Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Leal posted:

Manager told me there was a conference call with all the produce managers in our company and not one single store wasn't having issues with our new warehouse provider. Fantastic.

In other great news, the other opener has transferred. So I'm the only opener, I'll be working 6 days now until a replacement is found. My avatar is basically me every day.

Have fun with that, used to work at a kitchen that was moving to a USDA kitchen (health food startup in Austin, long story there) and refused to hire people for the longest time, and then only grudgingly got temps when it became clear that the kitchen staff was about to quit. Of course they didn't tell us about the move so for the longest time everyone was going "Why don't they just hire someone?" I ended up running 3 different jobs, often working 10-12 hour shifts or longer, 6 days a week. It got to the point where I straight up told my manager "Yes I know it's bad but I need days off. I have two of them on the schedule, you may call me in for ONE of them this week. Is this the one time you actually need me to come in?"

As a side note, does working at an Amazon Fulfillment Center count as "retail"? I didn't see a thread for that, or warehouse work, and it would be nice to have a place to vent sometime.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



The Snoo posted:

any time I interact with someone w/ kids (especially ones who are visibly/audibly sick and gross, like that nasty cough they do or picking their nose in front of me) I slather on the hand sanitizer and hope for the best lmfao

I have a lot of grown-rear end adults coughing on me and leaving tissues on my loving counter, though. everyone is disgusting. go home

Showed up at work the other day and one of the security contractors (Amazon FC) was wearing a facemask. I just shrugged, thought he was sick which was nice. Overheard him talking on his break later that apparently he lived with his cousin, who just had a child, and was doing his best to not bring anything home with him from work (which, again, Amazon FC, probably a good idea). So I was half right.

There are nice people out there who take care of themselves/others. They're just few and far between.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Eric the Mauve posted:

Should have gone with The Night Santa Went Crazy

I would have gone with "If it has to be Christmas" from Payday 2's Christmas album, A Merry Payday Christmas.

If it has to be Christmas for you to be nice
You're an rear end in a top hat
If you think the season is the reason
You're a piece of poo poo
If someone has to dress up like Santa or you won't back a fund raise
Then you're a low-life loving twat


"I've been a Bad Boy" is also pretty good, but "If it Has to be Christmas" sounds so very normal and holiday-ish even as they start swearing. And I imagine every single retail worker would get a kick at the store PA's music calling their rear end in a top hat customers on their poo poo.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

Really, it just boils down to the fact that I believe if you're in a position of leadership, and you poo poo on someone that's trying their best instead of trying to build them up- you're a loving idiot and you deserve all the other loving idiots which will sprout beneath you in the mushroom farm that is your command structure.

You also deserve every bit of ire that you generate when HR comes down on your stupid head, as happened a few weeks ago at the Amazon warehouse I work at. Not technically retail, but close enough and I can't find an Amazon bitching thread.

We had an upper level manager and his two floor manager buddies decide the best way to increase productivity in the outbound shipdock was, in short, to piss everyone off. They could come in and basically kept telling everyone they weren't doing their job right, or fast enough or [insert other complaint you can probably imagine/remember hearing yourself 1,000x over from your own bosses]. Obviously this worked to a degree but it rapidly ran into diminishing returns, and increasing tempers that weren't being given a chance to cool down after Peak season finished during what is normally the Q1 slump (everyone burned their money/bought what they wanted for the holidays) because management was on their asses. Until, one day, they pissed everyone off that about 2/3 of the ship dock crew just walked off. Which is actually a thing you can do at Amazon warehouses: your time off is allocated down to the hour so you can basically tell your boss "Hey man, I feel like poo poo, I'm going home" (see also "I want to crack open some brewskis with my buddies" and "Because I want to" but mainly the reason is if you're having an off day, Amazon would rather you head home than be a safety incident so management can't stop you if you have the time in reserve).

If one person bitches, HR will likely find fault with them as the managers are pretty much guaranteed to win the "He says, she says" contest. When 15 people just walk out the door at once, HR takes notice and not just because they have to walk past HR's desk to leave. When the outbound dock slows down and stops, the entire facility rapidly grinds to a halt as the pack departments quickly run out of places to put the shipments they built. The entire building notices it. And HR has a hard enough time finding people who can/will work on the shipdocks.

Those three managers? 2 got fired by end of shift, one was on called in off of family leave and then fired a week later. All because they wouldn't stop basically trying to neg their workers into being more productive instead of pulling their heads out of their asses and solving problems.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Nope, it's corporate wide and literally how corporate doles out our hours. The policy is set so far above local HR's paygrade it's not even funny.

-Every quarter we get 20 hours of Unpaid Time Off (UPT). Never expires, caps at 160 hours. BUT you get fired if you go negative and don't immediately have your rear end at the HR desk begging for forbearance.
-Every paycheck we get about 1.5 hours (it's some weird decimal) of Personal/Paid Time Off (PTO) and it maxes out at 48 hours/year for full time and 36 hours/year for part or reduced time shifts. Expires at the end of the year so it's use it or lose it and you start from 0 in January.
-Every paycheck you also get 1-ish hours of vacation time, which increases to 2-ish (like 2.25? It's another weird decimal) once you've worked a year. Like UPT this never expires, caps out at 160 hours (but HR will start nagging you to use some around 150 hours because they don't like people to have a full month of paid vacation stocked up).

There's also VTO (Voluntary Time Off, a.k.a. "we don't have enough work for everyone, who wants to go home early tonight?")

It comes down to the fact that it's very much a sweatshop job (albeit a well paying one with crazy insurance) and Amazon would rather its workers take a half night off here or there if they're just not feeling well as compared to staying and being another injury statistic. The fact that it also gives workers a bit of a stress pressure valve helps reduce the job's absurd turnover. Technically you're supposed to give your boss an hour or two of notice if you can, but that's a soft/unofficial rule to give management less sudden headaches. I've basically gone "Yeah, I feel like poo poo, sorry." several times with no prior warning and never gotten in trouble for it.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Honestly because OSHA likes to breathe down Amazon's neck, and because some people in management realized this was just a more flexible way to do it. It solves a lot of problems at once.

Also a lot of the horror stories come from one of two places:
1) The old, old sites which simply cannot be run at the newer, more advanced sites rates no matter what you do. Which means of course there are managers who will still try to do so. Everywhere has its rear end in a top hat managers who goes "I can make literally magic happen by treating my workers like poo poo" and Amazon is no exception. There is just so much equipment and redesigning in newer facilities that the workflow and production rate that the newer facilities produce is simply not compatible with the older warehouses that look like, well, everyone else's warehouses. Also and you get poo poo like one of the original Amazon warehouses in Seattle having literally only one metal detector for an entire shift to filter through (you have to go through screening as you leave. For me it's "hold clear water bottle in one hand, hold keys and safety knife in other hand, walk through metal detector", but other people have bags and such). It takes so long to leave that building that no one can leave it on lunch break, so you're effectively trapped until shift-end.
2) Opening new locations. New buildings are giant clusterfucks for the first 3-4 months at minimum because as far as I can tell the company policy is to basically give management the bare minimum training on the equipment, hire a bunch of people off the streets, then everyone gets to sink or swim. They do have "Away team" members filling in just about every non-management role from other, mature facilities, but those are maybe 10% of the workers. A brand new Amazon FC isn't a mere dumpster fire. For the first few months it's a ballistic dumpster fire hurtling through the sky, spewing flaming garbage everywhere. The building I work at opened just before the 2016 holiday season, when I was hired for Peak 2017 I was informed that during Peak 2016 they had an ambulance visit nearly every day. That is something the people hiring me straight up told my entire shift to our faces when we were being on-boarded.

In short anything that lowers injuries and such is approved. If going home means you're less likely to hurt yourself, management lets you go home.

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Feb 22, 2019

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Kickshaw posted:

We need 2-3 more people in my dept for weekends, mostly Sundays, just in order to give other people an occasional Sunday off. Mgmt insists I'm fully staffed, then demands to know why we have late orders Sunday and I'm in the dept instead of doing manager stuff. HR is asking why I haven't been taking the one weekend a month off that corporate policy entitles me to. :suicide:

I was talking to my lead about it, and he suggested I just take my weekend off, let store mgmt see how we crash and burn without an extra ten to twelve (salaried) hours in the dept that Sunday, and then re-approach the hiring issue, but I don't want to abandon my team like that.

And at the same time, I'm dreading tomorrow, because we did nearly double the orders we were budgeted for last week, and Sundays have been trending upwards for months.

Kill me. I do not want to go in tomorrow.

Do it. DOO EEET! Just let it crash and burn. Fully tell them ahead of time that you're taking X day off then just turn off your phone. When they ask where you were tell them you let the battery die. Maybe warn some of your workers that you trust so they know it's gonna be a poo poo day if you know they won't rat you to corporate. Bonus points: see if they can take that day off too and see how bad the mess gets.

Corporate will never learn until you rub it in their face that they are wrong. Until they're left holding the bag as you comply (maliciously of course, but don't tell them that) they will insist that you're doing it wrong and can run department X with half the people.

Sometimes the hardest lesson is to just not care too much. Your corporate overlords certainly don't. Short of the building burning down, the place will still be there tomorrow. And if you've covered your back there's not much they can do. Of course the reason it's so hard is sometimes there's just bills to pay

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Eric the Mauve posted:

:feelsgood:

But there's a decent chance they will fire you (or demote you/make your life hell until you quit) out of sheer spite (and as a warning to others) even though they know they're hamstringing themselves. I've seen it happen before.

Yeah it's definitely something you want a backup plan on before you even attempt it. But one of the best feeling in the worlds is watching corporate management sputter when all their threats bounce off of someone they rely on suddenly stop giving a poo poo. All their threats in the world can't do anything against "Yeah, well, I got another job lined up. Bye."

Never done it myself, seen a few of my bosses do it. Envied them every time.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Arcsquad12 posted:

Today I was introduced to the world of collectable toy scalpers. Some lady has been buying up all of the L.O.L Surprise dolls from Toronto and has recently set her sights on Ottawa. She's been using every underhanded trick she can to abuse Indigo's threw day hold policy and demand discounts that don't apply to her. Apparently she's lied about being a teacher to get our teacher appreciation discount, thrown tantrums that she "thought the online price was the store price" and has been holding entire boxes hostage for days. These limited time series for toys means their market value goes up once they're discontinued, so she pretty much ransacked the toy departments across Toronto and now Ottawa so she can buy low and then rip off impressionable children.

I work at Amazon and she can loving have everyone of those in the warehouse if it was up to me. I hate those little L.O.L. balls and tubes as they just roll out of the chutes I pack from. I swear it has been a small miracle that no one's stepped on one and cracked their head, or some other part of them.

Elmnt80 posted:

I get inventory and tax return season, oh god my cooling/ac system failed season, the snowbirds have returned season and then help my heater don't work because I bypassed it season. And all of this must be fixed by tomorrow because I have to be at work but I did 0 planning so its your fault its not in stock.

Jan -> Dec at Amazon:
Second/Gift Card Christmas, spring slump, Mother's Day, Prime Day(s) (because Amazon has to have an actual 'Christmas in July'), back to school, ALL THE CANDY, "learn how many 'The Pilgrims/Santa Clause are farting' coloring books there are" season, PEAK, then the week between the 25th and the 31st where everyone's using the last of their time off and the buildings are hollow shells.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Roth posted:

I always think of this one woman who kept insisting that it should be possible because it's 2019.

I remember when I worked at a local pizza delivery shop just out of highschool in 2005. Some guy got pissed I needed to see his drivers license to accept a check from him and started shouting that he ordered from Conan's all the time and that I could totally look him up in the store's computer system.

I was too much of a scared, socially awkward dork to explain to him that our "computer system" was basically diner/restaurant notepads with carbon paper duplicates because this was basically a little mom-and-pop store not PIzza Hut. I spent what few points of courage I had at that time on making the buff guy shouting at me get his drivers license out of his truck to show it to me before he got his pizza.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



areyoucontagious posted:

What monster pays a delivery driver with a check???

There was a reason our policy was "Driver has to see your DL, and your DL # has to be written on the check", it was as much to generate enough of a headache to keep them from doing it again as it was to prevent fraud.

Either way it wasn't long after that the guy who owned the shop said "gently caress this, we're not taking checks anymore. It's the 21st century."

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



silvergoose posted:

Not that I've been to one in years, but I'm sure never going to a Sonic ever again, wow

Pretty much how I feel too. :stonk:

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Welp saw the dumbest loving item I've seen in a while at Amazon today. Amazon sells just about everything so we see some real stupid stuff at the FC, most of it health and pseudo-science stuff (Grounding pads! You sit on them and they...ground you! Sucking away the negative ions and leaving only the positive ones behind!) but every now and then you see and order go "whoever made this is a dumbass...a rich loving dumbass making money from people dumber than them."

Chambongs. The champagne flute version of a beer bong. It's a normal (well maybe a bit above average, I couldn't see into the box) sized wine flute only the bottom bends away. So it's a wine glass you have to hold funny to fill up, can't put down (as if someone getting one of these would have alcohol in it long enough to put down) and then you tip it/your head back to drink your alcohol all fast-like so you can't even enjoy the taste if that's your thing. Oh and the best part? The slogan on the box was, I poo poo you not, "Because they're awesome!" completely non-ironically.

They come in "Mini" sized too. So you can have even less to chug down. I was never the part of a crowd that would do such a thing but isn't the point of a beer bong to chug until you've downed a night's worth of alcohol in only a few seconds? You can just use the wine bottle itself for that.

Upon seeing the box of Minis I was packing the guy to my left asks me "What are those for? The kids?" To which I reply "Nah, the minis are for the guy so he can bide his time while his girl using the normal ones drinks herself under the table....gently caress I just made a date rape joke, I'm sorry." I was feeling horrible until the little old lady to my right finished it off in style "Nah, it's okay. She's passed out and didn't hear you say it, so it never happened."

Amazon Associates: we're bitter people and while we don't know who you are but we see what you order and we judge you. The bitterness and judging goes double for night shift. I feel that we almost get to know you better than the people at the checkout counter: the cashier's not gonna remember your face in five minutes anyways so we're on even ground there, but you're too ashamed to buy what you really want from Wal-Mart.

Also packed tonight:
-Several cases of heavy rear end Soylent and other "health" drinks just begging for me to sprain my wrist trying to fit them into the box.
-A box with a penis pump, "extra large" replacement tubes and a bunch of accessories for the brand new iPhone and smart watch the guy (I assume it's a guy) bought.
-A case of individually wrapped sticks of firewood for a fireplace. For all I knew they were hand crafted, artisanal sticks of firewood.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Preechr posted:

For some reason this one raises the most questions.

Yeah, people straight up order firewood off of Amazon. It comes in a box of individually wrapped sticks promising they'll burn for 2 hours. Honestly they're likely compressed sawdust from a sawmill somewhere trying to make a buck off of its trash. As someone who grew up in a house with a fireplace the idea of buying firewood online boggles my mind. My parents always just kept an eye out and grabbed chunks out of any tree someone in the neighborhood cut down and saved them for later.

Part of me wonders how many people buy a case before they realize their fireplace is fake anyways. The number has to be greater than zero.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



And that's why I'd rather deal with working in the pits of Amazon instead of dealing with customers. Customers suck. I had so many lovely customers when I handed out free food samples. It's a Free. Food. Sample. You take one, smile and nod as I say where you can buy more. Be polite to me and I'll let you take two or three extras if you like it so I can go home early! :argh: How is this so hard, I'll get paid the same if I'm here for 2 hours or my full aloted 6 because my supervisors bitched at me for putting in anything besides 360 minutes on the timesheet so yes be nice, I'll give you an entire ice cream bar instead of little cut up pieces!

Anyways, more Amazon bitching. last week we had a belt on the AFE item sorter break (the thing that sorts the items so we can build the boxes). Because of this and other issues we're behind on shipments...but we're getting better! Our backlog value went down from .5 to .32 the previous shift (no don't ask me how that works, it's just numbers they throw at us. But we asked so they at least throw us vague numbers to give us SOME reference). Should drop it down to like .1-ish tonight, right?

A belt on the ship sorter broke about an hour into shift and had to be repaired. :suicide: This is the machine that sorts all the non-envelope shipments and sends them to the trucks to be loaded, which means no one's shipping anything at all in this building. Management tried to keep us packing for a while before throwing up their hands and having us basically hand carry all of our finished shipments to the label printing machine and palletizing them and then fully restock our areas as best we can before going to break 2 hours early. Annoying but makes sense: HR would rather we be on our unpaid break if there's nothing for us to do rather than paying us to sit on our rear end all night.

Gah they're gonna be just as crazy about trying to get us to play catch-up when I go back in tonight after that. And to think they just shut down the facility for one day a few weeks ago for extra maintenance. The things we go through just to ship people their essential oils, dildos, and boxes of firewood!

Just...one more shift and then it's my weekend and back half crews can deal with that nonsense for 3 days.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Since I'm the Amazon guy...

Official policy is to use your paid/unpaid time off (and maybe a dollop of vacation if you know you're still gonna be sick in a few days) because we can spend it in chunks down to an hour (or down to minutes with paid time). The company knows the job is rough and would really like you to be at home and not making more people sick. For the actual workload the system has a goal for each facility/shift to hit but it's reasonably fluid and not actually "assigned" until managers get their headcount.

Reality: half the workers spend their time off freely so they're down to the wire where if they take any more time off they'll get fired. So they show up sick anyways at least for a half day to better stretch out what time they have left. Spreading their germs, and occasionally working until they're sent down to AMCARE which goes "No, go home, you're infectious! We'll talk to HR and get you some extra time off."

A few months ago we had someone who picked up something wrong and fractured their arm but didn't know it, thinking it was a sprain. But they'd used up all their time off until their next drop and tried to work through it. As you might imagine, the Safety team was incredibly "happy" when the pain got bad enough he reported his injury, as was HR when they were told the guy had to be put on leave because he had a broken arm.

Then again if this sounds like magical unicorn fantasy land, it's my workplace is overstaffed. Which from the stories is pretty much the opposite of what everyone else's experience in this thread.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Am I allowed to say gently caress Dayshift?

Because gently caress Dayshift. Not just ours, but in general.

Half the reason Night Shift is so bitter is because we're cleaning up after your sorry asses. Okay, maybe a quarter of the reason. If we were socially well adjusted and not bitter assholes we wouldn't be on Nights in the first place, even if they do pay us $0.60/hour more.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



bonus hole boy posted:

Shifts leaving a bunch of garbage for the next shift to do really isn't unique to days or nights, it's entirely down to lovely staffing (due to lovely corporate policies). If you want to be mad at someone be mad at the group actually causing the problem, not the convenient scapegoat.

While I agree with you in most cases this has been an ongoing on-and-off-again issue that magically disappears when we complain loud enough then comes back a month later. Some of it is legitimately Management's fault for thinking that we could go without support staff for a while, but ultimately Day Shift has about twice the workers we have.

There is no reason that Night Shift should clock in and find that the item sorter is in Anti Gridlock Mode (i.e. it won't start because it's overfull and has nowhere to put new items), down 200 sorting trays from where it should be (so it won't sort items as fast), meanwhile every pack station is missing half of its box suite and the box storage areas are trash filled mine-fields littered in plastic strap tripping hazards.

And as Eric the Mauve said we're basically expected to get out what they don't because a) we're the night shift and b) we're consistently one of the better pack shifts in the entire US Amazon network. Having to take an extra 30-60 minutes on some nights to hit our stride shipping everyone their dildos and essential oils tends to grate. Especially when management is telling us about the backlog (because equipment keeps breaking).

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



bonus hole boy posted:

I guess I'm still not seeing where any of these issues (bullshit as they are) are caused by the crew itself, and not by policies implemented on them? Like the fact that you want to generalize it to 'gently caress day crew everywhere' should be a giant red flag that the problems are structural and blame should fall on the people who provide that faulty structure.

Being mad about a lovely crew just seems like being mad at a symptom, which I guess if you just want to make yourself feel better is fine, but it's not really going to accomplish much.

Let me put it this way.

gently caress Dayshift, especially Dayshift's Management. Every department has (at least) one manager specifically for each shift. It's their job to run their area. Also gently caress upper management. Side effect of Bezos declaring "$15 company minimum wage" has been that the building management has done everything they can to cut our support staff, running on the bare minimum that aren't doing the main job of that department (unloading/loading trucks, putting items in/taking them out of storage, packing boxes, etc.) Was sent to single item packing where they had a single woman running not just Problem Solve (missing/damaged items, bad barcodes, etc.) but both SLAM lines (the machines that spit out and automatically place the shipping labels on a box)... And Single's Dayshift left her with a giant pile of unsorted, unsolved Problem Solve work and kickouts at both SLAM machines for her to fix.

Oh yeah, also the contractors didn't see a penny from that $15 company minimum wage. I'm pretty sure Amazon Business Maintenance's only customer is Amazon, but they're still being paid janitor wages.

Edit: I know I bitch a lot but...meh, most of the time I really do like the place and my co-workers. Just gotta vent somewhere. I'd be facing just as bad poo poo if not worse elsewhere, for less money/benefits.

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Mar 12, 2019

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



bonus hole boy posted:

I really do get it, and for what it's worth I apologize for jumping in and dumping my hot take when venting is all you were looking to do. This thread really should be for venting as much as anything else imo, and half the reason I lurk it is to know that other people deal with the same dumb poo poo I do (and can see it for just how dumb it is).

Fair enough. And sorry for coming off angry at your response. It took me a while to realize/remember that not every shift has their own dedicated managers at other places. It's still a shitshow though. One of our water spiders (anyone who does a non-problem-solve indirect roll is a "water spider", no don't ask me where the name came from, I don't know. Pack Spiders are basically box suppliers) came back from vacation Monday and immediately strained his wrist...and didn't admit it until todaynight so he got to basically spend an hour in the AMCARE office and go back to packing. Did get to have a moment of levity with him:

My co-worker tonight at work: "Ew!"
Me: "What, it's just Shibari lube, you must have packed 1,000 bottles of that by now."
Co-worker: "No, this!" holds up a "Sonic Prostate massager"
Me: "What, have you never watched Dr. Who? That's a Sonic Screwdriver!"

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Management told me to clean my station before I left at the end of shift.

So I removed myself. :v:

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



The funniest part is that it's their greed that gets them every time. Of course the store is gonna keep a sharp eye on its most profitable products.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Ugh the stupid is strong at Amazon tonight.

It's Wednesday, the last shift of our week (Sunday-Weds). I've told y'all how at Amazon we get time off hours we spend freely. Some people are a little bit more loose than others (I'm not sure how some people survive with only 4-5 hours in the time-off bank, I'd have a heart attack worrying about getting sick/hurt) but the last day of the week is the day people are obviously most likely going to spend their time.

Dayshift fell behind big time. Since Dayshift, whatever their other faults, has the building GM breathing down their neck I suspect it was equipment failure. Either way we come in and everything is clean for once (again, I suspect equipment failure as the managers would have everyone clean up and restock so the workers aren't sitting around while being paid) but every wall is full of shipments. Start work at 6:30, miss our 8:00 deadline, the 10:00 deadline, barely miss the midnight one because someone didn't seal a box correctly and it exploded on the ship sorter, Shipdock was not amused. During all the Senior Ops for all of Outbound comes up to our PA (Process(ed) Associate, basically assistant manager. Not to be confused with an AM, or Area Manager) and asks her "What did you do!?"

The PA's job is, in short, to say "I'm Sorry" and fix the problem and do the work of the AM above them. Worker asks why their station is broken, PA says "I'm Sorry" and tries to fix it (or call IT). Boss says "Why is the machine that I'm responsible for breaking?" PA says "I'm Sorry" and fixes it. This PA has worked at Amazon pretty much twice as long anyone else and Amazon wrung the Sorries out of her a long time ago. Instead this tiny little blonde cheerleader looking girl fixes a manager 2 levels above her with a stare that could kill and goes "Excuse me?"

"You sent out VTO didn't you!"

"Um...no?"

"Then where is everybody?"

"It's Wednesday. They're using their own time."

Awkward pause as it sinks in. "...Oh."


Meanwhile, our department has two AMs. One's off this week leaving the new woman who's still got that New Manager Smell (confusion and terror). For the most part she's ignorable. They rotate and we get a new one every 3-4 months it seems so I let most of their nonsense roll off my back. Except she's got this bad habit of micromanaging everyone in the last 10 minutes to try to balance the load for day shift, making sure one area isn't overloaded while another is empty of work. That wouldn't be a problem if she started doing that 4:30 AM. At 4:57 AM telling someone to log out of their current station, walk to a station a minute away, wait for the new station to take up to another minute to populate their pack list...they're just gonna look at her like she's crazy because they'll have time to pack at most 2 shipments before quitting time at 5 AM. The woman does not get that we can't just teleport instantly between positions.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Yawgmoth posted:

new thread title

To be honest I prefer it to the other New Manager Smell of "Had had an entire library of management books shoved up his rear end." During Peak we had a seasonal AM (promoted from PA with payraise for 3-4 months) that came from dayshift. I swear he went through every insipid "teambuilding" management activity short of trying to sing Kumbaya over the speakers before we finally broke him.

New lady at least takes safety concerns seriously. Other AMs will go "Yeah I'll call Safety and have them look at it." and go back to ignoring you unless you actually need to be escorted to our on-site medical team. I told the new lady about a break in the ergo-mat we work on I'd nearly tripped on (there was a taped-over 1-inch gap where the old tape and broken and I'd basically shoved my toe under the mat without noticing) she immediately taped it shut then basically dragged a member of the Safety team over by their ear to go "This needs to be fixed. This fresh tape is gonna last a week at most"

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Oh yeah, she has the potential to end up well. One of my co-workers hates her and I don't know why, the AMs here aren't worth paying attention to 90% of the time, let alone the energy to get mad about them. The only one that matters is J.P. anyways who goes out of his way to look after everyone in Outbound, not just the department he's been told to manage. In return everyone goes out of their way to be awesome for him.

...None of us know where he gets his energy, we're fairly sure it's not from cocaine.

But yeah, much prefer her to the rear end in a top hat we had this time last year. He ended up in Shipdock was one of the trio of managers who pissed off the dock workers enough that they walked off a while back. New Lady is just clueless but earnest.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Eric the Mauve posted:

From management’s perspective it’s a rational and usually correct bet that they’ll milk years’ worth of mercilessly overworking the underling who has a pathological need to care before they finally leave. Penta, you’ll notice, is still there.

The soft collusion that characterizes the entire retail sector is key. There’s a reason all retail workers, even supervisors, even superstar workers who clearly are worth several times what they’re paid, can’t get anywhere near a living wage anywhere in the industry. A person in Penta’s position isn’t going to find a meaningfully different situation anywhere else. The only rational options, besides leaving retail altogether, are

Accept that you’re going to be perpetually overworked and utterly unappreciated, still dreaming that one day it will all be worthwhile, until it utterly destroys your mental and eventually physical health (this is where Penta still is)

or

Adopt a protective layer of snarky cynicism protecting your sanity as you get on with it (this is where you and the majority of us appear to be)

or

Reprogram yourself to not give any more of a poo poo about your employer than they give about you—to wit, zero-point-zero—and coast along doing almost nothing, and not showing up when you don’t feel like it, just like most of your co-workers do. Unless you decide to sell your soul to become a store manager (and Faust got a better deal than that) this is the correct thing to do, but very painful difficult if your brain is hard wired to take pride in doing your job well :smith:

After three years working for Crossmark as a contractor handing out free food samples in Walmarts in West Texas I chose option 4: Do everything in my power to avoid a customer facing job again. Management is and will always be poo poo, that's a universal constant especially in this day and age, but deep in the bowels of Amazon I never have to meet a customer, just pack their combination vibrators and essential oil diffusers. And before that as a kitchen worker I interacted with a customer maybe once or twice a month.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



PFFT! Nah, we do a great job shipping them. Packing? We have a rate to hit and putting dunnage (the sealed air cushions) in a box takes time so a box better be worth it to get dunnage. (i.e. it's something visibly fragile or it's heavy and if it shifts around it will likely break someone's wrist). The real secret is that 95% of the stuff has its own packaging protecting it...and that while everyone takes it for granted corrugated cardboard is like some perfect space-age material for shipping. Light weight, strong, and basically acts as padding, and cheap as gently caress since it's usually made out of recycled material.

Just do yourself a solid and don't order reams of paper through Amazon: most paper mills just pack them in another sheet of paper because why not they're already a paper mill. By the time they get to me as a packer, half of them are exploding out of that tiny sheet of paper they were wrapped in even before I put them in a box.

Also don't order floor tiling (seriously, wtf people!? Could you not go through Home Depot or Lowes?) because that poo poo is HEAVY.

But yeah, never loses that cynicism if you ever get out. That is the one worthwhile thing that Retail gives you.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Revalis Enai posted:

Because I'm mentally weak, I'm still hoping to stick around when I know I should find a way out of this place. I was initially hired as IT and office work and all was fine. Now that I'm a asst manager(not by choice) as well as managing cashiers(not by choice), It's difficult for me to take days off if I needed, but I have to work if a cashier decides to call in. I do all the stuff I do not because it's for the employer, but if I don't then others who work with me gets a harder time. As much as I hate all the higher ups I'm cool with most of the people on the floor and I try not to make their jobs harder.

I don't know what IT job I can transfer to from doing small shop IT, but hopefully I can get the hell out of retail for as long as I can.

Seriously, I suggest you make like this guy:


You care, which is great...for everything besides work. I was there. I was you once. I busted my loving rear end for a health food startup called Snap Kitchen making pre-made health food units for people until they decided to move the kitchen from Austin to Dallas. Now I understand why they did that: they were gonna get twice the square footage for their USDA kitchen at half the price of the one they were about to build in Austin, and going full USDA let them sell their food in stores they didn't own. I worked my rear end off and asked for a promotion or at least a raise since I already did 75% of the work of a kitchen manager being the most senior person on nights and therefore the de-facto night manager. They offered to graciously let me keep my old rate of $11/hour and a flat $1,000 moving bonus I'd have to pay back if I quit/got fired within 6 months with a smile and "helpful" tips on applying for federal income assistance. All with a big grin on their face because I should be grateful for this opportunity, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, what's that? Amazon is hiring at $12/hour? With another $0.50/hour for night shift? AND they offer solid health insurance AND state my schedule very clearly in advance so I don't have my manager calling me on every day off to try to get me to work 6, even 7 days a week? Yeah I'm really sorry you can't pay me up here *places hand up by head* while you're paying the people I'm training, who are temps from a temp agency, down here *places hand by waist*. So sorry Amazon then gave me a raise to $15.60 within a year too When Lord Of Commerce Bezos Doth Declare that he is getting bad press and the company minimum wage should be increased.

Yeah I know you want to care. I know you want to make this work. In a just world that would be the right thing to do. In reality, your upstairs management is just using and abusing you for their profit. Learn when to shut down those emotions and walk out.


Pentaghastly posted:

I've seen other 24 year olds in the south and let me tell you it feels good to still be able to slav-squat and then stand up without using my hands. Only positive thing about my job is it's kept me relatively active and graceful. I've lost and kept off 20lbs since I started here and haven't been this lean since high school.

Meanwhile other coworkers my age have gained weight at this job. Can't imagine why.

gently caress yeah fellow Squatty Buddy! The moment you realize you've gone from :btroll: to swole is a good one. Yeah I'm still a big chunky guy which makes it funnier when people see me casually Slav-squat. Also the amusement I get when people ask me if I need a seat and I'm like "nah, I'm fine" after working standing jobs for 5+ years.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



At the kitchen we worked at we didn't have employee theft, we had "quality control sampling." Everyone did it. The lady coming in to make gluten free brownies at 4AM would "sample" half a pound of the potatoes I'd cooked the previous night and some eggs to make herself a hashbrown quesadilla. The manager would "sample" half a tray of the roast brussel sprouts or brocollini I made because she's a vegetarian and the tray is right there in front of her in the walk in she has to know if they're good.

In return I'd sample gorge myself on the Almond Butter and Maple pancakes right as they come off the flat top because I had to check the cook's work they were delicious even after sitting on the shelf for 3-4 days but they were culinary cocaine when they were still hot and hadn't been chilled for packing yet. Also I regularly dipped in the dark-chocolate-and-roast-pecan mix we used to garnish the vegan yogurt* cups we made but so did everyone else.

*Mix about 1 cup of coconut/soy/almond milk (your choice really) with 2 ounces of chia seeds, let it sit for an hour or two (or overnight) in the fridge and you get basically tapioca pudding. Flavorless, but can be used as a delivery vessel for anything from fruit to nuts to just Hershey's chocolate syrup, keeps for about a week.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



gently caress yeah, 20 hours of unpaid time dropped at midnight. With my other 20 still saved up, yeah I'm leaving three hours early for my mental health or else I'm gonna stroke out or sneak up behind an Ops manager like Number 47 and use a box strap to garrote the fucker. Or maybe both.

In Amazon's never ending drive to up productivity Ops is loving with our pack stations. Previously they added a keypad on the side of the monitors which was a bit clunky at first but we didn't mind because it let us log in or deal with most problem cases with a few clicks instead of awkwardly flailing with the mouse. We could still use the mouse if we wanted to. Now they took away the mouse and put the little computer on the far side of the station that we can't reach.

Without the mouse we're hosed if we bump the keypad and make a data entry field lose focus. Or the scanner reads the barcode all wonky and sends us to a menu where the back button doesn't work (usually reading a "P" and then sending us to the problem solve menu). Or if we have to upsize a box since there's no "wrong sized box" button on our quick keypads (yet, they're in the mail supposedly). And if the computer loses connection to the network and freezes as we try to declare a box finished we have to walk all the way around to reboot it instead of just reaching up above our stations.

But no, it should increase our rate somehow.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Funktastic posted:

What do you guys recommend for work shoes that don't break the bank? I've been wearing flat shoes for a while and it's really starting to catch up with me now.

When I worked in the kitchen, Sketchers had some super cheap kitchen shoes. They've got non-slip treads that just cling to the ground like you're wearing magnetic boots if the ground is slightly damp. They're made to be worn out and replaced every 3-4 months as they just start falling apart.


Rainbow Knight posted:

Hold on

They want you to increase productivity while also loving with your routine and your tools?!

:monocle:

Really though we should just kick Amazon out of the country.

Welcome to Amazon! We were crushing our old rate so they increased it. Not much, like 10 items in an hour (note that's 10 items, not 10 boxes). But at the same time they're doing this whole setup where they are loving with the layout of our entire station and I want to stab someone. Management is apparently frustrated that our station doesn't have room for our biggest boxes so they're set up every 4 stations. We have to go over there, grab a box, walk back to our station to build it and set poo poo in it. Takes time right? Only the thing is anything that goes in that box is likely gonna be slow anyways because it's heavy, big and bulky or just 1,001 small tiny items we have to count out.

So they're experimenting with moving our less-big-but-still-big boxes from below our workstation up top, which leaves less room for the other boxes but lets us put the giant S5 boxes down low. The gaps are already set up to be the perfect size that someone can just grab a stack of 20 boxes, shove it home, cut the strap and be done with it. Making them smaller means more work for the water-spider reloading everyone as he fiddles to get the right size for the space and has to visit more often.

And during all this they are doing the "upgrade" which takes away the computer mouse to deal with problems that arise. Just simple poo poo like "I bumped the wrong button and now the entry field has lost focus".

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



So today was actually fun. Started out still angry over dealing with the bullshit new stations and called my manager out during the start of work Stand-up (announcements and stretches). He gets to the Standard Work item of the day, talking about putting dunnage (what we call our sealed air pillows we use as padding/filler in boxes) and how we should have time to put it into the boxes.

"No we don't. Not at the rates you're setting and not with the way you're changing our stations on us."

His boss, the Ops manager in charge of Outbound Nights is standing right there so he has to respond to this. He has us all find a partner, stare at them ("make it as awkward as possible") and count to 30 and imagine us packing a box as he counts.

"Now raise your hand if that's enough time to pack your box and put dunnage in it?"

Dead air and annoyed glares from the shift, the only raised hands are managers sticking up for each other. OB Manager fixes the AM with a look that screams "Underling, you WILL fix this." before everything slips back onto the normal routine. OB Manager is here to congratulate us on nearly cleaning up Day's mess yesterday, but to tell us Day hosed up again today and under-shipped by about 25K units. It's 18:40, we have about 2.5K due at 20:00 and another 21K due at 22:00. poo poo's real and we don't have time for drama.

About 40 minutes later the AM comes up and asks me what I mean and I start explaining to him: yeah I can do 2 boxes a minute if they're small. If I'm feeling good. If nothing out of 1,001 things don't go wrong. Etc. I go onto about the errors and issues I had with the new stations the previous night. I'm told that I'm a conversational bulldozer when I'm like this and he's hardly getting a word in as I'm giving him concrete example after concrete example of poo poo that's hosed. I keep him there for a good 30 minutes explaining how poo poo actually works here in the real world, not the magical managerial la-la land he lives in.

By first break he's suddenly running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to fix the things I've declared. He gets the head of Night IT up to have me talk to him about the issues I'm having with the altered stations and in return I get the down low. There's a mix of some higher level management wanting to make "the perfect station" with box layout...and Safety determining that the dunnage cage sitting 6 feet off the ground is a safety hazard in case it falls. So Senior Ops's first idea was just lower the cage and IT was left scrambling going "We have nowhere to put the computers now!" which lead to the current mess. Senior management basically stopped Safety and told them to cool their jets while they wait for new equipment to come in and to give time for everyone to figure out a plan instead of the current "slap poo poo together in a panic and hope it works".

In the end I left the manager I called out with three pieces of advice:
1) Actually show us you're listening. After nearly a year of being ignored since the old GM transferred out, those of us that work in the trenches are convinced that "We'll Look Into It" is management speak for "gently caress off, we don't care." If you want the respect we used to give your red vest, you need to work on changing that image and it's gonna be a long road now after so many months of neglect.
2) I'm glad you finally made the executive decision to give us the indirect support we need a couple weeks ago. However we have been complaining about our indirect staff numbers being cut since November when the change was made. Yes you weren't the manager here until relatively recently but you had more than enough time to fix this yourself if you'd listened to us before it got to the point that Safety had to step in because one of the Water Spiders hurt himself badly enough to be put on reduced hours with Worker's Comp.
3) I'm also glad you finally came down to explain what is happening and listen to my complaints. Again, next time try paying attention and I won't have to call you out and have you humiliate yourself in front of your boss.

I think I'm going to try to start calling managers on their poo poo more often. Throwing a stick in the spokes if their metaphrorical bike wheel is too much fun and it actually gets poo poo done.

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Apr 2, 2019

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Rainbow Knight posted:

Yeah I found out too late that as soon as you know how to do something, people will always and only come to you to do it.

Or they'll just heap it onto the stuff that "Oh So-and-So knows, I don't need to hire someone to do that." when you're already working 50-60 hours/week at the kitchen. It's how I ended up basically working 3 jobs at once.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



I would like to re-iterate once again my hatred for Dayshift. Every single day our backlog grew because of them this week.

Sunday: Dayshift under-shipped by 10K on top of our usual 100-110K units.
Monday: "Congratulations, you got 6K of the backlog out but Dayshift fell behind again" and we have about 20K from them. Stowers from RSP (Robotic Storage Pen) are called over to help us.
Tuesday: 25K, RPS's own Dayshift screwed them so they can't laborshare over and instead I get laborshared to help them put fresh inventory into storage (which I don't mind, being laborshared is kinda cool to do something new for a few hours)
Wednesday: 30K. poo poo has gotten so dire that not only did we get RSP laborshare back but Back-Half Nights were offered VET (Voluntary Extra Time) if they want to come in and get some overtime pay.

Apparently something (i.e. someONE) on Days is screwing up and giving them a constant, level workload throughout the shift which simply doesn't work. You want it heavy at the start then lower as people leave. Instead it's being kept at a constant level, so the first half of the shift outbound Days ends up work starved, encouraging people to head home and then the second half they end up increasingly overwhelmed as they have less workers.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Funktastic posted:

My parents/friend's parents dropped us off at movies/restaurants/the mall all the time from the time I was like 11 and this was in like 2005 in a normal suburban town. I don't think it's that strange. Some of my friends had cell phones by then so we always had someone who could call if we needed help.

In retail relevant news, a customer peed on a chair yesterday. The customer who told me was shocked when I told her we threw it out.

A lot of customers just don't get that human blood and waste are major health issues and your options are "call for and pay for the decontamination team" or "throw that poo poo out". This goes quadruple for food service. One of my friends used to work at the Chik-Fil-A in the Lubbock shopping mall's food court. They had something like 8 registers that would be fully manned during lunch rush and do 2/3 of the food court's business six days a week. One day he came over to play video games after someone apparently took a dump on one of their table and they had to shut down the seating area of the Chick-Fil-A and push everyone out into general seating until decontamination was done. His ranting at customers was legendary that night because no one seemed to understand "Someone's kid shat on the table. We have to clean it and the surrounding areas for health reasons."

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Week begins and Dayshift is at it again, 10K undership. But we're chewing through it and our work fast enough it's no big deal.

I mean if management wants to keep offering back half nights voluntary overtime to fix this, when they make nearly $27/hour when overtime hits, it's not my problem.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Well Days actually kinda-sorta got their poo poo together for a single shift and other than an absolute scramble at the start to clear the early due-times we actually had a reasonable load tonight. Well other than Stackie Chan, the robot that stacks Amazon Yellow Totes for trans-ship, going down. When the Trans-ship robot goes down the palletizing has to be done by hand which is slow so the Trans-ship line starts backing up until it hits the tote router and then everything shuts down because the tote router is full of Yellow Totes it can't offload to the pack area.

For reference: Trans-shipment is sending items from one facility to another, balancing out inventory and such.

Normally this isn't a problem outside of Peak, just before Prime Day and...well as I said when the robot breaks (which thankfully it doesn't do often). But it is a problem that does happen so the engineers designing the facility built in a pressure relief valve of sorts. There's an area near the packers where excess totes can be taken off to clear the line enough the tote router can start working again and then be put back on when the line starts clearing up. I did this often during peak so I get chosen as the sacrifice for this. I don't mind: no rate to hit, I get to relax and chill.

Only at some point a section of track got all hosed up. One of the electric eyes isn't properly signalling a full track ahead so the U-turn in the track is pushing totes for 5-10 seconds longer than it should, smashing them together and making them popcorn everywhere. Oh and the U-turn sections of conveyor belt are pushing faster/harder than usual. Way harder. Normally I could hold these lines back with a couple fingers. I try to pull a tote back to clear a jam only for the damned line to slide my feet a good 2-3 inches across the floor. As you might guess I'm built like the average Goon so that's a lot of force to be suddenly transferred through my arm. There's nothing like pulling your shoulder to become intimately aware with how many muscle groups are connected to your shoulder blade. :qq:

On the plus side, now that there's a recorded safety incident, Safety is gonna be breathing down the maintenance crew's necks to fix that section of track.

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Yeah, I see people with those "Jam-clear trained" tags all the time but have never been offered a Jam Clear class at any time. The FC I work at is incredibly lax about that poo poo, especially as of late. As long as we don't reach over the grates at the corner (hint: we do this all the time) or stick our hands in the machinery (we're generally smart enough to not do this) no one loving cares here.

And since it was only a (relatively) minor strain that will heal in a few days, all AMCARE is willing to do is keep doing checkups and giving me ibuprofen and biofreeze. Still gotta go back and pack. Still gotta hit loving rate (which is a bullshit number they lie about to make us go faster to get their bonuses. I stopped caring months ago and they haven't written me up yet). I'd be angrier at AMCARE if honestly most of the pain wasn't already receding after a couple of days.

And yeah, we're well aware of how Maintenance never responds to voice calls more advanced than "The tote sorter is jammed again" and has to be goaded into action with tickets. I think that's an Amazon standard.

Alkydere fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Apr 10, 2019

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



Pentaghastly posted:

Is it rude to say “What’s up?” in response to someone greeting you casually? Just wondering. My manager came in the back to say hello and apparently it was impolite for me to say that :rolleyes:

Edit: is that just like an old person thing?

Yeah that sounds like an old person thing to me.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Alkydere
Jun 7, 2010
Capitol: A building or complex of buildings in which any legislature meets.
Capital: A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it.



NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

I'd complain about how it's cool and good that my reward for getting my department in order is getting a day cut from next week's schedule, but I know that isn't the reason, 'cause they'll cut a day even when I'm drowning in backstock.

But it is fun never knowing how many days you'll be scheduled, week to week. It's fun when you have a couple long weeks back to back and start making kinda-sorta OK money, maybe spend a little on some nice coffee or whatever, then, blammo. Four day week. You didn't need that fifty dollars, did you?

And then they're surprised when you don't want to work that fifth day when, actually, it turns out they need you to do something

Yeah, loving love that. Managers just assume that they can call you in or that you totally want to work 6 days a week and get all confused when you say no. "B-but you're already here six days a week." Yeah because I allow you fuckers one call in, ONE a week and you always use it.

My favorite was a dipshit boss who had an obsession for cleaning the kitchen. Which is good in general: kitchens should be cleaned. He never figured out you need to shut down at least half of the kitchen to use the power sprayer he got and loved so much and pouted that we never used it. One week he tried to take a day off from everyone who had two on the schedule to have a "cleaning" shift and was absolutely confused when everyone suddenly* wanted to strangle him and told him no. Yes Nati and Leti come in at 4 AM to start cooking things the 5 days they work. No they're not gonna take one of the two days they have with their family, their kids to come in and spray down a kitchen that's in motion. And if you want me to come in at 9 AM when the kitchen is at it's busiest the only safe place I can use that sprayer is by shoving it up your rear end!

*Actually we already hated him, it just pushed us over the edge to showing it to his face. He was an incompetent, back stabbing shithead we couldn't get fired because he was friends with upper management. Dude tried to make us serve up over 100 pounds of undercooked chicken and still didn't get fired. When the health food startup decided to move to a USDA kitchen in another town and not pay any of us to move, every single person on the chopping block laughed that he was getting laid off too.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply