BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness" 321
Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that an investigation into a UK-based Amazon facility has uncovered conditions that experts believe foster mental illness. At the root of the problem seems to be unreasonable performance expectations combined with a fundamentally dehumanizing environment. From the article: 'Amazon said that official safety inspections had not raised any concerns and that an independent expert appointed by the company advised that the picking job is "similar to jobs in many other industries and does not increase the risk of mental and physical illness."'"
Remind anyone of Manna? (Score:4, Informative)
The gear they're using sounds like a very primitive precursor to the headsets from Manna...which are already very close to completely possible. Just some Google Glass units and the rest is software (where the difficulty lies, in object recognition of course).
Re:Let's just replace pickers with robots... (Score:3, Informative)
To be fair Thatcher tripled unemployment, introduced student loans, sold nationalised industries off for peanuts (and no, the service isn't better or cheaper, See: BT, British Gas etc.), allowed foreign companies to take over much of what was left, treated whole swathes of the country like shit, allowed councils to sell off school playing fields to property developers and, well, created that whole property-owning landlord monster class who is still fucking over the masses & means a typical house the size of a matchbox in the UK costs more than a middle-class home in the US.
And while we're at it she presided over a cover-up concerning Hillsborough, a cover-up over police actions during the Miner's Strike and was best pals with England's most famous TV presenting paedophile rapist - Jimmy Savile (actually demanding he should be Knighted by the Queen).
There's a lot more that can be said about Mrs T. Sure, she didn't outsource to Eastern Europe (no one did then - Cold War and all that). However, she was meant to be 'tough' on immigration while the inner-cities filled up with all manner of immigrants. Yeah, I know many down South still love her, but much of the rest of the country see her as someone who did more to kill the social fabric of Britain than the Germans in WW2.
As for the BBC, you do know many of its top staff are Conservative supporters don't you? Since the coalition got in the BBC has bent over backwards to push a right-wing agenda (including those numerous God-awful 'Oh look at all the benefit scroungers' documentaries). They also appear to act as a job agency for failed Tory MPs who litter its programmes. The BBC is and always has been the Establishment. Sad really.
Re:Where would we be without experts? (Score:2, Informative)
No it isn't. The BBC is full of Oxbridge-educated upper middle-class types & their kids. Some may be lefties but only in a wooly 'lets be nice to the gays' sort of way, however many of its top names and power-brokers are typical right-wingers (Andrew Neil, Jeremy Clarkson, Chris Patten, Michael Portillo). Sure the Daily Mail and other cretinous rags will insist the BBC is a heaving mass of Communists, but the Daily Mail is perhaps the worst excuse for a newspaper since the Sunday Sport. I would concur that the BBC have a fair few liberal dramatists, but this is probably because right-wing entertainment really doesn't sell with a general audience (don't recall everyone rushing out to make Atlas Shrugged a big hit...)
Re:"similar to" (Score:4, Informative)
I read the article. Some guy worked 2.5 hours of overtime one day and got sore feet. He spoke of "hobbling" so he probably just didn't feel good that day, and he described feeling "absolutely shattered" because of his feet.
According to the article, his average speed for his shift (11 miles in 10.5 hours) works out to about 1 mile an hour. My walking speed is 4.5 miles per hour. I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes. The truly ironic fact is that my job involves sitting all day and is way less healthy than his. However, I can understand why he might complain about the sore feet, which would make his job more difficult and less pleasant.
The "mental illness" of the title was just a generic embellishment by some professor. Unfortunately, he didn't specify what characteristics he thought were risky about this job, so I didn't learn very much.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Informative)
I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes.
Or maybe...like many if not the vast majority of warehouses, they have hard concrete floors, which are brutal on the feet. The husband of one of my co-workers' works at Home Depot with the concrete floor, he is slim and in good shape, and has tried every orthopedic shoe solution available and still it's problematic. And I know for me personally, I can walk or hike for hours on end without a problem, but more than 30 minutes in a Home Depot or Costco on the concrete floors and my feet and calves are aching.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Informative)
"For example, Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours"
Not true at all.
- signed, an Amazon warehouse employee