I clicked feeling like it would be impossible to give them a fair chance in 3 minutes, but reading it I definitely am on the workers side and he gave them way more than 3 min.
This is a Kafka level story, having long dealings with an obviously incompetent and labyrinthine organization, only to be immediately penalized for the slightest miss on his own part. Especially the "if you're not at your workstation in one minute you'll be penalized / where is my workstation / I dont know" bit is straight out of The Castle or something.
Anyway, I agree with his overall feeling on the state of labor now.
Kafka is one way to look at it, but if anything the description of the process evokes The Good Place to me.
It must be an accident that the process is so catastrophically bad that it leaves new hires drained and crying. But you'd almost start to wonder how much worse you could really make it, if you were optimizing for "plausibly deniable torment”. I don't have it in me to imagine how.
I can't help but think about POSIWID (the purpose of the system is what it does). This is not obvious for the stated purpose of the system. So what's the actual purpose?
Part of it's to make people feel powerful, like the person who gloried in busting people taking time off. Part of it's clearly conformance to plan, where people are rewarded for marking items in a list done, whether or not they were effective. And I'm sure there are executive metrics that hit targets, no matter how many unmeasured things get worse.
I have had similar induction experiences at some supposedly great academic institutions. The irony is that I am accepting a much lower pay at academia to, among other things, avoid experiencing this nonsense.
Dysfunctional organizations are something horrible we should punish as a society. They are an enormous waste of resources. I am surprised this Amazon department so dysfunctional, since the company as a whole is doing quite well.
The state of Amazon's blue collar working conditions are widely considered to be crap of course, and there are a lot of complaints about labor laws, unions, outsourcing and immigration, etc. I didn't quite see how he connected the issues in the post though. I mean beyond state of labor = not good (and maybe that's all you were saying too).
I highly mistrust anything on /r/antiwork. So many of the posts are the “and everyone clapped” variety but get hundreds or thousands of upvotes, I’m pretty sure it’s at least half a troll karma farm.
While they usually seem to have started off fairly sincere, /r/antiwork like many of the subreddits dedicated to telling stories about ridiculous behavior in others seems to have quickly changed into more of a place where people practice creative writing. /r/TalesFromTechSupport, /JUSTNOMIL, /r/AmITheAsshole, /r/MaliciousCompliance, and many others.
The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take what is written at face value.
I believe that the rule goes that for any popular "story" based subreddit with no verification, assume that 99% of the content is False. The more popular the subreddit, the faster this converges. These villain-based story subs typically come with a nice template of "X did Y to me, Y is obviously bad, I responded".
Content from that subreddit has gotten a ton of play on social media in recent months. It does seem the most viral stories from the subreddit are embellished, but I can't pinpoint why they seem that way.
Since you're on HN, I'll give you the benefit of assuming you're working a nice, solid, salaried job.
Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand.
If you haven't worked retail in the last few years, I'd actually suggest doing the following: Go on the dating app of your choice and put out that you're legit looking for coffee with folks who work hourly retail jobs. You're vaguely tech adjacent, you can automate those swipes. Literally just ask people who match with you to tell their worst experience in retail.
Ask those retail folks: Are you trained enough? Are you understaffed? Does your manager give a shit? Do you actually get the tips you're supposed to get? If you could walk away right now, would you?
Invite 'em to have a coffee/tea, etc in some public place. Talk about what's going on. Genuinely give a shit. What you'll learn is that most hourly retail folks are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. A friend of mine in college was making $7.70 an hour as a shift manager at a Taco Bell. The straw that broke the camel's back was when his manager suggested he take a *decrease in pay* and an *increase in hours* in exchange for "maybe getting salaried". He left and now is paid $35/hr to sell marijuana.
As someone who works a salaried job at a MANGA/FAANG Forbes Top 100, I feel that some of us lose sight of what our retail-facing hourly folk are actually doing. Retail folks get the most abuse from both sides that I've seen.
Last week, in the grocery near me, I looked at a dude who was mad about a few labels being misaligned, screaming until he was red in the face at an employee about how he was being ripped off, about how this was terrible. It wasn't until I walked over and (legitimately wanting the thing he was mad over) asked him to politely shut up and get over himself for not reading that he stopped, stomping out of the store. This store, like many others, basically demand that these people be happy in the face of abject abuse. The security at the door? That's only for shoplifting. Being a complete jerk to the floor workers? Not that poor fuck's job, and they can be reprimanded for stopping a fight from happening.
It seems more than a bit like quoting the front page of /r/relationship_advice to make a point about how bad relationships are these days. Even if you don't have any specific reasons to doubt it, how can you trust a source that adversarially selects stories for virality?
just the fact that anti work grew to so many people is telling of the times we live in, that along with superstonk, crypto, wallstreet bets dominating reddit popular tells me that capitalism will implode without major rework in the next 20 years.
I think it's likely people embellish frequently. But it doesn't detract, in my opinion, that working under capitalism is awful and absolutely messed up beyond belief.
> In the Earnings Call in July of this year, they said they now employe 950,000 warehouse workers. They're probably over the 1 MM mark right now due to the holidays. Yes, there are plenty of people working there that are overqualified, but that is the beauty of what Amazon is doing. Their onboarding and recruiting for this is incredibly smooth, fast, and will give virtually everyone a chance.
I guess if you hire 500,000 people per year and 99% of people have an excellent onboarding process there will be 5,000 bad stories?
I doubt it's as low as 1%. If you hire half a million people in a year, it's pretty much guaranteed a lot of the people involved won't know what they're doing. Many of the HR and recruiting people will be new too.
It’s always been surreal when I’ve had the chance to be/sit next to contractors whose every minute is accounted for and who cannot take a single day of vacation without finding someone to swap shifts with, every action under the scrutiny of a shift manager lording over them like a narcissistic parent.
All the while, the salaried, fully insured and vastly more expensive ‘real’ employees all show up late to meetings, randomly work from home because their ISP is upgrading their equipment and occasionally drag a lunch to two hours or more.
> It’s always been surreal when I’ve had the chance to be/sit next to contractors whose every minute is accounted for and who cannot take a single day of vacation without finding someone to swap shifts with, every action under the scrutiny of a shift manager lording over them like a narcissistic parent.
My brother was the first driver employed in a brand new amazon warehouse. He shook hands with the manager and came home to tell us the good news. He was hired! His start date of the following week was rescheduled many times. In fact, it went from August to November.
The rest was a like landing in an island all by yourself. Nothing works, no one can help you, and you are on your own. Sometimes, he would just sit in the truck for a moment, holding his head together not knowing what to do. That was until the cameras were installed in the truck for them slackers.
The only way he managed to survive there was out the generosity of random old time drivers that he met on the street. They gave him the ropes, shared private WhatsApp group where they coordinate and help each other with tips and tricks.
Systematizing and optimizing every detail of operations to create as large of a pool as possible of positions requiring the least possible skill, reducing the cost of turnover, training, and management complexity... seems to be externalizing a heavy toll on mental health. Regulation can tackle many cases of "socialized losses, privatized gains" but I am at a loss to understand how we can mitigate this one.
this reads like the opposite of a systematised process - this reads like a bunch of departments who don't talk to each other striving to check off tasks in the onboarding process without actually making any effort to complete the intent of the task. Which would make sense at a highly metric-driven company like Amazon.
There was this chap about 150 years ago, wrote about the alienation from labour caused by breaking down jobs into tiny, mindless motions that slowly eat away at your sense of self.
The one golden rule at Amazon is to externalize all costs that are paid by use of a human being’s labor and time.
Regulations don’t stand a chance of moving quickly enough to keep up with Amazon’s innovation budget. The only way to counter that is worker unions, which can make specific and timely demands that Amazon treat workers more humanely.
If workers unionize, Amazon has to stop externalizing the cost of labor.
Other than the drug test it didn't seem like there was a single thing OP was required to do that wouldn't be solved by automation. At my current job we set up direct deposit, filled out info for background checks, completed training videos and quizzes, etc. all through online forms. Everyone OP interacted with shouldn't even be in the picture.
It's a warehouse job; I struggle to see why you even need any humans in the loop above the workers at all. Clock in, move the boxes, mark tasks completed on your handheld, clock out. Frankly I have no idea why the people org as described by OP exists the way it does for a company known for its cloud services. None of these morons OP dealt with needed to be employed.
I figured that out in the second paragraph when he said "drug test" - I think they'd have an awful hard time hiring engineers if they required drug testing. I don't do drugs (not even marijuana even though it's legal here), but I'd refuse to take a drug test just on principle - they are paying for my performance at work, not for what I do on my own time.
The only time I worked at a job that required drug tests, was at a transportation company where federal law required it.
I've interviewed there twice and I gave up on them twice because honestly it was about the same thing with no one knowing what they were doing and being EXTREMELY slow about everything else. In the space between my first screening and an email to schedule an interview day, I applied at another place, did 3 interviews and a coding test, negotiated an offer, accepted an offer, and quit my current job. It was absolutely wild.
After reading that, I can’t help but feel like this is just someone experiencing awful anxiety and unable to cope with work:
“
I go home absolutely drained and i didn’t even do anything. I wake up with the worst existential dread I’ve ever experienced. I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general.
Sometimes id rather die then suffer until I die from an illness inevitably. I power through my break down. Leave for work to drive through a horrible storm. I ended up being a single minute late. I already get one point against me. Then I’m told if I’m not at my station by 7:05 I’ll get another point. I was never told where to report to. So I asked. In the rudest way possible they say they don’t know. I walk a little bit. 7:05 hits. And I just turn around and go home.
I did everything I was supposed to do but got shit on before I even officially hit the floor. From the time I applied to when I walked out. I tried so hard to be optimistic, but that was the worst experience I’ve had getting a new job. I can’t help but feel disappointed with myself. I’m not in a good financial situation, and my girlfriend is not going to be happy. But with it being a shit show the entire time I just don’t see how that was gonna work, especially at a company like amazon.
“
Reddit is one of, if not the single least reliable source of information on the Internet.
You are looking at algorithmic feeds which propagate only information which has the majority vote. Not only that, but a majority vote of a community which becomes more radical as any opposition or moderates are pushed out.
Point a microphone at a speaker and crank the gain. That awful feedback noise is Reddit.
I don’t mean to be rude to those who are seeking a living, but let’s call this what it is.
It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other.
They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reached EOL. Nobody here is meant to be anything but a cheap robot with decent sensor-end effector coordination. In fact, their humanity is a liability that Amazon begrudgingly tolerates, largely because it has to.
We need robots in the worst possible way to replace any and every job that people would never choose to do as a hobby.
For those confused, you scan in your badge, that get's you through the door.
Then you check the monitor to figure out what job you will be doing (ie, pack or rebin)
If your station is taken for some reason, you should be able to just move to another station and log in there - you don't have to use station assigned.
You will also have a monitor which shoes your rate.
Managers probably won't even know your name, and if you are day one employee showing up late, will have no clue who you are.
Some of the safety rules (because amazon get's hammered on this) - SUPER annoying - no listening to music - are you kidding? The most boring job possible, and to keep folks safe no music, not even one earbud in.
It's easy to blame this on Amazon, but anyone who's worked in retail for a big company knows that this is just your standard low level employee incompetence and power tripping.
It's really a swamp down there. Glad I made it out.
The larger the organization, the more hamstrung it gets by its own bureaucracy. This applies to all large organizations - business, unions, government, religion. It's inevitable.
At my company I have seen several changes over the last few years:
- Work is getting shittier
- Corporate internal communication has become very intense: several emails a day
- Company news is mostly green-washing
- Corporate communication is shifting to non-work related topics like sport, charity actions and general well-being
- Trivial MOOCs are heavily promoted, sometimes made mandatory
- The intranet has been more vexating everyday.
Of course there is the "quest for sense" trend. But there is also a trend for selecting the most resilient to frustration and the most obedient. I interpret this as an influence low cost countries have on high-cost countries workforce.
Forget about creativity, efficiency, technical excellence. These are not the values cherished by many companies these days.
Applying for a new job shouldn't be this stressful & them being so unprepared is absurd considering the company.
It definitely speaks volumes about the environment that you will be subjected to for 8+ hours a day & its fair that you choose not to put up with it.
I have also experienced having to quit shortly after starting a new job, I soon realized that my efforts were not going to be matched or acknowledged in a place where there was little to no organization & the supervisor could treat you as he pleased, if he even allowed you to speak to him that is since he was always so "busy". :s
I recently found out there's a setting you can "opt out" of new design. So it reverts UI for reddit.com to old.reddit.com, and all your links/redirects work w/o having to append `old`.
Random anecdote: I remember trying to get a job at McDonalds and I had to take these tests like "would you rather kill 1 person or 5" it's like you had to choose one. I did not get that job. Similar process for other stuff like washing plates at chains.
[+] [-] version_five|4 years ago|reply
This is a Kafka level story, having long dealings with an obviously incompetent and labyrinthine organization, only to be immediately penalized for the slightest miss on his own part. Especially the "if you're not at your workstation in one minute you'll be penalized / where is my workstation / I dont know" bit is straight out of The Castle or something.
Anyway, I agree with his overall feeling on the state of labor now.
[+] [-] tux3|4 years ago|reply
It must be an accident that the process is so catastrophically bad that it leaves new hires drained and crying. But you'd almost start to wonder how much worse you could really make it, if you were optimizing for "plausibly deniable torment”. I don't have it in me to imagine how.
[+] [-] wpietri|4 years ago|reply
Part of it's to make people feel powerful, like the person who gloried in busting people taking time off. Part of it's clearly conformance to plan, where people are rewarded for marking items in a list done, whether or not they were effective. And I'm sure there are executive metrics that hit targets, no matter how many unmeasured things get worse.
What else to people see?
[+] [-] haroldp|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS42yIDQX6s&t=6s
[+] [-] nextos|4 years ago|reply
Dysfunctional organizations are something horrible we should punish as a society. They are an enormous waste of resources. I am surprised this Amazon department so dysfunctional, since the company as a whole is doing quite well.
[+] [-] throwawaylinux|4 years ago|reply
The state of Amazon's blue collar working conditions are widely considered to be crap of course, and there are a lot of complaints about labor laws, unions, outsourcing and immigration, etc. I didn't quite see how he connected the issues in the post though. I mean beyond state of labor = not good (and maybe that's all you were saying too).
[+] [-] idontwantthis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eco|4 years ago|reply
The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take what is written at face value.
[+] [-] esyir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProjectArcturis|4 years ago|reply
Employee: I can't come in today for a very good reason.
Boss (rudely): You have to come in or you're fired.
Employee: I quit.
+1000 karma
[+] [-] hoten|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indrora|4 years ago|reply
Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand.
If you haven't worked retail in the last few years, I'd actually suggest doing the following: Go on the dating app of your choice and put out that you're legit looking for coffee with folks who work hourly retail jobs. You're vaguely tech adjacent, you can automate those swipes. Literally just ask people who match with you to tell their worst experience in retail.
Ask those retail folks: Are you trained enough? Are you understaffed? Does your manager give a shit? Do you actually get the tips you're supposed to get? If you could walk away right now, would you?
Invite 'em to have a coffee/tea, etc in some public place. Talk about what's going on. Genuinely give a shit. What you'll learn is that most hourly retail folks are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. A friend of mine in college was making $7.70 an hour as a shift manager at a Taco Bell. The straw that broke the camel's back was when his manager suggested he take a *decrease in pay* and an *increase in hours* in exchange for "maybe getting salaried". He left and now is paid $35/hr to sell marijuana.
As someone who works a salaried job at a MANGA/FAANG Forbes Top 100, I feel that some of us lose sight of what our retail-facing hourly folk are actually doing. Retail folks get the most abuse from both sides that I've seen.
Last week, in the grocery near me, I looked at a dude who was mad about a few labels being misaligned, screaming until he was red in the face at an employee about how he was being ripped off, about how this was terrible. It wasn't until I walked over and (legitimately wanting the thing he was mad over) asked him to politely shut up and get over himself for not reading that he stopped, stomping out of the store. This store, like many others, basically demand that these people be happy in the face of abject abuse. The security at the door? That's only for shoplifting. Being a complete jerk to the floor workers? Not that poor fuck's job, and they can be reprimanded for stopping a fight from happening.
In the face of [Nine dollar paychecks for 70 hours of work](https://www.today.com/food/working-mom-received-9-paycheck-7...), a [rising wage theft issue that accounts for billions in unpaid wages](https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...), it's no wonder that [suicide rates of retail workers is going up](https://archive.md/VrvBu).
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 93po|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] q1w2|4 years ago|reply
r/Anarchism r/Anarchy101 r/IWW r/LateStageCapitalism r/lostgeneration r/Socialism_101 r/mutualism r/radicalmentalhealth
It's part of an anarcho-socialist grouping of Reddit subs that push a specific agenda.
You cannot take anything there seriously.
[+] [-] justinator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mherdeg|4 years ago|reply
> In the Earnings Call in July of this year, they said they now employe 950,000 warehouse workers. They're probably over the 1 MM mark right now due to the holidays. Yes, there are plenty of people working there that are overqualified, but that is the beauty of what Amazon is doing. Their onboarding and recruiting for this is incredibly smooth, fast, and will give virtually everyone a chance.
I guess if you hire 500,000 people per year and 99% of people have an excellent onboarding process there will be 5,000 bad stories?
[+] [-] nitwit005|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antiterra|4 years ago|reply
All the while, the salaried, fully insured and vastly more expensive ‘real’ employees all show up late to meetings, randomly work from home because their ISP is upgrading their equipment and occasionally drag a lunch to two hours or more.
[+] [-] lobocinza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaws|4 years ago|reply
What a nightmare.
[+] [-] hiptobecubic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idworks1|4 years ago|reply
The rest was a like landing in an island all by yourself. Nothing works, no one can help you, and you are on your own. Sometimes, he would just sit in the truck for a moment, holding his head together not knowing what to do. That was until the cameras were installed in the truck for them slackers.
The only way he managed to survive there was out the generosity of random old time drivers that he met on the street. They gave him the ropes, shared private WhatsApp group where they coordinate and help each other with tips and tricks.
[+] [-] johnny35|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beaconstudios|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rowanajmarshall|4 years ago|reply
This stuff isn't new.
[+] [-] floatingatoll|4 years ago|reply
Regulations don’t stand a chance of moving quickly enough to keep up with Amazon’s innovation budget. The only way to counter that is worker unions, which can make specific and timely demands that Amazon treat workers more humanely.
If workers unionize, Amazon has to stop externalizing the cost of labor.
[+] [-] nexuist|4 years ago|reply
It's a warehouse job; I struggle to see why you even need any humans in the loop above the workers at all. Clock in, move the boxes, mark tasks completed on your handheld, clock out. Frankly I have no idea why the people org as described by OP exists the way it does for a company known for its cloud services. None of these morons OP dealt with needed to be employed.
[+] [-] dekhn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Johnny555|4 years ago|reply
The only time I worked at a job that required drug tests, was at a transportation company where federal law required it.
[+] [-] CountHackulus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] preetamjinka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stitched2gethr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ushakov|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] torbTurret|4 years ago|reply
“ I go home absolutely drained and i didn’t even do anything. I wake up with the worst existential dread I’ve ever experienced. I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general.
Sometimes id rather die then suffer until I die from an illness inevitably. I power through my break down. Leave for work to drive through a horrible storm. I ended up being a single minute late. I already get one point against me. Then I’m told if I’m not at my station by 7:05 I’ll get another point. I was never told where to report to. So I asked. In the rudest way possible they say they don’t know. I walk a little bit. 7:05 hits. And I just turn around and go home.
I did everything I was supposed to do but got shit on before I even officially hit the floor. From the time I applied to when I walked out. I tried so hard to be optimistic, but that was the worst experience I’ve had getting a new job. I can’t help but feel disappointed with myself. I’m not in a good financial situation, and my girlfriend is not going to be happy. But with it being a shit show the entire time I just don’t see how that was gonna work, especially at a company like amazon. “
[+] [-] throwaway55421|4 years ago|reply
You are looking at algorithmic feeds which propagate only information which has the majority vote. Not only that, but a majority vote of a community which becomes more radical as any opposition or moderates are pushed out.
Point a microphone at a speaker and crank the gain. That awful feedback noise is Reddit.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|4 years ago|reply
It’s not a hiring process. There is no interview. They aren’t interested in working with you to figure out if you’re a good fit for each other.
They’re trawling the ocean and filtering the catch through drug and background tests. They process countless people every day, constantly replacing others who have broken down or reached EOL. Nobody here is meant to be anything but a cheap robot with decent sensor-end effector coordination. In fact, their humanity is a liability that Amazon begrudgingly tolerates, largely because it has to.
We need robots in the worst possible way to replace any and every job that people would never choose to do as a hobby.
[+] [-] whoknowswhat11|4 years ago|reply
Then you check the monitor to figure out what job you will be doing (ie, pack or rebin)
If your station is taken for some reason, you should be able to just move to another station and log in there - you don't have to use station assigned.
You will also have a monitor which shoes your rate.
Managers probably won't even know your name, and if you are day one employee showing up late, will have no clue who you are.
Some of the safety rules (because amazon get's hammered on this) - SUPER annoying - no listening to music - are you kidding? The most boring job possible, and to keep folks safe no music, not even one earbud in.
[+] [-] katzgrau|4 years ago|reply
It's really a swamp down there. Glad I made it out.
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerome-jh|4 years ago|reply
Of course there is the "quest for sense" trend. But there is also a trend for selecting the most resilient to frustration and the most obedient. I interpret this as an influence low cost countries have on high-cost countries workforce.
Forget about creativity, efficiency, technical excellence. These are not the values cherished by many companies these days.
[+] [-] serverlessmom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruined|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hereforphone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wbc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smegsicle|4 years ago|reply
maybe just hosts file..
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcun4128|4 years ago|reply