decide to bike instead of walk, watch out for car doors opening into your path, trucks making turns, negligent car drivers, other bikers ignoring road rules, mild resentment of bicyclists, etc. Personally, I just walk, and know that there's a good chance that a driver even going through the busiest Central Square intersection is looking at their phone. :)
We do need to walk more but it's a crappy way to lose weight. You have to put a huge number of miles in to lose a significant amount. Tracking your eating and eating less calories is the only winner really.
Put it this way: Don't eat a 250 cal chocolate bar or take a 60 minute walk? Same impact.
Incidentally I have walked 103 miles in the last 24 days...
But AFAIK over years walking will strongly help maintain a good weight and keep you healthy. It certainly does help reduce weight and improve fitness compared to just potatoing. You can do more, but as a minimum starting point it is pretty bloody good.
One observation: people are generally not obese in central London and part of the reason is the few km walking per day to get to and from work via the tube.
When I moved to Manhattan I started walking about 4 miles a day on average, but I still gained 25 pounds because I could afford all the pizza and fried chicken my heart desires. Biking felt like better exercise, but much more hazardous to your life expectancy.
Exercise is not a great way to lose weight. The phrase is: "You can't outrun the fork."
Deuterated water studies back this up. Humans burn roughly the same amount of calories active or passive. The body only shunts the available calories around.
Now, exercise has lots of documented benefits. Weight loss just isn't one of them.
The body temporarily shuts down multiple processes like digestion during exercise to increase peak performance. However, it still needs food etc so those calories are still burned during downtime. Active people can consume 2-3x as many calories in a day as inactive people do. At the extreme end some elite athletes need 8,000+ calories per day diets simply to maintain weight.
This really isn't that much. The average Disneyland visitor probably walks 5 miles per day. A nurse might walk 4 miles in a shift. I'd expect most people who aren't overweight would be able go adapt to 5 miles per day pretty quickly, and 10 is fairly doable.
They're completely untrained in it, though. You gain endurance pretty quickly, and the fact that most people can go from couch potato to 5 miles in a day and just feel pretty tired shows that distance isn't a big deal--we're just lazy.
Sounds unpleasant, but really good for him and potentially life extending. The trick is keeping it off after switching jobs. A friend is dealing with that after moving off a busy manufacturing line to office work.
I'm not sure how anyone could walk 5+ miles a shift @350lbs and not injure themself, unless they were that big from training for Strongman or the like. Humans are not meant to have that much fat.
According to my iPhone tracking, I apparently walk several miles a day just from a habit of walking when on calls (largely circling around the parking lot like a vulture, for no apparent reason and probably confusing bystanders and co-workers continuously). Not for any particular reason; I’m just fidgety.
Well into obese (but less than 300) and it’s really not an issue at all — walking is a very light activity (and far easier than standing). Also notably, this habit has not lead to any weight-loss, or perhaps I eat to make up for it.
Ask me to run however and I’m dying in short order.
I mean, agreed, and he has been injuring himself. He’s dieting and trying to slim down though. Guy used to work out and be really buff back when he was in the military but it seems like a good number of people once they get out no longer have the discipline to keep fit once you don’t have all the structure of military service.
Aren't they lifting and moving packages? All sorts of muscle strains possible from that. Especially if there is little downtime for rest throughout the day.
They do operate some heavy equipment in the warehouse, but the people on foot aren’t that safe. Many injuries are based on people being unprepared for such an extremely athletic job, repetitive strain, or continuing to work injured. The more serious injuries are normally stuff like back injuries from lifting heavy weights bent over in a hurry, falls etc.
One example was dog food stored under a low platform so people needed to Cary 50lb bags while bent over. It’s possible to do that safely, but when you’re tired and in a hurry it’s easy to hurt yourself doing that.
