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And when I say limitations, I mean actual limitations to work output per person. Not some arbitrary limitation on services a company can offer that you think might trick their efficiency algorithms into making life better for their pickers.
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Jul 5, 2019 22:34
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Orange Devil posted:And this way is?
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Jul 5, 2019 22:38
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Baronash posted:Are you under the impression that second and third shift didn't exist in warehouses until Amazon popularized next-day shipping? Most of the warehouses of the company I work for (which is a 3PL focused solely on warehousing) don't run night shifts at all, or only run small night shifts during a few peak months. Except the ones doing e-commerce with next day delivery, those are build around evening and night shifts. So that's the impression I'm under. quote:By setting limitations and empowering regulatory agencies to enforce them with fines, warehouse shutdowns, and prison time in extreme cases. Then you let them figure out if they can still make it work. What limitations, and how would you enforce them? And why do you think it's desirable to let companies figure out if they can still deliver on some assinine thing which demonstrably requires loving over workers rather than just setting a limitation to solve that specific issue? You guys are coming in with "man, we should really regulate warehousing companies to improve the lives of their workers" and I'm giving you one example of a specific, actionable way to do that, and you insist we shouldn't even try to do that but should strive for vague generalities instead. Wait, is it because you personally don't want to give up the perceived convenience of next day delivery? Is that the craziness that's been going on for this last page? Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Jul 5, 2019 |
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Jul 5, 2019 22:52
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We get it. You work in an industry where your boss tells you certain things are impossible and you believed them. Now shut up.
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Jul 5, 2019 22:59
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I mean, I'm the one doing the calculations and figuring out what is possible, but ok.
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Jul 5, 2019 23:15
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Orange Devil posted:Most of the warehouses of the company I work for (which is a 3PL focused solely on warehousing) don't run night shifts at all, or only run small night shifts during a few peak months. Except the ones doing e-commerce with next day delivery, those are build around evening and night shifts. So that's the impression I'm under. Those same e-commerce companies were running night shifts for 2 day shipping and 3-5 day shipping before that. None of this is new, holy poo poo. Orange Devil posted:You guys are coming in with "man, we should really regulate warehousing companies to improve the lives of their workers" and I'm giving you one example of a specific, actionable way to do that, and you insist we shouldn't even try to do that but should strive for vague generalities instead. No shelves below waist height. Stepladders placed every x feet. Assigning pickers to zones that they don't operate outside of for a given length of time, thereby limiting distance between each pick. 72 hours notice for cancelled shifts. Redesigning scanners and other equipment to reduce RSI. This is all poo poo I would have liked when I worked warehouse. Let's start there. Baronash fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jul 5, 2019 |
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Jul 5, 2019 23:17
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Orange Devil posted:I mean, I'm the one doing the calculations and figuring out what is possible, but ok. "My company can't exist unless I grind my employees into a fine paste. This is a problem with my customers and not my business. I'm at the whims of the market, you see."
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Jul 5, 2019 23:27
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Baronash posted:Those same e-commerce companies were running night shifts for 2 day shipping and 3-5 day shipping before that. None of this is new, holy poo poo. Warehouses I’m familiar with doing 2 or 3 day lead times don’t run night shifts. There’s literally a financial incentive not to since night shifts cost more, So again speaking from my direct experience and that of coworkers who I’ve had this discussion with, you wouldn’t have the same situation. And again I’m not proposing this as *the* solution but as one thing to do with little negative impact and a whole lot of positive. Agree on low shelves, that should be outlawed. Agree on scanners, I’m happy ergonomics are a primary concern for our newest, but the old ones still suck. Agree on notice for cancelled shifts, but would like to point out that more predictable volume due to no next day delivery would already significantly reduce cancelled shifts. We have stepladders where required, should definitely be mandatory. I don’t see how you’d legislate or enforce pickers in zones though. Some of these legislation is absolutely the only way to accomplish this, as market pressure makes it impossible otherwise. And to be clear, I don’t own the company I work at.
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Jul 5, 2019 23:43
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There are a number of practices that definitely should be illegal, like the immediate firing with no warning, and a couple that probably are illegal like having to be at work for an hour before getting on the clock, the conditions that harmed people's health (and killed a person, that's manslaughter right there), and keeping people working with a dead body on the floor, but usually the enforcement method for things like that require people to band together to sue the company, and putting together a class-action lawsuit is hard, especially with companies that are very aggressive at firing workers with a hair trigger. Historically, the most comprehensive way of enforcing fairer labor standards is employees banding together to form a union, so that there will always be lawyers onhand for dealing with violations of labor laws and more specific problems can be handled more directly with collective bargaining. The best way to encourage that is to get right-to-work laws repealed, have the right to protest more firmly entrenched, and to try to crack down on companies that are preventing unionization. It could also help to directly target massive anti-competitive companies with too much control over an industry and break them up like we used to do with monopolies so that the companies have less relative power to suppress their workers. Theoretically, with companies in competition for workers, that could even lead to improving working conditions as part of competing for workers. Also, smaller companies would presumably be worse at keeping unions suppressed. I'm not saying that it would be "easy", but it is thoroughly doable. Especially since it's already been done. If you read up on labor movements back in the 20th century, much of this has already been done before. Conditions for dockworkers back at the turn of the century involved many of the same problems.
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Jul 6, 2019 00:52
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Saucy_Rodent posted:It’s not about need, it’s about want. People would rather have their Oreos tomorrow than later, or their new shirt, or their retro gaming system or whatever. It’s probably a good policy, but it’s a policy that will be unpopular with the vast majority of people who aren’t warehouse staff. No politician is going to run on taking away your nice things. Oh I get the need vs. want thing, my point was that people will use the free fast shipping options because they're there, not because they care all that much about them. Before Prime, you had (and still have) the option to pay more for faster shipping of anything (especially, like I said, perishables and other time-sensitive things.) Then Prime gave us free 2-day shipping, with an option to upgrade that to 1-day for $2/item IIRC. Before Prime I was perfectly happy to put $25+ of items in my cart so I could checkout with free [slow] shipping. Even now, anecdotally, the "no-rush" option pretty much always delivers the stuff in less time than specified. And although it's getting way off topic, people not supporting climate legislation because it slightly inconveniences them are going to get a loving wakeup call when they get way more inconvenienced due to the continued lack of climate legislation. See: ongoing record heat waves in places like Europe, Alaska, etc. Saucy_Rodent posted:Yep! You don’t have to run your business at a profit if you have enough investors to keep you running forever. Youtube’s a black hole financially, but where else are you going to upload a video and expect anyone to actually watch it? I'm pretty sure, at least before the Adpocalypse, Youtube at least broke even due to ad revenue. Now, probably not so much. PT6A posted:I think another problem is that people don't know where to buy poo poo any more. For example: I lost my umbrella the other day, and I needed to get a new one. Where does one go to buy an umbrella? There's no such thing as an umbrella store. I think I've seen them in souvenir shops before, maybe. A department store, perhaps? gently caress it, I guess I'll just order one off Amazon, because I type "umbrella" in the search box and all of a sudden I have a range of different sizes, constructions, colours, etc. and I can stop thinking about my need to purchase a new umbrella. You're right, although you're basically just describing a general store. That's what Walmart and Target are the modern examples of, but department and convenience stores are along the same lines. You can actually Google products and get links to local, B&M stores if you don't immediately want to go to Amazon or whatever. Saucy_Rodent posted:Next-day delivery is an unnecessary convenience we’ve all gotten used to and wouldn’t want taken away, and the idea that outlawing it would get any public support at all is laughably naive. Orange Devil posted:3. I've never claimed eliminating next day shipping would make these jobs good. In fact I've explicitly stated it wouldn't. What I've argued this entire time is that it would make these jobs measurably less lovely and it would do so at a loss of minimal societal benefit. The solution isn't to "ban" next-day shipping, nor is it easily enforceable (particularly in the sense that a government prohibiting industry from giving something to you in less time is a pretty apparent overreach.*) As I've mentioned, giving customers the option to pay incrementally more for faster shipping has always been the norm, and it still is outside of Amazon and its direct competitors. If the status quo became, "just put stuff in your cart and check out, and it will get to you within a reasonable amount of time, but you can pay more for faster shipping if necessary," then people would do exactly that. Those that need their next-day Oreos can pay extra for them or get off their fat asses and walk (lol, who am I kidding, "drive"  ) to the store.***This reminds me of the now-defunct NYC ban on large containers of sugary soft drinks. It's not at all the case that it prohibited [dumb] people from drinking sugar-laden beverages or purchasing any specific quantity of them, it just prohibited the maximum container size, yet it was widely unpopular. It wasn't even a bad idea, but the mere thought of a government entity trying to nudge people towards doing something that was better for their health was seen as overreach. "Banning" next-day shipping would have a similar outcry, I'd predict. That's why keeping it as a paid option is the only logical course, and it you wanted to legislate anything along these lines it'd have to be something like taxing the seller/shipper/whatever for faster shipping options*** to the point where they had to charge for them. **Just a thought, the "order online, pick up in store" thing that places like Target, BB, etc., offer, even though it's pretty standard for the restaurant industry, may create working conditions like in the warehouses tasked with fulfilling the next-day orders. It's probably not on the scale of the warehouses, but the people in the grocery stores or Target or wherever still have to run around to pick items within the 1-2 hour windows. ***On this point, I also had the thought of waiving the aforementioned fine/tax/whatever for using USPS, which could be a way to increase volume and help the agency address its financial situation.
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Jul 6, 2019 01:32
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I'd like to point out that lots of you, as well as John Oliver, have used "next day oreos" to paint customer wants as a bad thing with a side of fat shaming. Grocery stores sell oreos same-day. 7-11 does it at any hour of any day. This isn't about loving oreos. Stop making customers sound selfish by reducing them to fat people who want to eat things.
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Jul 6, 2019 04:26
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LividLiquid posted:I'd like to point out that lots of you, as well as John Oliver, have used "next day oreos" to paint customer wants as a bad thing with a side of fat shaming. People have been using the phrase "next-day oreos" to refer to luxury goods that could easily be acquired by expending a moderate amount of effort to go to a store. How exactly is that wrong? And yes, grocery stores and 7-11s sell oreos. That's kind of the entire point.
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Jul 6, 2019 10:42
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Who the hell next day ships Oreos? That's what Prime Now is for.
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Jul 6, 2019 11:47
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And here I was thinking that all this talk of ordering Oreos was super-racist on a few different levels. I had no idea it was also fat-shaming. Let's start an online petition to have them change the name of Oreos. That'll fix the problem.
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Jul 6, 2019 16:48
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Racist? Do non-whites love Oreos or something? Americans are messed up with their racism man
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Jul 6, 2019 17:04
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Alan_Shore posted:Racist? Do non-whites love Oreos or something? Americans are messed up with their racism man Don't know if you're being serious or not (I only know that I was joking), but the word "oreo" has been used as a slur in at least two ways: 1) as a word used to describe someone who has a black and a white parent; and 2) as a word used to describe a black person who "acts white;" i.e., they're black on the outside and white on the inside, or so the sentiment went. The latter was by far the most common variant, but I know I've heard "oreo" and other slurs used for mixed people before. (And I'm pretty sure it was on network TV, not from some random drunken racist uncle.) And before anyone yells at me, I didn't invent this use of the term. I just remember it.
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Jul 6, 2019 18:23
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Jesus loving christ
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Jul 6, 2019 19:30
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LividLiquid posted:I'd like to point out that lots of you, as well as John Oliver, have used "next day oreos" to paint customer wants as a bad thing with a side of fat shaming. Well we're running with the Oreos example because Oliver mentioned it, but it has nothing to do with "fat shaming."  Oliver himself used it as an example of a trivial item that doesn't need next-day shipping but is nevertheless available for free next-day shipping for no good reason (and all of this is irrelevant to the fact that you can just go to a grocery store to buy them same-day.) As I've already mentioned multiple times, fast shipping isn't the problem, because it's a necessity for things like temperature-controlled drugs (i.e. refrigerated or frozen meds that need to arrive quickly to the pharmacy from a wholesaler and are shipped with ice packs or even dry ice.) The problem is offering free rush shipping on trivial poo poo and squeezing warehouse employees for no good reason.
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Jul 6, 2019 21:26
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The issue of rush shipping is separate from overworking warehouse employees, though. They could quite simply hire more people than they need, and pay them even when there's nothing for them to do, to account for peak demand whenever it should occur.
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Jul 6, 2019 23:51
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PT6A posted:The issue of rush shipping is separate from overworking warehouse employees, though. They could quite simply hire more people than they need, and pay them even when there's nothing for them to do, to account for peak demand whenever it should occur.
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Jul 7, 2019 00:07
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Milo and POTUS posted:Jesus loving christ Why? Why does this thread get so stupid?
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Jul 7, 2019 02:48
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LividLiquid posted:But that would be impossible because A competitor would not do these things and squeeze employees instead, driving the nice warehousing company out of business. You know, market pressure.
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Jul 7, 2019 10:37
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I know this wouldn't fix many of the core behaviors of treating their workers like this, but why don't these warehouses; 1) Have workers assigned to designated sections, where they only receive orders for items within those sections 2) Give workers electric carts that would greatly reduce physical strain or running around and pushing heavy baskets 3) Have bathrooms in more than one corner of the goddamn building These seem like such simple things to do that would cost very little to implement, and that money would come back to them fairly quickly by improving efficiency and productivity, and reduce turnaround which means not having to train new people all the time.
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Jul 8, 2019 05:02
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LividLiquid posted:I'd like to point out that lots of you, as well as John Oliver, have used "next day oreos" to paint customer wants as a bad thing with a side of fat shaming. They are though. What idiodic hill are you even trying to die on.
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Jul 8, 2019 05:22
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Jamesman posted:I know this wouldn't fix many of the core behaviors of treating their workers like this, but why don't these warehouses; The cruelty is the point.
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Jul 8, 2019 05:26
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Largely, they don't care. Employees don't have any input, and are mostly considered disposable by the companies, so no concern is spared for them. It's never about actual cost, it's just about how wellbeing of workers has absolutely no value to them.
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Jul 8, 2019 05:39
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Orange Devil posted:A competitor would not do these things and squeeze employees instead, driving the nice warehousing company out of business.
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Jul 8, 2019 06:38
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They should just break up Amazon. "You had a nice run Jeff, too bad you just suck at being a human being." Frugal my rear end.
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Jul 8, 2019 08:22
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LividLiquid posted:In this hypothetical, that couldn't happen. The hypothetical is that we make it impossible for companies to abuse their workers instead of sucking up the cost of the things they promise for their customers. Now if you want to argue that it won't happen because labor unions are weak, or corporate america is needlessly corrupt, or capitalism can't work without abject exploitation, we can talk, but your argument hasn't been any of those. It's been that we need to exploit people. So it's painfully obvious that you're not a defeated pessimist like some of us. You're a bootlick who needs us all to understand that the bosses know best and shared that information with you because you're special. Right, so warehouses couldn't "quite simply" do the things PT6A outlined. Instead first legislation is needed to force all warehouses to do these things, thus removing the market pressure. Then on top of that you have the issues you list. But my point was never "we need to exploit people". My point is "in order for a business to function in capitalism, it must exploit people", which is patently true and also the main reason capitalism should be abolished. Also, gently caress you.
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Jul 8, 2019 08:39
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Mr Shiny Pants posted:They should just break up Amazon. wHY do you Want to puNish SuCceSs
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Jul 8, 2019 09:06
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Nationalise it, give it to the Post Office.
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Jul 8, 2019 11:55
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I love that you all are trying to rationalize all of this when Amazon could quadruple the number of workers it has without it affecting Bezos' income in any statistically meaningful way. They choose to do it the way they do because a spreadsheet said this would give the largest short-term profits. Unkempt posted:Nationalise it, give it to the Post Office. This but high-speed internet. SlothfulCobra posted:Largely, they don't care. Employees don't have any input, and are mostly considered disposable by the companies, so no concern is spared for them. Actually, Walmart showed us that the company can have an active interest in harming the wellbeing of its workers. Did they ever regulate away the ability of companies to take out secret life insurance policies on their employees? Because I am pretty sure they did not...
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Jul 8, 2019 17:42
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I don't think nationalization is good for that kind of industry. It legitimizes Amazon's unfair consolidation of power while saddling the government with this huge series of duties without the venture capital that keeps it alive. Would the government have to go nationalizing the whole industry? Something like internet could be nationalized as a utility though, or at least treated like phone lines (break up big providers, allow anyone to provide through the same lines). Or even something like the oil industry, which is already treated as a matter of national security and ends up being kept afloat by government subsidies anyways.
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Jul 8, 2019 19:34
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:This but high-speed internet. We were supposed to have this in Australia but we had a change in government a few years back just as the infrastructure was about to be rolled out and they went "National network connecting every household to the internet via optical fibre? Pffft, in OUR day we had copper wires and we liked it just fine so there's no way we're paying for this "optical fibre" malarky. What do people even need high speed internet for? Suck it you millennial snowflakes!!" so now our internet speed is ranked 50th in the world (behind Estonia, Kenya and Slovakia) and last week the government was going "Whoa the internet is slow as hell, let's start levying an "excessive downloads" fee on people like Netflix subscribers because they're clearly the problem here"
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Jul 8, 2019 19:36
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:This but high-speed internet. Government either won’t do that or will do it until a complete Trump-like doofus shoes up shouting about the need to know what sites brown people are browsing. (The government can already do this through national security requests, but again, not like populist fascists know/pretend to know this.) Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 20:33
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Craptacular! posted:The problem with nationalizing internet access is that it probably lowers the bar significantly for law enforcement to spy on people. Current ISPs don’t have to turn over customer data to any copyright attorney who asks and can tell police to come back with a warrant. This is a tradeoff I wouldn't even blink at, though. I already assume that if I'm ever a person of interest, my entire internet history is going to be visible to anyone who really wants to see it.
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Jul 9, 2019 03:08
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Eh, I don't want to actually nationalize the infrastructure, but it would be cool if they used the apparatus of the Post Office and updated it for how people currently communicate and offer some kind of widely-available, free broadband.Craptacular! posted:The problem with nationalizing internet access is that it probably lowers the bar significantly for law enforcement to spy on people. Current ISPs don’t have to turn over customer data to any copyright attorney who asks and can tell police to come back with a warrant.  The entire US network passes through a few, controlled points. NSA projects like Red Lantern have been monitoring all electronic communications within, to, and from the US since at least the 80's. And if anyone thinks the largest data farm in history is for storing  meta-data, then I have a bridge to sell you: dirty cheap!
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Jul 10, 2019 03:18
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:Eh, I don't want to actually nationalize the infrastructure Why not?
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Jul 10, 2019 06:49
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Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:And if anyone thinks the largest data farm in history is for storing I didn’t say I was looking to hide things from the NSA. I’m talking about much less important people who drag people to court over things that aren’t important enough for the NSA to care.
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Jul 10, 2019 06:59
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-on-spouses-ex-lovers-watchdog-idUSBRE98Q14G20130927 They've already used it for personal reasons so the genie is out of the bottle...
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Jul 10, 2019 13:49
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