11/25/2019
I really need something to do. I have been unemployed for far too long and while browsing through Craigslist jobs I saw that Amazon is hiring at the local fulfillment center, AKA “FC”, starting at $20/hr. What the hell. I’ll fill out an app and see what happens. We could use the money and I assume the job ends after Xmas. Who knows I might lose a little weight at the same time. I chose to apply via walk-in hiring at the facility. There were hundreds of applicants and 30 or so little POS laptops that barely worked. I needed assistance several times while filling out the application. Again, really POS laptops. One day later got an email with a conditional offer of employment. Click here to accept and then attend an unpaid familiarization tour at which time I signed a bunch of stuff, got my picture took, swabbed my mouth for a drug test, and went on a walking tour with about 20 or so other new hires. They do at least two or three of these a day, six day a week.
First, it’s noisy! In order to hear the guide we had to wear an earpiece. The building, known as DEN3, is the second largest building in the state of Colorado at 800,000 plus sq ft. It has 26 miles of conveyors and about one mile of pedestrian walkways demarcated by green tape on the floor, thus known as “the green mile.” There are three possible paths for me: pick, pack, or stow. None of them look fun. It is pointed out that there are no chairs, anywhere. This made sense at the time. Little did I know what an abuse this was going to be.
The center of the building, demarcated by a blue line and a chain link fence, is full of robots. There are about 5,000 of them which weigh about 500 pounds empty and up to 1,500 pounds fully loaded.They look like huge roombas and move along at about 10 mph. The robots carry around “pods” filled with products. Entering the robotics area (RA) results in immediate termination. First time! I can see why. These robots cannot see you unless you are wearing special sensors and will run your ass over and over and over. If you got trapped in one of the hallways in the RA you would not stand a chance. Each workstation has a kill button which will shuts down the entire floor in case someone stumbles in there. Only specially trained employees, called “Amnesty” are allowed in there to pick up fallen product and such. They first use a tablet to tell the robots in their area to slow down – to about 1/4 mph. The robots travel about 50,000 miles per year.
I have the 6:30 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. shift Wednesday thru Saturday, plus mandatory overtime TBD. The base pay is $15/hr plus and extra $5/hr for working the night shift. Over time rate is based on the base rate, so $27.5/hr.
Day minus 1. 11/19/19
Tuesday. Orientation is as dull as you can imagine. I have been chosen to be a picker. So, I look at a computer screen that tells me what I am looking for and where it is in the pod. Then I pick product out of the pod – scan it – put it in one of five totes – and then hit a button above that tote telling the system I am ready for the next pick. When the tote is full I send it down the conveyor. I receive my badge complete with a lanyard. My locker comes with a combination lock that takes me right back to junior high. The locker is inadequate, to say the least, and there is nowhere to place your stuff while you sort through your lunch bag or whatever. Again, there is nowhere to even sit down. We have been advised to bring a change of shoes but they will not fit in the locker. Nor will a coat or your lunch. This is a place to store your phone and your keys.
Training will take three days.
Alicia has repeatedly expressed her displeasure with me taking this job. Sleeping alone, never seeing each other, dinner all alone, blah, blah blah. She also likes it when a nice warm dinner is waiting for her on the table when she gets home from work. Mostly I just think she is embarrassed by my taking such a menial position. So am I, but I can’t pass up an opportunity like this. I have seen several reports of how horrible it is to work at Amazon, but they are mostly on the left wing websites. I am truly excited to see how the system functions and to test my libertarian capitalist bias.
Day 1. 11/20/19
I have been trying to acclimate myself to working nights by staying up till 2:00 or 3:00 but I still wake up at around 6:00 a.m. so I am going into my first day sleep deprived. It was snowing and windy when I was getting ready to leave for work which caused me to write my first ever fairy tale on a sticky note:
It was a dark and stormy night. There was a feeling of foreboding and regret.
Will this be my first and only night as a servant of the empire? Or will I end my working career here?
Seriously?
Ha!
Lame, I know.
I badge my way in and am greeted by overly enthusiastic “ambassadors” with high fives for everyone and upbeat music played at party volume. I decline the high five’s. I don’t know where your hands have been – let alone all the hands of everyone else you have high fived. Yuck. I would rather get a pat on the bottom – not that that’s what I want but it would be less invasive to my person than a high five. I hate this whole contrived atmosphere.
I head for the training room where we learn all about insider trading, ethics, harassment policies, safety policies, the ATOZ employee website, live shooter thoughts, paid time off, unpaid time off, mandatory overtime policies, and penalties for all of the above. There is a huge emphasis on hazardous materials (which are not handled at this facility) followed by a written test which you must pass in order to continue. I scored 100%. After lunch we are split into small groups – five in mine. Our “ambassador” is Laticianta, or something like that. She has been with Amazon for several months and is very nice.
There are free vending machines for PPE – Personal Protective Equipment. The vending machine is badge activated and keeps track of allotments. I get a pair of gloves and a clip to hang them on so as not to constantly lay them down somewhere and lose them. We continue our training at a pick station where Laticianta is required to read safety stuff verbatim from her tablet. There are about 15 pages of this stuff and her Fire tablet is giving her fits. She openly wishes for a “good tablet”. I find this highly amusing. Finally we badge into the workstation computer and begin picking. This is gonna get old fast. Laticianta comes around every half hour or so to check up on us? There is actually a bit of a learning curve about when things don’t scan, or aren’t where they belong, or are damaged, etc.. At about 4:00 a.m. we all get pulled off for a debriefing in the training room. We are supposed to be asking questions and giving feedback but mostly we are all just kind of glazed over by lack of sleep and exhaustion.
Day 2.
Thursday. 11/21/19
Today our ambassador is… I forgot his name so let’s just call him Doufus. It fits. After morning “Standup”, a five minute cheerleading session, we go straight to picking. At 8:30 exactly I log out for a 15 minute break. Here begins the problem. I am physically tired and I need the break. There is nowhere to sit. The break room is a seven minute walk away plus I will have to go through security – another possible delay. By the time I get a granola bar out of my locker it is time to head back. I used up all of my three minute buffer before badging back in. So much for a break.
Lunch is no different. Seven minute walk to the break room plus security wanding, plus locker access time allows means I have to wolf down my sandwich. I got a cup of free coffee from a vending machine that is McDonalds hot. There was no time to let it cool down. I did not get even one sip. After punching back in, barely in time, I attend Standup again. There is thankfully no critical information being given because I can’t hear a word they are saying anyway. At the end of standup there is “clap it out”. So whatever the subject was, child slavery maybe, everyone starts clapping slowly and in the next ten seconds or so the clapping becomes faster and faster until the end when everyone shouts “child slavery” and throws their hands up in the air before going back to work. The worst part about all this, except that I got no rest, is all the damned high fives and constant cheering that must be endured. I feel accosted.
Second break is at 2:30 a.m. There is no time to walk down to the break room and back. I am tired and just need to sit down for a few minutes. We are not allowed to sit on any of the equipment at the workstation or on an overturned tote. What the fuck am I supposed to do? There is a picnic table up one floor- which is two flights of stairs. It takes me about 4 minutes of walking each way. But there is no clock available so I have to short my break in fear of being late returning. I knew about this and brought a watch but it quit working. So I got to sit for about five minutes on a picnic bench. Not much of a rest, to say the least.
Doufus checked in on me to see if I had any questions. I am exhausted and nearly told him to go fuck himself, but he is not the really who I want to take it out on. Deflecting anger is what all the cheerleading, high fives, and party music is all about.
We all get called down to the training room at about 4:30 a.m. for another debriefing. Everyone is just too tired to really give a care so the staff kicks in with joviality. I’m not in the mood for it.
A lot of my fellow workers either have neck tattoos or are immigrants. My point is that they are low skilled and economically disadvantaged people. There is a noticeable lack of Mexicans. I noticed this because there is such an abundance of them in the construction industry. I don’t think they can muster up the legal documents, pass a background check, a credit check, and speak English well enough to do the job. Many of the immigrants are from Africa and are not friendly.
The lunch room has free bananas, apples, and little tubs of peanut butter. While grabbing my stuff in the “locker room” I watched a woman pilfering some of the free apples and peanut butter before heading out to catch a shuttle. I can only imagine what it must be like to work a ten hour shift of manual labor without sitting down and with no real breaks only to then catch a shuttle to a real bus stop to wait in the snow and then home to dine on stolen apples. Her face shows a lot of hard wear and tear and I can’t help but wonder what she has in the way of health insurance. I empathize with these people tremendously and am really livid as I think about the state of health care in the U.S. This morning I read an article about sticker shock for policies available through the Colorado Health Insurance Exchange after the legislature decided to tax some policy holders so as to re-insure (subsidize) other policyholders. It backfired because of all the reverse adverse selection and unintended consequences. Can the morons (Yes, I blame the Democrats) running this state not see the very real effects that this has on people? God!!! I am foul, pissy, and tired but I would love to go on a rant right now.
Day 3. 11/22/19
Friday.
I was talking, complaining really, to my son Chris this morning. He laughingly suggested that I need to check my white privilege at the door when I go in tonight. He’s right!
Tonight my ambassador is Christopher. He’s young, blonde, good looking, tall, thin, and fit. He is also intelligent.
My performance is not too bad – I don’t think. The computer displays my products picked and time it took to pick them. There is another metric that I’m not sure I understand but basically shows how much time I spend looking at the screen, I think. Christopher spent about ten minutes giving me pointers and picking while I watched. I will never pack as fast as he does. He has a wingspan about two feet larger than mine. He can reach the third tote without taking a step. I can’t. He can bend down to pick from the lower two shelves. I can’t. It takes me a good while just to get down on my knees and an even longer while to climb back up. It must be painful for him to even watch. Mostly though, Christopher has large hands. I don’t. (Insert joke here). He can grab a box with one hand and pull the straps open with the other hand. I need both hands just to grab most boxes and then I have to wrestle the straps apart. This takes much longer. His pointers really are good. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I just don’t care. We had a nice long chat that could be summed up with “what are you doing here?”
Tonight a supervisor, Alicia, stopped by several times just to chat, I think. The first time she stopped by her eyes were glazed over and she was wearing a gentle smile as she leaned against the railing like a piece of soft taffy. She smelled really nice – a Sativa I hope. How she ever passed a drug test I will never know. I really dislike being high but I was thinking a touch of something to take the edge off just might make this job tolerable.
Day 4. 11/23/19
Saturday.
Today is my first day without an ambassador. I am fully trained up.
One thing that is kind of interesting here is seeing what kind of things people buy through Amazon. A lot of what you would expect including vitamins, supplements, specialty foods, electronic gizmos, and pet supplies. Not so much food but chew toys and treats. Lots of pet stuff. But why would anyone buy a box of kleenex via Amazon? Sex toys I understand. It never occured to me how much technology there is in sex toys. As near as I can tell I pick about eight toys per shift. There was one blow up sex doll for men and all of the rest were for women. Interesting. I also encountered a children’s book: A Day In The Life of Marlon Bundo, an LGBTQ rabbit.
What makes this job harsh is the not being able to sit down for breaks. In a ten hour shift I get to sit for a total of maybe 20 minutes. Ten minutes or so at lunch plus maybe five minutes at each break. Physically the job is demanding, but nowhere near as much as construction. There is no carrying sheets of MDF up flights of stairs, or sacks of concrete to be unloaded, or long awkward countertops to be wrestled. I don’t mind hard physical work, but not being able to sit down for a rest is a big deal.
The bathrooms are clean, well stocked, and don’t smell too bad. I don’t miss the porta potties of the construction sites.
I have a full forty hours of work under my belt now and I have tomorrow and Monday night off. My first day of mandatory OT is scheduled for Tuesday. Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, is just an ordinary scheduled day. Thursday is Thanksgiving and I will get 8 hours of holiday pay plus 4 hours of OT for working only four hours. I go in at 11:30 p.m. so I will be able to enjoy a nice turkey dinner. Friday begins 11.5 hour shifts. I ain’t gonna do it. Twelve hours effectively without any real breaks. Nope. This is Black Friday and I want to make a statement. This is when Jeff needs me the most and I won’t be there. Yes, I could use the money but we all need a little dignity. I can only hope that this benefits my fellow proletariat workers.
Conclusion:
Has my Libertarian Capitalist bias been compromised? Yes, a little.
This is the first real factory job I have ever held and it is not fun. I can better see why regulatory protections have been written and unions might be necessary. Too bad neither one of them are effective and that the cost of both is so burdensome.
PS: This Thanksgiving I intend to thank Gawd that I don’t live and work in a factory in China or the developing world.
Travel With A Curmudgeon 