The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves 202
theodp writes "If Amazon is Santa, says Gizmodo's Joel Johnson, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn't always lure in 'workcampers' from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. 'Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,' explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. 'There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious.' Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. 'They'd get there exhausted.' The work wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned."
Robots (Score:2, Interesting)
Aren't industrial robots able to do most of the packaging tasks Amazon needs done? Given the enormous size of Amazon in terms of books sent, even just one plant catering to the US automated with robots could well make a significant impact on costs/delivery times/etc. Restricting automation to just ordinary books could be a great way to demonstrate methods to calculate the optimal packaging/arrangement per order.
Thankful for a couple of things (Score:3, Interesting)
- I'm thankful Amazon has this system down pretty much pat. There were a few toys my nieces and nephews REALLY REALLY wanted, and I was coming up dry on in the brick-and-mortar stores around here. Amazon listed them as "in stock", and I was able to order them on the 22nd with standard shipping - they shipped within a few hours and arrived on the 24th.
- Having read the article... I'm thankful Amazon had the policy of "employees can't carry anything in that is an item we sell". The idiot featured in this story talked about wanting to "tweet" about stupid crap (my description, not his) that he saw. Any policy - even a draconian one - that prevents some dullard from tweeting is okay in my book!
Re:What is the point of this article? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work for Amazon. Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes. If you would have RTFA you should have gotten to the point where that little bit was discussed.
The other interesting thing is to use RVers to handle some of the seasonal demand. In some ways it is a little offensive though. RVers typically aren't looking for a steady paying job, but end up doing a little work at Amazon "for the experience" (ie they thought it might be fun). While there are lots of people out there that have no job, and have real bills to pay, and mouths to feed. But if they are offering $10/hr and people without jobs don't want to commute 4 hours a day for it, I guess that's just the free market being fair about it.
Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't "sell myself" well at interviews, but Amazon (and partners) have the web presence (and logistics) to sell stuff efficiently. I'm happy to be here.
If I get more confidence, and the right opening comes along, well....
Re:eh, I'm not crying too hard (Score:5, Interesting)
He's being ironic with the plenty of jobs. His point is that morality and workers' rights should be set to whatever the market will bear. Since jobs are in demand, it is possible (and ethical) for companies to offer less desirable jobs.
Re:The point is ?... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think its fascinating. Its a mix of the itinerant fruit pickers here in southern Australia and the RV borne populations popular in cyberpunk books by Bruce Stirling and Neal Stephenson.
Re:Robots (Score:4, Interesting)
Robots might make sense to handle their routine volume,
I think not. From what I know of industrial robots, they can do repetitive tasks, but have no adaptability. Good on assembly lines [youtube.com], but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
I have to wonder what Amazon was thinking, building such a labor-intensive operation four hours from the nearest major labor pool.
Political science in 8-bits (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won Monopoly and turned the world into slave-land, I'll remind them when they come asking for a bread crust. "Look around you! This is YOUR fault. Are you beginning to learn yet why self-service doesn't work? --Or do you want to be stupid livestock for another dozen life times? We WILL repeat this until you learn."
I'm all for idiot FOX viewers being punished for being idiot FOX viewers, but I am not content when others have to put up with the fallout from the knuckle-dragging propaganda-swallowing moronics of the pack man.
Humn. Pac Man. I just got that. That only took twenty years. --The pie-shaped dude is the archetypal pack animal, locked into a state of stupid because his genetics make him easy to subjugate into a ridiculous life-long race after crumbs through a rat maze. The Ghosts. . ? Ha! That actually makes sense too, but it's an idea too alarming for most people to deal with so I'll pardon myself from trying to explain.
What a depressing metaphor. Sigh.
Happy New Year.
-FL
Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:3, Interesting)
A girl(I presume teenager) rang in and she won. Her father made sacks. He sewed the bottom of them. I was about 14 at the time, and at first I laughed. As she mocked her father more I stopped laughing. I'll never forget it, and I Iearned a lot about humanity in 2 minutes that day.
Chris & Cherie might not be welcome back... (Score:1, Interesting)
...because I'm sure they signed an NDA which they are now flouting.
Details of the internal design and processes of Amazon's distribution centers are probably part of Amazon's competitive advantage. It's tough to make money selling $20 billion worth of stuff at a few bucks per order. Try selling physical goods online sometimes - it's not easy. Effective order fulfillment processes (low error rates, cost efficient packaging, quick order processing) can easily be the difference between making money and losing money.
Re:Robots (Score:3, Interesting)
but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
So don't let them make any decisions. Stick a bar code on everything as it comes in and weigh it. Let the robots do the multi-mile treks around the factory, and all they have to be smart enough to do is scan a bar code and double-check the weight.
Robots are used at Newegg [anandtech.com], for instance. It's just that sizing the costly capital equipment for the peaks probably would increase the payback period by quite a bit! Better to use seasonal workers.
I have to wonder what Amazon was thinking, building such a labor-intensive operation four hours from the nearest major labor pool.
It looks like they took over a former Golden Books warehouse. I have no insight, but a glance at the map shows that it is smack in the middle of a bunch of area population centers - kind of the center of mass of Wichita, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Springfield.
Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:1, Interesting)
Seen the job offers (or lack of) that college grads get? A recent career fair at a local university (accredited, one of the top small colleges, and had a good reputation) had the following jobs for its graduates:
Army. MOS, 11X regardless of ASVAB score. If you want anything other than being a grunt (praying that you bag an insurgent so you can claim their AK-47 so you have a reliable rifle), you have to wait a year+ for DEP.
Incoming calltaker at a bank.
Script monkey for a temp agency who serviced a PC company.
Commissioned sales for whatever crap, aluminum siding or whatnot. Can't find enough suckers, you go hungry.
Outgoing calls for a collection agency.
So, being an "elf" for Amazon looks good in comparison to what is available (and this is for people with a B. S.) Better to have a job than not.
The job market isn't going to be improving soon. The rate businesses are hemorrhaging jobs has yet to decrease, and this has to go to zero and turn negative if the US is to see any type of real recovery.
So, the Amazon temporary work may be something to snicker at, but for most of the country, they would be damn happy for *any* jobs at all.
Entitlements= unemployment= lower quality of life (Score:2, Interesting)
Superior talent for moving boxes ? You're kidding right ? And not just in this specific instance ... The large majority of jobs are low-skilled, low-productivity and very low margin jobs, even in IT.
You want better conditions for these people ? Lower the cost of labor so this work can be done with more people, without increasing costs too much. Obviously if you increase costs per employee like you suggest (and force people to accept conditions they may or may not care about, e.g. Any student I know would much rather have a short, very intensive (even little to no lunch break), and better paid work) than the conditions you force on them.
Otherwise you're simply forcing companies to destroy jobs that are below a certain productivity. Since the bulk of employment is at the very low skill (and productivity) level any raise in minimum productivity (minimum wage = minimum productivity for obvious reasons) will cause staggering numbers of layoffs. Raising minimum productivity by 5% would certainly kill over 20%-30% of jobs, nationwide.
That's how it works, you know. A company hires a person, at cost X, and then makes that person do work of value Y to society, which is then sold for price Z, which correlates very strongly with Y (in a free market society). Obviously unless Z >> X (significantly larger) that person will be fired.
Before you say "we'll simply outlaw firing people" so you know one of two things will fire these people :
-> the company's (or government's) good sense
-> the company's (or government's) bankrupty
And if printing more money is your solution to that, you might want to look at countries like Zimbabwe.
The solution ? Make sure a better life becomes possible at a lower wage. Of course that means lowering costs, and increasing choice. Increasing choice, both for employers and employees. The more competition there is in the labor market, at both sides of the equation, the better life will be in America.
Labor listens to the laws of supply & demand just like everyone else. Ideally taxes should be limited at the level that say 98% of supply is utilized. Needless to say, they're seriously above that level for the moment, and Obama's done nothing but raise them. Granted, some (even a lot) of the cost raise was entirely not Obama's fault, but at his paygrade that's no excuse. Obama's not some box mover, who only gets judged on mistakes and targets, he has to perform massively better than status-quo (govt. doing nothing at all). He's spent trillion(s ?) while making the situation worse than his own predictions of what would happen if they didn't do anything at all.