14 
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Amazon’s warehouses, especially at Christmastime, have to be a perfectly greased, gargantuan machine in order to meet the needs of its hundreds of millions of clients. We’re less likely, however, to look beyond the company’s impressive exterior at the individual pieces that make it run—Amazon’s very human employees.
FT Magazine takes a look at these troubling lives working in Amazon’s UK warehouse. What we get is a picture of an eerie, Stepford-gone-wrong labor camp:
They might each walk between seven and 15 miles today… Before they can go home at the end of their eight-hour shift, or go to the canteen for their 30-minute break, they must walk through a set of airport-style security scanners to prove they are not stealing anything. They also walk past a life-sized cardboard image of a cheery blonde woman in an orange vest. “This is the best job I have ever had!” says a speech bubble near her head.
But even after enduring all that, there’s still no real sense of job security.
The former shop-floor manager and another worker described a strict “three strikes and release” discipline system – “release” being a euphemism for getting sacked. In the early days, people were “released” frequently and with little warning or explanation, workers said. A very large number were laid off after the first busy Christmas period, some of whom had assumed their jobs would be permanent. Chris Martin says his job lasted less than a week after he took a day off for blisters and returned to find the night shift he was on had been abruptly cancelled.
It’s really a fascinating (and eye-opening) read. You can learn more about life inside the depths of Amazon employment over at FT Magazine, here. [FT Magazine]
Scientists Create 230-Per Cent Efficient LED Bulbs
Boeing's Jets of the Future Will Be 60 Per Cent More Fuel Efficient Thanks to Natural Gas
This Boring Warehouse Is Actually the World's Biggest Battery
I’ve worked there before but the scanners had to come in because people would pocket stuff. Like people used to put CDs into their CD players and there was no way to prove that they didn’t come in with it. So they banned anything being brought in and put the scanners up. They also started randomly searching people too, so people wouldn’t feel safe taking stuff.
The breaks is what I had a problem with, the place was like the size of 8 football pitches and some parts have multiple levels. You basically got no break because by the time you got to the front you had to go back again. Also at lunch they’d put the clocks forward 5 mins in the canteen so it was hard to tell the time as you weren’t allowed items on you unless you went through the scanners multiple times to the lockers.
Also yeh you’d have people constantly having a go at you to go faster and faster. Like you couldn’t go any faster but they’d still have a go at you for no reason. Then they’d call a big meeting but because there was just so many people talking you couldn’t hear anything. So when you got to doing work and had to ask a question because you couldn’t hear they would have a go at you again. So I just told the guy to fuck himself and he fired me lol… like whatever I was 18, didn’t need a job back then, just did it to shut my Mother up at the time.
They’d always put you down for over time on the weekends too and if you didn’t do it they would try to threaten you with your job claiming it’s what you signed up to.
All the immigrants worked there really, only like 5 English people when I was there, they put up with any shit for min wage.
That’s an eye opener. If that is really how they treat their employees, I don’t particularly want to shop with Amazon anymore.
But you will.
Not necessarily as some of us DO say “no more”, see my first post: I have cancelled my pending orders & removed my credit card from Amazon.co.uk, and sold my Kindle… I just don’t want my first-world impatience for a book “now!” to contribute to Amazon’s continued misuse of the temp worker system/misuse of human workers.
It’s no surprise that Amazon are working to replace as much of their warehouse workers with robots, then.
To be fair, I’m not sure what people would expect it to be like. As if running a massive operation like this could possibly be done with any level of kindness or slack. Manual labour is never really a career option you look to in school, but it is a necessary part of an industrial and commercial infrastructure. At least until it becomes as automated as possible… which point anyone complaining about the conditions now complains about losing their jerbs.
I worked in the Newark depot of Currys UK for a year and trust me, it was exactly the same. Your treated as a non human, worked to death and discarded at a moments notice.
I came from a background as an engineering professional, until I experienced it I never knew hell holes like this existed. Thankfully I managed to get back into a decent job again. For all those that are still there I’m thinking of you.
Simon
Ugh, I did not realize that Amazon UK had such conditions, so I ask myself: would I want to work there with all its BS? The answer is “Hell, no”, so I have cancelled my pending Amazon UK orders, and I’ve sold my Amazon Kindle… I really don’t want to aid and abet Amazon in exploiting its workers/abusing the temp worker system, so from now on I’ll buy my books from the local bookshops… sometimes you just have to tell a megacorp to cut the crap, else one day it may be you working in such conditions…
Yeah but is it better that they do it over here or in the Philippines?
How are they exploiting its workers? It is well within a company’s rights to use temp workers, are you going to boycott all the companies that use temp workers?
So I presume you now own no items ‘made in China’?
I worked there a couple months in last year’s Christmas period. They hired three times their normal workforce just for the Christmas and fired almost all the temps on 23rd of December. Merry Christmas everybody!
Hey was you at Rugeley ? I was kept on but let go on the 8th of jan and now they want me back. Ill do it for a few months to save up some more cash, but it aint a career and I`m not going after my blue badge.
All I want is monies for summer the I can bum around for a bit while I get something better.
A blue badge?!
Jesus Christ, do they work you that hard?
I was at Hemel Hempstead. I was in QA so got to stay on a couple extra weeks. But everyone in packing picking etc got called for a big meeting at the end of shift on 23rd and got ‘released’. They did not even know it was going to be their last day when they came in to work for that day. My manager told me that they do it like this so that people don’t try to steal stuff on their last day of work.
Surely the guys in the pick/pack departments would of had an inkling…the last day for orders to go out for Christmas delivery maybe?
Seriously what do people expect from a low-level (no brain required) job such as this?
There have always been and will always be (until complete automation) manual labour jobs that somebody has to do and people without the intelligence to progress in life or the ambition and dedication to study and succeed in higher level jobs will do them.
It’s the modern western equivalent of factory work or digging fields or any other monotonous poorly paid job.
Would I want to work for them, “Hell,No!” but I studied and have the ambition to ensure that my skill set enables me to earn my money in other less repetitive ways.
Will I stop using Amazon? No, because unless I decide to grow all my own food, make all my own clothes and manufacture for myself everything that I currently buy ready made it would be a pointless grandstanding gesture.
If you worked there as a student I hope it helped you to study harder to gain more qualifications for the future; I know working at Payless DIY and Currys as a student definitely made me realise that study was the key.
Well done Julian! Quite clearly demonstrating the attitude utterly lacking any kind of compassion, empathy, or milk of human kindness which will almost certainly ensure you rise to the top of the tree whose strong, vital, unseen and unappreciated roots make possible. You remind me of the cretins who visit a slave labour camp warehouse such as this, arriving by helicopter, treated like royalty during the tour, before retiring to their luxurious office to make a cost-saving decision which will further erode the working conditions for workers, whilst at the same time saving the company some money – earning them a well deserved slap on the back and massive bonus.
Instead of taking the attitude that this is what these people ‘deserve’, or need to just accept because ‘hey dreamer, this is the real world we live in’ and you didn’t study hard, maybe you should realise that many people don’t have a clear path to a decent education for a variety of reasons – disruptive home life, sickness, mental health issues etc – use your imagination.
Imagine if your Mother or Father was a lovely person, but just never particularly bright or inclined to study. Would you be happy for them to be treated like a meat robot in one of these hell-holes? Or would you still be reciting the big boys mantra about how ‘that’s just how things are’, without thinking that maybe this needs changing. People who lack the strength of mind to imagine a better situation for the treatment of people remind me of those from history who couldn’t see beyond and therefore went along with slavery, the Holocaust, Apartheid.
First of all if I was a ‘cretin’ flying in by helicopter making decisions to ensure the company stayed profitable and the ‘workers’ remained employed then presumably I studied and worked hard to attain that position.
Secondly, the vast majority of people in this country have / had a clear path to a decent education and failed to take the opportunities available to them (although obviously people with mental health issues are a completely different matter).
Finally, many people would consider basic office work as menial and soul destroying and yet we need people doing those jobs just as we currently need people fulfilling Amazon orders.
It is not that I lack the strength of mind to imagine better, it is that I’m mature and intelligent enough to realise that there will always be different levels of ‘worker’ and that treating all people the same is communism / socialism which has been proven time and time again not to work.
It’s not me being a git, it’s just the way the world works.
Well I have a degree and studying for my masters, its just that there is no other work out there and many people have no choice but to take these crappy jobs.
It would be nice to at least be treat like human and not some sort of work machine.
and whilst I agree that in a perfect world that would be true; but the fact is that ‘some’ people have always worked as some sort of work machine (at least for a thousand years or so with peasants toiling in fields, etc) and the fact that you have a degree and are now studying for a Masters shows that you have the drive and ambition to try to be more.
The fact of the matter is that you will find very few people with good qualifications doing these crappy jobs as there are jobs out there for intelligent educated people, they may not pay as well as they used to, or be as plentiful but they are available and it’s a big world out there with plenty of need for talent.
If people can’t find a job here then go overseas and get work experience elsewhere. (personally I actually think it should be compulsory for every person finishing education to have to spend at least a year out of the country to broaden their views of life, people and other cultures but that;s another story!)
So they won’t allow stealing and will make you work your full shift before you can go home???? Shocking.