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."'"
"similar to" (Score:4, Insightful)
Working at hopelessly automated amazon warehouses where you are treated as a physical automaton with no free will is "similar to" working in a traditional warehouse in the same way ozone is "similar to" O2. It's made of roughly the same thing, but isn't exactly good for you.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue that very few jobs are actually "good" for you.
But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
Quite the conundrum.
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Occasionally one must have a Mountain Dew.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Funny)
But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
I do this all the time and nobody has sent me a paycheck yet!!!! Fucking monster.com..LIES.
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But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
What a statement!
Do you mean that we cannot run?
Do you mean that we cannot be naked?
Do you mean that we cannot eat nuts?
Do you mean that we cannot eat berries?
Oh, no I see what you mean. The forest(s) are not big enough to house us all. Well my friend, that's because of Western culture. It's Western culture that 'we all' cannot do, as this article is trying to point out. The bit about running, being naked, eating nuts and berries is the only thing that can always be done, and by everyone.
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I don't really think we should live in a world were people live that desperate and frantic. But then again what can I really do about it?
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No. We do not.
But I want them. Them and a new PS4. I like working for a living.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Insightful)
To go hunting and foraging you need to own the land or have the permission of someone who does. Even on public lands such activities would be restricted. You might get away with breaking the rules for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's allowed. Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging. Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging.
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Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Interesting)
What prompted this investigation? Sounds like a news crew just looking for a story they can call big.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's reasonable to consider, but strong enough correlations say something. Not necessarily causation, but implies a relationship of some kind. Thankfully us plebs are spared the actual p values to make a judgement for ourselves.
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Bullshit!
I've done jobs worse than that and I didn't go crazy! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAAAAAAHHHH!
*runs away, hands flailing*
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I know this post is 100% intended as humor, but I'd like to point out that "bad" as in unpleasant, and "bad" as in harmful to mental health aren't necessarily the same.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean "intended as humor"??? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAAAAAAHHHH!
*runs away, hands flailing*
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just that, but "correlation is not causation" is only true in that those could be correlated due to a secondary cause. The phrase isn't meant to imply a complete lack of connection, just that the connection isn't necessarily the intuitive one.
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.
What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.
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Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.
What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.
He isn't talking about "huge swathes of medical science," he's talking about one very narrow one where its very possible and in fact reasonable to get a diagnosis. Since there hasn't been one, it's also reasonable to deduce that the whole thing is a money grab. Not exactly hard to deduce either considering Amazon employees are striking right now in Germany (soon other places in Europe) for higher pay.
Re:"similar to" (Score:4, Interesting)
How many bodies do you need for this? Must they be permanently disabled or will it be OK if they recover 80% in a year or two on the dole? How overt do the signs need to be? Must they don their Napoleon hats and bobble their lips in the corner all day or is it enough that if a voice like the one in their headphones says "invade France and slap people with a herring" they do it without question?
It's funny that your deduction doesn't meet the level of proof you demand.
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How many bodies do you need for this? Must they be permanently disabled or will it be OK if they recover 80% in a year or two on the dole? How overt do the signs need to be? Must they don their Napoleon hats and bobble their lips in the corner all day or is it enough that if a voice like the one in their headphones says "invade France and slap people with a herring" they do it without question?
It's funny that your deduction doesn't meet the level of proof you demand.
How about a simple diagnosis? I didn't know hyperbole was enough to condemn a company of employee abuse but I guess in your narrow little mind an accusation is all thats needed without any fucking evidence.
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I'm not suggesting condemnation, just mitigation. One might HOPE Amazon would be quite willing to make adjustments because it's the right thing to do. Failing that, make sure they know they will be on the hook financially and see if that motivates change. Only then dig deeper and see if any of their practices deserve an outright ban.
Meanwhile, I'm sure plenty of Amazon workers have been diagnosed with something. That is true of any large company and doesn't necessarily mean the company caused it. Unfortunat
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I'm not suggesting condemnation, just mitigation. One might HOPE Amazon would be quite willing to make adjustments because it's the right thing to do.
Based on what evidence? You want a company to make a major adjustment in working conditions because you can't help yourself from fucking whining about them? Prove it or shut the fuck up.
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Yes, absolutely everyone has the responsibility to not do anything wrong, including corporations.
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I actually watched the associated documentary last night and can say it's a bit of everything.
Part of it was simply just whiny workers and union reps who work simply averse to doing the type of job they found themselves doing. For this I have little sympathy and would have to side with Amazon here. It was the classic union story of wanting lots of money for doing fuck all work. According to the worker undercover and whining he was getting over £8 an hour which is about 20 - 25% more than minimum
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.
Never seen anything like that. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I worked at the Home Depot for two years, and I never got what you described. I never met one HD worker who complained about chronic foot pain due to hard concrete floors. I trust this observation because we, Home Depot workers always complained about other physical things: like dust from the Building Materials and Flooring departments. Back pains (the company gave us elastic back braces to help with lifting heavy stuff). Incredibly rude customers. Getting our fingers smashed when carrying tiles or concrete blocks or whatever.
We came in all shapes and sizes, male and female. We even had a joke, that whenever we finished our day, we would have been "Home Depot'ed" (beat up to crap by work.) But I never heard people complaining about chronic foot pain from walking 8+ hours on the concrete floor.
I'm not saying that what you describe is false. But it is not something that I ever experienced, or witnessed, when I worked at a Home Depot store.
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I'm amazed that Amazon use human beings as pickers. I'm surprised it is not all automated.
Take Ocado as an example. 9 people work in each warehouse that is just as big as Amazons that employ thousands in each one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKpyPO76yZ4 [youtube.com]
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They ship all sorts of unwieldy and unusual things. Even a perfectly automated warehouse would need "problem solvers."
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They're working on that, but the system seems to have trouble with the variety of types of items. Think about the necessity of adapting to handle an iPad, a DVD, a dead-tree bookshelf, and a stuffed platypus all on the same order. For some things robotic systems work well, for others they don't. It will probably be a couple more years before they can roll the robots out on a large scale.
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I worked in a couple of warehouses around 10 years ago, and the work then was certainly "similar" to this description. Even without electronic automation most warehouse jobs are repetitive, it is the nature of menial labor. Imagine a never ending series of boxes coming down a conveyor belt, which must be read and sorted based on destination, then lifted and stacked on the appropriate pallet. For 9 hours, with a 1 hour lunch. It was hard, but it made me in the best shape of my life. It was actually not terri
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
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Funny)
Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours. Speak to anyone, lose your job.
Well that just seems like it would shut the warehouse down in a hurry.
First, one guy talks. "Man my legs are killing me!"
"You're fired!" says his supervisor... who is now going to get fired for talking on the job.
"You there, talking supervisor, you're fired for talking when you fired that guy!" And now *that* guy is next, and up it goes until Jeff Bezos finds himself out of a job.
I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
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Amazon factories are probably no worse than a typical UK call center... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12691704 [bbc.co.uk]
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I have the utmost sympathy for the suffering of call center workers. I've read more than enough horror stories. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's equally harmful to mental health(if the relationship here is causative).
Re:"similar to" (Score:5, Interesting)
Working at hopelessly automated amazon warehouses where you are treated as a physical automaton with no free will is "similar to" working in a traditional warehouse in the same way ozone is "similar to" O2. It's made of roughly the same thing, but isn't exactly good for you.
My experience as a warehouse worker consists of exactly 4 days from almost 30 years ago. It was a distribution warehouse for a major NJ supermarket chain and reading this article immediately brought me back to that experience.
I was in college and I needed a summer job, as the land surveyor I had worked for the previous summer wasn't hiring. The warehouse job was available and conveniently located so I took it figuring 'how bad can it be?' My recollections:
1) The job was basically to drive a pallet jack up and down endless rows of various products; pick A number of B product, C number of D product, etc.; stack and arrange the boxes so that they didn't all fall off as you continued picking, then bring it to the wrapping machine and finally drop it off in the loading zone. For every pallet you got a computer printout noting the maximum time allotted to fill the pallet. By the end of the fourth day, I was still struggling to get the orders picked in even TWICE the allotted time. It was far and away the suckiest work I ever did.
2) On top of that, the people who worked there were just sad and pathetic. The 'old-timer' union guys looked like they were entirely used up even though none appeared to be past their mid-40s, to a man they all appeared lifeless, joyless, and miserable. Then there were the younger guys, not in the union yet, mullet-headed yokels who *aspired* to be among the 'old-timers' with the blank gaze of death. I was struggling with the idea of tolerating the job for the summer...how one signs up for a lifetime of that...I can't even imagine.
Luckily for me, the evening after that 4th day the surveyor I worked for the previous summer called me and said they had a guy quit and if I still needed a job. I said unequivocally 'Yes!' and called in 'quit' at the warehouse the next morning.
That was a 'traditional' warehouse job, and I can fully relate to how it would affect workers precisely as the article states. I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cause (Score:3, Insightful)
This Thanksgiving I am going to hear from all of my pro-union family members about how evil Walmart (my employer) is, and how they treat their employees. All the while comparing books they are reading on their Kindles and shopping for Kindle Fires for their kids.
Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.
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This Thanksgiving I am going to hear from all of my pro-union family members about how evil Walmart (my employer) is, and how they treat their employees. All the while comparing books they are reading on their Kindles and shopping for Kindle Fires for their kids.
Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.
So we trade families for Thanksgiving. You can have my awesomely hypocritical conservative in-laws instead.
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you two trade families when you can get married and have the worst of both worlds at the same time?
mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanksgiving: It's like the /. comments, but with turkey and alcohol.
Fixed it for you.
Not even alcohol can fix it. Not even alcohol.
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Funny)
"My liberal family members are hypocrites, therefore all liberals are hypocrites"
Your conservative reasoning is awesome.
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Generalizations aren't going to do much. Some conservatives are much the same.
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Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, is your employer the one that held a food drive for you because you wouldn't have enough food for thanksgiving with the shitty pay you get, or was that a different wal-mart?
Also, I don't own a kindle, and I'm aware of, and try to avoid the modern slavery in electronics production.
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Liberals are so awesomely hypocritical.
I can't decide whether to respond, "...says the AC" or, "...how the heck did this turn into a liberal vs. conservative issue?"
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Insightful)
It turned into a liberal vs conservative issue because those who aren't in favour of workers not being made ill by their work needed a way to justify that, and therefore did their best to associate it with what's commonly seen as an extreme, and slightly insane political affiliation. They then burned this straw political affiliation man at the steak to demonstrate how dumb it was to support the idea of workers not being made ill by their work.
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And then they eat the steak, well-cooked by the straw-fueled flames.
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It turned into a liberal vs conservative issue because those who aren't in favour of workers not being made ill by their work needed a way to justify that, and therefore did their best to associate it with what's commonly seen as an extreme, and slightly insane political affiliation. They then burned this straw political affiliation man at the steak to demonstrate how dumb it was to support the idea of workers not being made ill by their work.
Can you show me who got ill at this Amazon warehouse please? Oh yeah, you can't because no one has..........
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I thought that was right wingers and homosexuals..
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, it's really amazing we haven't yet declared ourselves mentally ill, for putting people first. I mean, really -- minimum wages? Food and shelter? Safety regulations? Non-discrimination in the workplace? Civil rights? Healthcare? Are we nuts?!?
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Really? Because I'm pretty sure the standard conservative argument is that if you create an obstacle, people will always "find a way", and in fact you should purposefully do so. Don't give them food or shelter, and they'll magically educate and empower themselves.
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No, it's always been a liberal vs conservative issue, because liberals passionately hate anything that's successful without the government being involved.
[citation needed]
Take your time. We'll wait...
/sarcasm
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is that robots are already waiting in the wings ... Amazon pickers have only a couple years of job left as it is (unless minimum wage craters faster than robots get cheaper, at third world wages they can outcompete robots for a few years longer ... hard to see who will be left to consume though). If they unionise robots will take over faster.
Re:Amazon brutal, but not a convenient liberal cau (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon is working on it, it is just a matter of time.
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Which is interesting because this documentary revealed that Amazon were getting paid tens of millions to build some of the UK warehouses to create jobs.
So what happens if those jobs are automated? does the tax payer get their money back?
Of course I don't blame Amazon, the councils/governments in question were utter fools for subsidising a company as big as Amazon including building roads explicitly for them and are getting what they deserve, but I'm intrigued all the same.
The bourgeoisie creates its own gravediggers (Score:2, Funny)
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Where would we be without experts? (Score:4, Insightful)
A BBC investigation into a UK-based Amazon warehouse has found conditions that a stress expert said could cause "mental and physical illness".
Well, that settles it.
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I don't want to believe this, so I'm going to make "expert" sound like it's a bad thing even though I have no real argument
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I don't know, I see a lot of conservative garbage come out of their reporting too.....
I guess you could argue that the British left are really now the conservatives, because they're the ones trying to conserve bloated government and a massive, inefficient welfare state in a world where decades of socialism is driving the nation into bankruptcy.
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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 t
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It all boils down to UK natives whining that "it's hard" and refusing to do it unless they're paid extra. Then, some Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians come in, get the same jobs for 70% of the initial wage the UK natives were whining about and work harder and are happier with 0% insanity. This, in turn, fuels more whining from the UK natives who yell that "foreigners got our jobs, boooo!!!"
Meanwhile, the world spins round and the Universe doesn't give a flying fuck.
Re:Where would we be without experts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, some Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians come in, get the same jobs for 70% of the initial wage the UK natives were whining about and work harder and are happier with 0% insanity.
That's because they're getting paid ten times as much as a doctor would in their own country for doing menial work, and can save enough in a few years to go home and set themselves up for life.
If 'Lazy Britons' could earn $1,000,000 a year for fifteen hour days cleaning offices in Poland, they'd be out there with a big smile on their face eager to do as many hours as they could.
11 Miles a shift? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:11 Miles a shift? (Score:5, Interesting)
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No, if we as a people want to fix this we have to force it on each other through government ... tragedy of the commons and all.
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I actually wouldn't mind the option at checkout to pay 50 cents more to give the worker who packs my item a bonus.
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Having worked in a warehouse before, the physical toll of WALKING on a concrete industrial floor can be bad. My back, feet, and knees were in bad shape after about 9 months. You need to wear proper foot attire but most people working these jobs don't learn that until it's too late. Brand new athletic shoes were "flat" after 2 months yet they looked like they were in mint condition.
Having worked a warehouse before, I can tell you that one problem is finding a pair of remotely comfortable osha compliant steel-toed shoes. Anything remotely similar to athletic shoes with inserts would have been a godsend.
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Get a decent pair of redwings or keens and put in sorabathane insoles, I put a pair in my hiking boots at the recommendation of the owners daughter who basically lives outdoors half the year and they worked so well that after 127 miles in 7 days my feet still felt good. She apologized about selling me $25 insoles for $250 boots but after that first trip I went back to thank her.
Re:11 Miles a shift? (Score:4, Interesting)
Accidentally? How did that work? Did you think it was a sysadmin job when they were talking about mail delivery system?
Re:11 Miles a shift? (Score:4, Funny)
Accidentally? How did that work? Did you think it was a sysadmin job when they were talking about mail delivery system?
He just means he has been collecting pay checks from the USPS for decades, but accidentally, in spite of himself, without really meaning to, inadvertently, he performed some activities that turned out to be working.
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That sort of physical activity wouldn't bother me when I was in my 20's or 30's. In fact I had a supervisory job where I had to walk a lot when I was in my late 20's.
Now that I'm a few decades older I still do 3 miles in an hour on a treadmill at the gym a few times a week. Not sure I could do 11 miles every day right now but I could probably work up to it.
The 33 second timer thing though would get pretty damn annoying. I think personal control and freedom to make decisions on a job are really what separate
Balancing Act? (Score:2, Interesting)
What is the correct balance between societies desire and expectations of highly automated system's (virtual and physical) behavior and outputs and the real social need for low-skilled positions? As we move towards better working conditions for some, the stark contrast between the "old" way of working, however much we improve it and the standard "perks" of more modern positions, is there anyway that we could measure that doesn't result in "dehumanizing conditions"?
What is the replacement for these positions
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Any gains in efficiency never result in less work or more vacation time... it results in layoffs and cost cutting to be more competitive and increase margins, which in turn forces other companies to do the same thing. Combine that with globalization, it's a race to the bottom.
Obvious counterargument (Score:2)
Amazon: BBC employees have increased incidence of mental illness.
(Thing is, they're probably both right)
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:Remind anyone of Manna? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.
And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
Re:Remind anyone of Manna? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.
And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
just started reading from that link and then I found this paragraph in the story:
Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across America. But the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of the century had caused a number of important changes. Eventually, there were video security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every square inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone conversations and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought about starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and preemptively put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are impossible.
Let's just replace pickers with robots... (Score:2)
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At which point, the BBC will be printing articles about how awful it is that Amazon are sacking all their workers and replacing them with robots.
While supporting the left-wing government that encouraged British companies to shut down their factories in the UK, sell the land for condos, and move the work to cheaper locations in Eastern Europe. And blaming Thatcher. Right on!
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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 siz
Might as well push automation to it's max (Score:2)
Sooner or later humanity will have to deal with the looming "work crisis" so we might as well get this revolution started. One of the big gains of automation should be removing the mudane and insanity inducing tasks required. Sadly the reality seems to be more people ending up in call centers and retail but I don't see how this is sustainable. What's the point in giant mega malls or telemarketers when everyone is too poor to afford anything?
The floor is going to fallout sooner or later so might as well rush
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Ideally, we replace all workers with robots and spread the wealth around. That will require a few changes if it's going to work out.
The alternative is an eventual hellworld where a few at the top have their every desire met and the rest live only for the day they can tear everything down and start over (unless they're exterminated).
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Yeah, an organisation run by posh people and full of Tory MPs that appears to devote half of its political output to bashing poor people and praising multinational corporations just screams fucking left-wing, doesn't it?
Today's Tautology (Score:3)
Dehumanizing Work Is Dehumanizing.
My warehouse experience sucked too (Score:2)
I never worked for Amazon, but I worked at a much smaller warehouse that handled fragile items. Our mode of work was nowhere near as brutal as what they're describing. The warehouse was about the size of a large gymnasium. We picked, then packed so that broke up the monotony. Looking for irregular but functional items was also fun. These were randomly given free to employees at various times. That was about the only real perk. A lot of other things sucked. The management just didn't have a lot of re
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Amazon is working on fully automated warehouses, McDonalds is working on automatic burger making machines, etc.
At some point, there will just not be anything for millions of people to do, machines will do it all.
We will need to figure out another way to distribute resources at some point, having a job won't be it forever.
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The Republicans are going to push back hard against that idea. Having a society that doesn't keep wage costs low and concentrate wealth is considered evil in the right-wing bubble, and they're not going to change until they're the one's suffering.
We've seen the right-wing empathy deficit over and over again. They don't break from supporting toxic policies until their own families are ha
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, (Score:4, Interesting)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones. [motherjones.com]
"My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine."
So what (Score:3, Interesting)
In a 12 hour shift you would walk around a giant stretch of belts and racks and throw things weighing between 2-40 pounds a piece on a moving belt. I would only throw things on the belt that had a LED indicator next to them with a number because *shock and fucking awe here* that was what was ordered. It was ridiculously hot in the summer (no air conditioning and the belt system was about 30 feet off the ground and heat rises), you walked several miles over the course of the shift in steel toes.
I didn't really like it because it tore up my feet but some people actually preferred to do that most nights. I didn't like working there at all so I put in a lot of effort outside of work and got a job in databases which I love. My point being: boo hoo. If you can't handle it, grow a pair or find a different job. I'm sure the special reporter snowflake felt very dehumanized because no one cares about you very much unless you show you are going to be around for a while and he obviously probably wasn't.
Re: (Score:3)
He had the privilege of having the opportunity to study after hours. Not everyone's got that privilege, e.g. people with small children or those who have to work two or three jobs to get by.
Granted there are people who have that opportunity but waste it, but not everyone's got even that.
Crybabies (Score:3)
Millions have worked on assembly lines ( and similar jobs ) for generations and they did just fine.
Sounds like more of the 'me me me' crap. Fire their ass.
Re: (Score:3)
This is the type of life they want for all of us.
YEah......the UK is just a bastion of republican ideals........
BOZOS for BEZOS! (Score:4, Funny)
Hell comes to your house, one box at a time!
Re: (Score:3)
Ah right, illness that you can't see manifest on the surface is not illness at all, right?
Re:Total Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't class stress or depression as a mental illness, it is a physical one.
AC, at least the BBC have the balls to do this, unlike other commercial broadcasters.