Everything that they say about Amazon is true. It’s a sweatshop and workers are treated like slaves. Didn’t make it to the end of my shift but I did put in several more hours than I should have and now my entire body hurts
Don't they give everyone entering and leaving the warehouses pat-downs?
Good. Don't let anyone fool you into think you don't deserve a job that makes you feel good at the end of the day. You deserve better and I hope you find a job that treats you and your body with respect.
One of my worst jobs was as an exterminator. I was willing to spend 12 hours digging through spiderwebs in rich people's dank, hot crawlspaces, but when they asked me to kill a family of voles at the end of my first shift I bounced and never looked back. They explicitly told me that we only dealt with bugs and that I wouldn't ever be asked to kill rodents or other mammals - that was my one condition that I made sure to ask about during the interview.
It was a miserable job and I'm sort of glad they gave me that out, but I really needed the money and had to go back to delivering pizzas for a while. I wish I could say I was still so principled, but I've been beaten down by capitalism in the time since and I'd probably just bite my tongue and do it if I were still there. Here's to quitting!
Dear American Workers considering applying for the annual hiring glut Amazon goes through for the Christmas Blackout:
Please read this missive from oft-remembered years gone by (AKA sometime in the mid 2010s)
It sounds like Amazon is terrible to work for too Oh boy howdy if you knew what kind of an understatement that is. First off, if you're in the 90% of Amazon Associates that work in the warehouses, get ready to jump through the Integrity Staffing Solutions LLC hoop. Welcome to the world of Subcontracted Hiring, where you begin at part-time with no benefits because you technically aren't an Amazon employee. Shifts are 12 hours, no budge. You're expected to take what hours you are given and basically act as if you're on-call 24/7 on the off-chance that a surge puts your warehouse into pseudo-blackout and they start calling in anybody that hasn't worked 40 on the week yet. But this doesn't even scratch the surface on how Holidays are handled: Hard blackout means 14-16 hour shifts (depending on how close to Christmas you are), dangerously crowded picking floors, packing floor running as fast as possible, and no formal breaks. You take your break in-place (i.e. find a spot that's not in anybody else's way and collapse for 15 minutes.) All this time you are being hammered with the "move up to an Amazon Associate!" line, where they tell you 15% of blackout workers will be asked back as Amazon Associates during the January wind-down. What they don't tell you is that Integrity Staffing will use every dirty trick in the book to axe the other 75% of workers by February. I got laid off because, for three days in a row after Blackout, i clocked in from lunch when the clock said 12:00. That is, I was technically over my 30-minute lunch break by seconds. This is compared to Holiday Blackout, where all time clock infractions are basically ignored if they're within ten minutes. How did I find out I was laid off? I came in for my next shift and found out they had deactivated my badge. I couldn't even enter the building. Fuck Amazon. They're a garbage employer.Benefits are day 1 now and you have a set schedule but for peak they can make you work 12 on any shift and everyone works 6 days a week not to exceed 60 hrs. It's still gruelling bullshit with happy go lucky managers complaining you're not picking stowing or inducting 10 packages a second but the protests did improve conditions a bit.
There've been a lot of amazon job postings here recently, I've been tempted to apply only for the fact they pay more than my current cleaning job and I don't want to stay just doing that, but then I also hear things like this from people online and also people I know. I wish options weren't so limited.
Give it a shot. If you can beat the first few weeks you'll be ok. I took a temp contract, and whilst it made me want to kill myself, I pushed through and came out with some nice cash to flash.
The performance quota stuff isn't great and their covid response was awful in the beginning but at this point, atleast at the warehouses here, they're probably the safest warehouse to work for if you're worried about covid.
If you can beat the first few weeks you'll be ok. Then a few months later you'll probably realise you're only a husk of a human now, and quit.
My dad has worked for Amazon for a couple years and he has said that like 80% of new hires burn out and quit within the first two weeks. It's even worse during the holiday rush
Yup, they have one of the highest job turnover rates out there. That's why it's so easy to get a job with them.
Different kind of bad. I worked amazon night shifts because I figured - fucking finally, I don't have to talk to anyone - would put my podcasts on and chill. Soon realised I really needed that human interaction. Making some friends there helped, but in the end I just couldn't take it anymore. I do think the fact it was night shifts made it considerably worse.
What did they have you doing? When I did Amazon I just zoned out picking and did drugs.
At least UPS has a union and their pay and benefits are actually decent.
A bucket of crabs mentality will not bring about the liberation of the working class.
Because they needed the money? And venting about quitting a job helps deal with the fear of jumping into the great unknown that is unemployment, and you're being an ass about it. Show some solidarity with your comrades and stop belittling them at the first opportunity when something doesn't quite agree with you.
lmao did you really edit your post to add more stuff after "weak" because of my comment
I cant see it being worse than other minimum wage jobs
have you tried using these: 👁️
this is kinda dumb bro, "no my shitty hard low paying job is worse than your marginally less shitty low paying job"
My minimum wage grocery store job was chill, like it still sucked but id take that over busting my ass and being micromanaged at amazon
Eh, I've worked there. It's pretty bad. I wanted to quit day one, but I perservered and stayed about 3 months in the end. The price I paid was my mental health and knees. Shit ruined me.
Went back to lower paying jobs after and didn't regret it.
