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<p>sure, and my point is that if you buy products from China, then you don’t care what conditions the Chinese laborers work in either, so really we are the same. Apparently you are just happy to exploit Chinese, but think it is “very sad” when it happens in the US.</p>
<p>It is of course very sad for anyone working in harsh conditions anywhere on the globe. Again, I was referring to your rather bold statement that “I don’t really care what the temperature in the warehouse is” and now you seem to be deflecting the attention away from your statement. I am glad that Amazon seems to be addressing the issues.</p>
<p>This plant is near me… few things…</p>
<p>I know a girl who started working there last year as a temp. She was a bit out of shape and quit after 3 days because she couldn’t handle all the walking that they do to pick orders and such.</p>
<p>I have a friend who started working there around the same time as a temp. He got hired on as an employee, and just got promoted to first level management. He was appalled by that story in the m.call because he said for the most part they did a great job considering how hot it was… we had 110 degree days here this past summer… People don’t seem to realize that factories and warehouses aren’t typically air conditioned. I’m sure it’s hard work but those people are paid decently (not making minimum wage) and it takes a certain kind of person who is cut out for that type of job. He did tell me they have different kind of events and that they do attempt to make it somewhat fun. I dunno.</p>
<p>fendergirl,if your friend is appalled and feels the situation in that plant was misrepresented, I suppose he could write some kind of rebuttal or letter to the editor.</p>
<p>All I can say about this is that there are plenty of people all across the South working in un-airconditioned spaces, and you will never hear about them because they don’t work for a giant news-worthy company like Amazon. A lot of them work for small companies that couldn’t afford to aircondition the workspaces if they wanted to.</p>
<p>I think sevmom was objecting to the bold wording of soccerguy. Had it been:</p>
<p>“I Will still buy from Amazon even with the alleged conditions in that warehouse”, there should be less argument.</p>
<p>Frankly, as several comments above, I think the Amazon incident was magnified because the news worthiness. Thousands warehouses accross the us and the globe would have the same problem and have not been reported. There are more important things for us to consider/object to than mulling over an incident at a warehouse.</p>
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<p>Not deflecting. I do not care, and I will still buy from Amazon. Just like you do not care, and will continue to buy products from China.</p>
<p>See? We both don’t care. Only you don’t want to admit it. It doesn’t make you a bad person to admit you care about the bottom line, just makes you a realist.</p>
<p>Or do you only buy fruit from farms where they pay their fruit pickers $20/hr?</p>
<p>Give it a rest,soccerguy… You keep popping up to keep a discussion going. artloversplus has already indicated why your statement was a potential problem. All the best.</p>
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<p>Order picking jobs, by definition, involve a lot of walking. For people who enjoy exercise, a nice perk of the job is you get to get good exercise all day long. That’s my big gripe about my job - since I sit at a desk all day long, I get very little exercise and it is hard to maintain my weight.</p>
<p>If a person is out of shape and don’t want to walk all, warehouse jobs are not very good jobs for that person. One of the benefits we have in America is there are a lot of different jobs out there for a wide variety of people. But not every person will excel in every job. That’s life.</p>
<p>OK, let’s start helping with famine & violence victims and other things. Whoops, not here, those are political.</p>
<p>Besides Costco, can you think of any large retailer that treats its people well? That is worthy of patronizing over other places?</p>
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I think most successful retail places treat their employees reasonably well given the type of job it is. If they’re not treated well you can usually tell by it being filled with unhappy staff and not very knowledgeable staff due to high employee turnover. If the company is on a decline financially, and especially if in financial straits, there’s a good chance the employees won’t be so happy due to cost cutting and an discertainty of the future (along with their own financial security) in the minds of the employees.</p>
<p>‘Treating well’ has a lot of aspects and drivers though - corporate culture, pay scale relative to the type of position it is, management training, competency level of the people they hire for management (since this is probably the biddest impacts to the employee morale along with pay).</p>
<p>There will always be some people complaining almost everywhere so one needs to look beyond the outliers.</p>
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<p>because there were 5 more posts after mine, I am the one keeping the thread going? right. I keep “popping up” because my post was responded to. There was nothing in my post that could be classified as “a potential problem.”</p>
<p>Let’s not forget that your first response to me in this thread was extremely rude and you took the opportunity to use my undergraduate school against me. PS I’m sure your sons at VT and UVA buy lots of stuff from Amazon.</p>
<p>perhaps you should let me know which threads I am not allowed to participate in and consider being more cordial? just a thought.</p>
<p>soccerguy,My first response to you was about your very disagreeable and rather rude statement. I was truly shocked at what you said and asked you if you were joking (which you never answered). You are of course free to keep posting on whatever thread you like. I like Amazon and my kids do too. Thank you for thinking of that. By the way, I think William and Mary is a great school and I hope you enjoyed your recent time there. Let’s just move on,please. I don’t want to keep going back and forth with you. This is a thread about Amazon in the Parent Cafe and I’m glad to see Amazon seems to be addressing whatever issues have been going on.</p>
<p>For me, the easiest way to get SOME idea of how well employees are GENERALLY treated by employer is longevity of staff vs. frequent turnover. Of course, it’s only ONE marker, but when you TALK with employees, you can also get some ideas/measure. The only locally owned supermarket chain in our state is pretty good to its employees and has pretty steady workforce, especially compared with the other chains. Sorry, don’t know the answer to your Q.</p>
<p>Also, don’t know what to do about what I posted in #70, but don’t want to hijack this thread.</p>
<p>So I checked in with the member of my church who just started working at the warehouse.</p>
<p>In order to keep his job he must bubble wrap, box, lable and seal 90 packages PER MINUTE!!! So about 20,000 packages between any kind of break. There are no allowances for the time it take to replace empty tape dispensers, run for fresh bubble wrap or put new lable tapes into the dispenser. He doubts that he’ll be able to stay past the 30 day trial period. I think if they did this in a prison it could be considered hard labor.</p>
<p>^^ That seems hard to believe. That is 1 1/2 packages per second, which is impossible.</p>
<p>I know I’m late commenting on this. D worked in a factory one summer. It’s brutal how they treat employee’s in this economy. </p>
<p>She worked through manpower, had a job and was let go one day. No explanation, just your assignment has ended. She was asked right before she was let go if she wanted to work there permanently, she answered no as she was going to college. I’m not sure if that was the reason but it could be. The real kick in the teeth was that she was recommended by the production manager as he is a neighbor and was told that she could come and do this as a summer job. </p>
<p>She was assigned to another factory. It is very surprising that they hire tons of help from manpower but very few make the cut. They loved her at her second place and told her that she was welcome back. Very few people lasted more than a couple of weeks. They had tasks that had to be completed in a certain amount of time and they could not make mistakes. The job that my D had was pretty intensive. But then she’s an anal retentive engineer with an eye for detail. She was told that they start you out in a easy job packing and then move you to another job and if you don’t produce you are gone.</p>
<p>It was the hardest job she has ever had. Midnights on her feet, in a factory that was not air conditioned, set breaks and mandatory overtime (or time off when they shut down production). For $8 an hour.</p>
<p>The state of manual labor is very different these days. I think that the article about Amazon could be written about just about any factory or warehouse job these days.</p>
<p>That is the exact reason to go to college, perhaps a tipytop one will make the difference. My firend’s D went to a tipytop college in Midwest. Through the connections from the college, she had paid interns every summer, in SF, Chicago and New York, all the right places. She is a SR. in college now, and one year before her graduation, she is offered a job from an investment banker from Chicago and she TURNED IT DOWN! Because Chicago is too cold…But what about the last four years?</p>
<p>I hate to tell y’all, but it isn’t just factories that treat employees that way! I just met a woman who was extremely highly regarded at a major international company. She had a VP level/General Counsel position. After 15 years she was walked out the door and allowed to come back after hours to pack her things. This all because an efficiency consultant had been hired and recommended removing that “layer”. A year later, she is still devastated. Yes, she got some nice severance, but this is, unfortunately, how more and more companies treat employees. I consider myself fortunate that in my recent (professional) job loss I got a week to transition my work and pack my stuff!</p>