Amazon Faces $350K Fine For Shipping 'Amazing Liquid Fire' (computerworld.com) 202
An anonymous reader writes: The FAA has ruled that Amazon will face a $350,000 fine for shipping a one-gallon container of "Amazing Liquid Fire" by air. The corrosive drain cleaner was sent by air from Louisville, Kentucky, to Boulder, Colorado, on October 15, 2014. The container leaked during transit and nine UPS employees came into contact with the chemical, which caused a "burning sensation on their skin" that had to be treated with a chemical wash. According to Computerworld, "The FAA ruled the shipment wasn't packaged properly, wasn't accompanied by a declaration of dangerous goods, and was not properly marked or labeled as a hazardous package. It also said Amazon didn't provide emergency response information with the package and had not provided hazardous material training to employees who handled the package." The FAA said in a statement, "Amazon has a history of violating the Hazardous Materials Regulations." They apparently violated the rules 24 other times.
Slap on the wrist (Score:4, Insightful)
This fine is nothing to a company like Amazon. It's a slap on the wrist rather than a significant penalty.
Proportionality (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't want to kill Amazon, just make it comply. I'd say that 350 K for a single transgression will get their attention. If not, the next penalty will be higher.
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You don't want to kill Amazon,
Why not? If they're not willing to obey the law, and endanger the health of their employees and the public just so they can save money, then they need killing. It's not like they're doing anything vital.
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and endanger the health of their employees
Actually, it was UPS employees that had to be treated. I suspect that he Amazon ones that required treatment kept quiet about it.
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24 items out of millions and we're ready to tar and feather them already? Damn, tough crowd.
Re:Proportionality (Score:5, Funny)
While 350 K$ is nothing to Amazon - bring down a plane with 300 passengers and the liability (~ a billion) will get even Amazon's attention.
True, but I imagine the fact that someone was smuggling 300 people on a UPS cargo flight would grab most of the headlines.
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It's called proportionality. Amazon sends millions of packages, but were caught out breaking safety rules about 24 times.
You don't want to kill Amazon, just make it comply. I'd say that 350 K for a single transgression will get their attention. If not, the next penalty will be higher.
What those 24 caught events (clearly only the tip of the iceberg) tell us is that Amazon clearly does not have in place a good process for vetting the shipability of stock items. The risk analysis group at Amazon must be shitting bricks. While 350 K$ is nothing to Amazon - bring down a plane with 300 passengers and the liability (~ a billion) will get even Amazon's attention.
You suck at math. Amazon shipped 1 billion packages in 2015. So you can estimate that it sends about that much a year (and probably more so by the end of 2016.)
24 incidents / 1,000,000,000 = 0.000000024
That's 7 zeroes to the left of the most significant digit, or 99.9999976% or 7 degrees of reliable testing.
I'm not defending Amazon. A lapse is a lapse, and good that the feds are suing them, which will make the company improve a track record that is already good.
The numbers suggest that they indee
Base fines on corporations on CEO's wage slip (Score:2)
That wouldn't be a slap on the wrist - and is self regulating
Re: Base fines on corporations on CEO's wage slip (Score:2)
Um, Bezos draws $1 in salary each year.
The company does pay for a personal security service for him, but the company's annual reports don't show that as very much ($1-2M, I think?). So even if you include benefits like that, it won't be much of a fine in Amazon's case.
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"Hey, you! We're gonna take 10% of your worth because one of your hundreds of thousands of hires fucked up doing a couple of the millions of things your company does every day!"
Boy, you think politicians don't get enough donations already, this much power would be their wet dream.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also the quotas make it so that the employees don't wastes time on non quota stuff and I hear at the warehouse level get canned if they can't make rate.
So are they willing to have non quota workers do paper work? set the system so that when some does the hazmat forums it counts as 10-20 items as part of there rate?
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Other rule violations (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't violate the rules 24 other times, they got caught 24 other times. I would be surprised if the packages leak more than 1% of the time so they've probably violated the rules thousands of times at least.
Re:Other rule violations (Score:5, Insightful)
Number of times they got caught vs. the number of times they got away with it is mostly irrelevant. Since other people/companies shipping hazardous materials will probably have a similar ratio of times caught to times they got away with it. So you can just compare the easy-to-determine number of times caught per 100,000 shipments across companies, and that'll give you pretty much the same ranking order as the much-harder-to-determine number of times they got away with it per 100,000 shipments.
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Right you are. Make 'em pay. Hit them so hard they never, ever think its worth the risk of getting caught again. Mega-corps of this magnitude need to be hit in magnitudes greater so that they never fudge again. They only commit these crimes when its profitable. We just make sure it never is, and suddenly it stops, or they just go out of business. Simple.
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Are these number of times a lot? Or is it a drop in the bucket? Is someone political out to get Amazon for not making their donations for the year?
Prison time (Score:2)
It sure doesn't seem accidental, and intentional mis-shipping of hazmat is Serious Business:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've even heard of someone who (allegedy) got locked up because he ground-shipped sodium to Alaska, not realizing that in Alaska even ground packages go by air.
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I've even heard of someone who (allegedy) got locked up because he ground-shipped sodium to Alaska, not realizing that in Alaska even ground packages go by air.
There is ground shipping to/through AK... but not everywhere, and not all year
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Amazon can just pass the blame to the 3rd party (Score:2)
Amazon can just pass the blame to the 3rd party staffing firms at the shipping centers at least some did not die / a plane did not start on fire. They need to fine all party's and not let amazon hide under some 3rd party / sub contractors?
remember ValuJet Flight 592?
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Doubtful. I'm pretty sure a company the size of Amazon knows everything in it's inventory and internally tags items requiring special care as such, to not do so puts them at significant risk should an unlabeled box of lithium batteries happens to cause a ValuJet 592 like incident.
Re:Amazon can just pass the blame to the 3rd party (Score:5, Interesting)
And if you think Amazon demands they abide to a certain standard, yeah, good luck. I can't even get these warehouse guys to do it and keep proper inventory. They'll nod their heads, yeah yeah, but the reality is, low paid workers really don't care, but when you need the warehouse space, you really don't have much choice in the matter (They're all like this).
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And if you think Amazon demands they abide to a certain standard, yeah, good luck. I can't even get these warehouse guys to do it and keep proper inventory.
The software should handle it when printing labels. They shouldn't have to think.
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The "software should" pack the box, too?
There's a mention in this very thread of software which does this. It's not a very hard job.
Earth calling!
Yes, we don't miss you.
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This year’s daily publication of the federal government’s rules, proposed rules and notices amounted to 81,611 pages. http://thehill.com/regulation/administration/264456-2015-was-record-year-for-federal-regulation-group-says [thehill.com]
Read that carefully, that's over 80,000 pages per day.
UPS should send bill... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If enough leaked to affect 9 employees handling the box after the flight then there's a reasonable possibility that the escaped liquid now poses a corrosion hazard to the aircraft structure. UPS should send them the bill for the complete inspection and overhaul of the affected areas of the aircraft used to transport it. Perhaps that will be more than the fine.
You say that because Amazon is a rich company. Suppose an old grandmother ships something to someone and doesn't properly fill out the form declaring hazardous materials and similar damage was done. Would you suggest UPS go after her for damages to the aircraft? Double standards shouldn't apply just because a party is wealthy.
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Double standards shouldn't apply just because a party is wealthy.
What? No double standards? Sign me up ! Which galaxy and star date is this place?
Re:UPS should send bill... (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose an old grandmother ships something to someone and doesn't properly fill out the form declaring hazardous materials and similar damage was done. Would you suggest UPS go after her for damages to the aircraft?
That depends. Is the grandmother incorporated? Does she make decisions at the behest of her shareholders' best interests ($$)? Is it likely that her decision to disregard regulations was driven by a profit motive? Is shipping packages a substantial portion of her daily activity? Does she have, or have a legal obligation to have, employees or consultants who are familiar with shipping regulations?
Double standards shouldn't apply just because a party is wealthy.
Perhaps not, but it's long been established that double standards do apply when you're running a business, whether it's wealthy or not. I can refuse to let people with seeing eye dogs into my home, but I can't refuse to let them into my business. I can get in my personal car with state minimum insurance and drive for 30 straight hours, but a Wal-Mart tractor trailer driver must carry a much larger insurance policy and is federally limited as to how many hours he can be on the road. When you set up shop and hang out your shingle to the public, you accept a different standard of risk and regulation than a private individual like the old grandmother.
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small mistake vs a big company system that fails to train workers / flag stuff as hazmat / flag stuff as ground only / has a quota system that does not count for things that can take X5-X10 times the time needed to do it safe.
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I submit it is a lack of greased palms, so the palmees are working to see huge fines applied until things get back to normal.
Re:UPS should send bill... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mishandling doesn't matter in this case, accidents are expected to happen but illegal shipping is still illegal shipping.
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amazon still failed to give ups / faa the right paper work.
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amazon still failed to give ups / faa the right paper work.
Is it up to Amazon to file paperwork with the FAA? I would have thought that was UPS's responsibility. If you or I ship packages with UPS or FedEX, I don't think we interact with the FAA in any way.
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I would have thought that was UPS's responsibility.
And UPS is going to open each package and make sure none of it was mislabeled? No. Amazon gets it to the FAA via UPS. It doesn't matter if there's an intermediary if they don't label hazardous materials at all.
Re:UPS should send bill... (Score:5, Informative)
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You don't get to lie about your cargo. The manifest has to be correct. Otherwise you're a smuggler, and the response to smugglers is to throw them off the boat/plane while in transit.
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Smooth move.... throw the gallon of smuggled hazardous materials off the flight as unauthorized stowaway, and contact the EPA to designate the place where they land as a superfund site, mobilize a few hundred billion $$$ worth of assets and thousands of full-time highly-paid government workers to commense the clean up, and make Amazon pay every dime of the total cleanup bill plus a 100% penalty.
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Why? because YOU don't like them?
No, because it's a hazardous material that isn't properly contained and shouldn't be there, and workers need to get as much of the material away from people as safely as possible.
And Amazon's responsible for it, so they should bear the burden of that, whatever that is, plus penalties to deter further misbehavior or negligence.
Negligence ! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amazing Liquid Fire? (Score:2)
I think that's the green stuff Tyrion Lannister used to destroy Stannis Baratheon's navy.
Its Frequently Bought Together listing... (Score:4, Funny)
As mentioned elsewhere, on Amazing Liquid Fire's Amazon page, it is frequently bought with "Red Hot Devil Lye" (Sodium Hydroxide).
If both substances come in contact during transit on a plane...things would get very exciting very quickly.
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They're bought together as they're common chemicals used in making bathtub crank and methamphetamines. They're used as catalytic reagents quite often in attempts to produce anhydrous ammonia for manufacture of meth specifically.
There's almost no other reason to buy those two things together.
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That's about it, but you don't normally buy two DIFFERING TYPES of drain cleaner (acid and base) because (channeling The Simpsons here) "you know what happens when you mix acids and bases, right Bart?"
Lemee get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
My Diet Coke can't make it past airport security but something named "Amazing Liquid Fire" can?
Re: Lemee get this straight... (Score:2)
Type 2 is the one associated with sugar consumption/obesity. Type 1 is thought to be closer to an autoimmune disorder.
Meh (Score:3)
Meh, that stuff is weak. When my sinks clog I use fuming hydrochloric acid.
I'm not kidding. [homedepot.com]
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why?
I just use boiling hot laundry bleach. Cheap, does not get you on a government watch list, and does the job fast.
Unless your slow drain is in a fast food place, or a kitchen that uses too much fat. Then you should consider installing a grease trap. Bleach wont do anything to fat, but then again, neither will concentrated HCl. Hydroxides will, but those get you on watch lists, and damage pipes.
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does not get you on a government watch list,
Who cares about being on a watch list? I've been on them since the early 1990's, being interested in explosives and cryptography tends to lead that way. Hasn't kept me from working for a defense contractor or one of the largest law firms in the country. As long as I avoid doing anything overtly illegal there's nothing they can really do except come and talk to me and file a report which might or might not get brought up during a security interview (my first one di
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" Bleach wont do anything to fat, but then again, neither will concentrated HCl. Hydroxides will, but those get you on watch lists, and damage pipes."
Wrong. Bleach in fact destroys lipid (fat) membranes of bacteria - that's why we use it to sterilize surfaces and food handling equipment..
And concentrated HCl (Muriatic acid up to like 12 mol) most certainly dissolves fat, as fat is a lipid hydrocarbon and HCl breaks hydrocarbon chains.
I can tell you've never worked with any of this stuff in any serious capac
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We must be thinking of different substances. Laundry bleach is sodium hypochlorate. Its primary method of action is chemical oxidation. When you oxidize most lipids, they form complex branching polymers. That wont wash them down the pipe, it will harden them into resin.
Treating them with hydroxide, however, will cause exchange of the fatty acid head with the sodium, making the complex able to form stable mycelles which can be suspended in the water as a colloid.
Bleach destroys hair and protien by decomposi
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I would be surprise if Sodium Hydroxide got you on a watch list anywhere. In the UK you can buy it in granular form at the large DIY chain stores (hardware store if you are state side), for example
http://www.diy.com/departments... [diy.com]
Quick check shows all the local stores have it in stock. Spending a day driving around I could accumulated in excess of 20kg of the stuff in a day using cash if I wanted.
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Refined sodium hydroxide is used in meth manufacture. If you buy lots of it, it does get you on watch lists. Just not terrorist ones.
Yes but (Score:2)
Amazing Liquid Fire??? (Score:2)
I thought they called that Napalm.
Next time they skip UPS and deliver by Amazon drone.
What could possibly go wrong?
Relatively Easy Fix. . . (Score:2)
. . . .because I was on a team that made software to do just that.
In 2000.
It was a plug-in to standard shipping systems, that printed labels, generated paperwork, and specified packaging, based on the MSDS of the chemical, the size and type of the container, method of transport, and destination. . . .
And we were not the only solution in the market. . .
Amazon (Score:2)
But since it wasn't directly provided by Amazon, they seem to see their role now more as an ISP (hey, not our problem; caveat emptor).
I suspect shady crap like
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I once bought an OBD2 scanner from Amazon and when I got it, it was clear that the thing was a cheap Chinese knockoff with pirated firmware. You would expect that sort of thing on eBay, but Amazon surprised me.
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"You would expect that sort of thing on eBay, but Amazon surprised me."
Just like ebay, anyone can sell just about anything on Amazon. Why the fuck would you NOT expect this sort of thing where you can't verify by visiting the physical location yourself?
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Actually, I hope he doesn't as the thought of him being POTUS is more scary than even Jeff.
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Amazon, they seem to see their role now more as an ISP
And if it was fulfilled by Amazon, there's no way for the vendor to cooperate with the recall without Amazon's help. I bet Amazon wouldn't even assist with that. I generally don't buy on Amazon unless it's at least fulfilled by Amazon, but that's mostly because of the shipping (both quality and speed).
Would Not Buy Again (Score:2)
Once I ordered an office chair and received a bobcat instead.
Amazon gets away with lots of crazy stuff (Score:2)
Try buying a pair of Apple Earpods - something like 90-100% of the items listed when I searched for "Apple Earpods" are knockoff brands that fall apart or have horrible dynamic range (even compared to the mediocre performance earpods). I'm surprised Apple hasn't (or can't) come down on Amazon like a ton of bricks for enabling such fraudulent listings/sales.
I sure as hell don't buy Apple stuff on Amazon anymore; I wonder if some of the other stuff I bought was really branded or a knock off.
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Almost anyone can setup an Amazon Marketplace account and list almost anything they want for sale (much like eBay's Buy It Now option). Marketplace sellers can put up new listings at almost any time.
If Amazon receives enough complaints for a particular marketplace seller (selling
Doesn't matter if it's "sold by Amazon" (Score:2)
Are they actually sold by Amazon or are you simply seeing listing on the Amazon Marketplace? Most of the time when I see stuff like that on Amazon, the items are listed and sold by a marketplace seller - not Amazon directly.
Almost anyone can setup an Amazon Marketplace account and list almost anything they want for sale (much like eBay's Buy It Now option). Marketplace sellers can put up new listings at almost any time.
If Amazon receives enough complaints for a particular marketplace seller (selling counterfeit goods for example) they have been known to disable the seller's account and pull all of their items from sale. The problem is, new sellers often pop up faster than they can be removed.
I have a hard time seeing how fraudulently labeled "Amazon Marketplace" is different from say, Walmart putting same items on their retail shelves. In both cases, the retailer (Amazon/Walmart) is collecting the cash before the vendor/seller is actually getting the payment for the product.
Essentially, Amazon gets to poison the well for stuff they can't directly compete with, and compete unfairly with their own vendors (see Rain Design).
In both cases, it's unclear what Rain Design or Apple could do to preve
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I really wish that Amazon would do away with the other sellers. Put them off on another domain where they can be searched separately for those people who still want to use them. It's very disingenuous to show all the stuff that comes on the slow boat from China from some random manufacturer mixed in with the stuff that's sold directly from Amazon and usually delivered within 3.
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I really wish that Amazon would do away with the other sellers. Put them off on another domain where they can be searched separately for those people who still want to use them. It's very disingenuous to show all the stuff that comes on the slow boat from China from some random manufacturer mixed in with the stuff that's sold directly from Amazon and usually delivered within 3.
Doesn't matter - the earpods I saw on Amazon were "prime one-day" deliverable - doubt that's coming from some slow-boat. It's being held in-state for delivery to me (through Amazon's fulfillment centers). It's so close to actually being retailed by Amazon that it's ridiculous they get to just say they're "other vendors". IN fact, those are being resold by being on Amazon's site.
Not a serious offense, small fine (Score:2)
To be fined a really large amount, like half a billion dollars, your company would have to do something monstrous like Google advertising low-cost online prescriptions:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr... [justice.gov]
Did Amazon confuse 'Liqui' Fire w/ 'Liquid Fire? (Score:2)
Really, really poor choice of product name on the part of Liqui-Fire people.
Apparently they know it, too. [woodsmansi...tional.com]
Doesn't excuse Amazon; just points out the fact you need to confirm.
UPS is union and they need to sue to recover the (Score:2)
UPS is union and they need to sue to recover the costs that they suffered.
Re:UPS is union and they need to sue to recover th (Score:5, Informative)
UPS is union and they need to sue to recover the costs that they suffered.
Don't get me started on all the double standards that UPS has going on in their shipping departments with their employees. That place is a sweatshop and the Union is in on it and has been since the 1980s!
By their own rules no loader is supposed to lift a package with a circumference around its widest part greater than 70 inches or weighing more than 70 kilograms.
That being said, I got a chewing out by a manager who sent down a bundle of solid steel bars that was 3 ft in circumference and was 12 ft long and weighed about 300 pounds and I was told "Just throw it in the truck!"
I complained about it to a higher up shift manager and the next day was fired.
They are lucky that I had another job lined up otherwise I would have totally sued their asses.
Realize though UPS is a shit job, where you pay about half your income in union dues for a union that basically does nothing for the employee and you are forced to work in an environment where safety rules are never followed and in 120 degree heat.
I ship Fed Ex where possible these days.
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the Union is in on it
That's true of Verizon as well. Don't expect them to protect you as an employee.
Re: UPS is union and they need to sue to recover t (Score:4, Interesting)
I have worked at UPS in probably the exact role you briefly did, "part time package handler," for twelve years now. You aren't wrong that it's drudgery and physical hardship, but you're kind of full of shit.
If you'd wanted to keep your job, wanted to complain, the union and the regulatory environment you live in in the United States are almost the most supportive environment for that you'll find on the planet. Some places are more careful; however all major institutions in society that have a large workforce are by design and nature keystone cop operations. You were the one who had a problem, and you didn't do anything about it. You seem, like lots of people, to want the excuse that those in authority let you down and you had to act as you did in response, that you got fired, not quit; that you were victimized.
I don't know if I have ever seen a 300 pound object in my building, in all my years there. Yes, I have seen things above the 150 pound weight limit, perhaps three or four a year. Hardly ever on the belt if not never, almost always on the floor, if not always. The people just like you and I who unload the trucks and the people who sort what's unloaded have no incentive to send something like that across. It could have happened, and I'm not calling you a liar. My experience leads me to suspect you're exaggerating the details though, both the severity of the hardship you encountered and the severity of the response.
I only bother to say all of this because I think this is the Santa Claus myth endangering civilization right now, that people are competent and institutions are as well, and they need to be treated as such and relied on to live up to their promises, and that we as individuals can place some misfortune from our own lives at their feet. I totally disagree. Every moment of my life has taught me the opposite.
Adult human beings and organizations so comprised are fallible, negligent, and in way way over their heads in exactly the ways you would take for granted that little children are. Looking down on a bunch of uneducated, sweaty middle aged men who yell into walkie talkies and nag other grown men to do physical chores that they themselves angrily thought, mistakenly, that they wouldn't have to do anymore upon promotion to full time management...well, that's mean. Even if they are paid well, and even if they have people beneath them they mistreat, everyone's expectations are too high. The ones in charge at a place like a UPS building are crabs terrified of being dropped back in the bucket. They abuse other people through their incompetence and small amounts of petty malice, but they are simply men who statistically tend to be morons, in charge of others from a larger population which is probably even less competent on average.
Christianity did a good job of advancing the cause of accepting an imperfect world, but something needs to come along to teach people to deal rationally with an imperfect creation and ultimate authority no more competent than its cast offs.
Re: UPS is union and they need to sue to recover t (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know if I have ever seen a 300 pound object in my building, in all my years there.
Oh come on now. I am sure other slashdotters work there, too.
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the union and the regulatory environment you live in in the United States are almost the most supportive environment for that you'll find on the planet. Some places are more careful
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaah ha ha. Phew. Ok got that out of my sys.... nope. hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha
Thanks for providing me some satire / comedy for my afternoon.
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I have the opposite problem. The people at the local Kinkos/Fedex have terrible customer service. You walk in when the place is completely empty and still wait 10 minutes for help. When you’re going to ship a package, they always try to sell you in the most expensive option. When the place has a few people waiting, they take customers out of order. If you didn’t box something yourself, they charge an enormous amount of money for packaging, and anything not FedEx-related is also enormously e
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Back in the day I worked at RPS. Management feared and hated UPS because it was unionized resulting in something like twice the pay (and, no, half of that did not go to the union). They were on to something because people only stayed at RPS until they could get a job with UPS. I was fired when I put in my two weeks notice because they would not believe me that quitting was due to moving (too far to commute to a hub), not because I was switching to UPS. Stupid, but that they really hated and feared UPS.
I cou
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This is the most often quoted case of our court systems abusing companies and coddling litigious citizens. But it is the epitome of what you are asking for here...
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm [lectlaw.com]
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Come on. You ordered hot coffee.You received hot coffee.
That's quite different from posting hazardous material in an unsafe way.
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Come on. You ordered hot coffee.You received hot coffee.
You ordered hot coffee. You got coffee that was above the safety standards put forth in the coffee provider's own documentation, in a cup which could not maintain structural integrity at the provided temperature. You were awarded damages because the vendor proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that what they knew was dangerous, and prohibited the act, and then performed it anyway.
How is the situation different? Coffee does not require a hazardous materials label for shipping. How is the situation similar? In
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the litigant [placed] a container, known to her to be filled with a dangerous liquid, between her legs while trying to operate a moving vehicle.
WTF? She was sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car! [wikipedia.org]
Having received life-threatening third-degree burns and undergone a skin graft procedure, she asked for $20,000 to cover the medical expenses.
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Yup:Sulfuric Acid (Score:5, Interesting)
The MSDS for the product says sulfuric acid and Rodine.
Rodine [chemtexlimited.com] is an acid inhibitor that attempts to prevent corrosion of metals by acids.
The liquid fire MSDS [ruralking.com] doesn't say specifically the concentrations (I hate that), but other drain cleaners of that type can be nearly 100% sulfuric acid.
It wouldn't come as a surprise if the thing was almost pure H2SO4.
Sulfuric acid is essentially sulfur trioxide gas dissolved in water. If the atmospheric pressure goes down, the SO3 gas comes out of solution, where it can hang around and then redissolve on moist surfaces, such as mucous membranes and moist eye tissue.
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Well, that is absolutely fucking terrifying.
It's pretty scary, but don't you already use swim goggles and a respirator when you deal with scary chemicals? Total cost, about twenty bucks. I use the respirator all the time because I do all kinds of things which are bad for your lungs... heat plus galvanized equals gangrenous testicles
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Well YMMV but I'm getting mod points at about the same frequency as before the takeover, and I'm not an ass-kisser (check my posts).
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I'd happily give you a mod point, but the new owners apparently believe that unless you kiss their rosy ass, you won't get those.
So, like the old boss?
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Out of how many (raw number) packages shipped is meaningless too. You have to have stats on how many hazardous materials they'd shipped. Do you publish the story or wait until after Amazon's numbers are (maybe) subpoenaed and become public record? That would delay the story for at least several months.