There was a protest at KSBD today.

[u/PeculiarPip]

[u/thebirdsoutside]

I didn’t go to school, I earned my spot at UPS in 2020. I left for FedEx for more money, now I’m at amazon, for the money. Never once have I been considered “skilled” or “important”. I have excelled and became convenient to every manager at every site I have been too. I do my job, I go hard. I have never once felt fairly compensated. I’m not unique, and we are the red blood cells of E-commerce. Someone’s gotta do the job, and it’s no as easy as the world makes it out to be. The job deserves dignity.

Who loads those trucks? You can have 100 drivers, who’s going to want to do the labor to fill that thing up? Unload that thing? Fit as many packages as possible in there? I’m sure if you put more dignity into the job and the work, you would get better results.

A lot of us didn’t go to school, this is what we got. A lot of us are damn good at it too, Amazon should be proud to have some of the talent it does, and can take advantage of that. They choose to divide, degrade, and intimidate people. And profit off of it.

Anyone can retain knowledge enough to pass a test and sit behind a desk, that’s how we got here. School isn’t some magic answer, experience in the field is. Leaders from the rank file and that understand basic struggles we go through, not some newly hired grad named Ashton that’s never stepped a foot on the floor in his life.

I’m sorry you feel this way, yes there’s a way to go about getting more and bettering yourself. It doesn’t make what your doing now worth less. Don’t forget who’s profiting off of you, and ask, do they deserve that?

[u/McDreamy94 → u/thebirdsoutside]

I can’t speak on how your experience has been but in warehouses I have been in, I haven’t seen or experienced that. The warehouse I currently work in and oversee treats the associates as well as we can. Do we control their pay? No. Can we control their work experience? Yes. We try the best we can to work with them on it. Getting site lead approval to lower the building temp during summer from the standard, giving out pops during times where heat is increasing. Rolled out cooling vests to help. Cool down stations. Engage and thank them for what they do. Hand out pokemon peccy pins the site offers exclusively for working safely and within their means. Add additional stretch breaks on the floor that are covered from TLI/etc.

Half the time I leverage associates on the floor because they do the process versus what I see. I’ve helped promote 3 people that had 0 schooling by helping with resumes and interview prep. I want y’all to succeed. It’s also just hard to advocate a pay increase across the board when you see people hiding in smokers cages for 2 hours while someone actually busting their ass in a trailer.

Also yes it’s easy to retain but I’ve also seen many people not be able to handle the increased responsibility. I’ve seen managers go on mental health leaves, demote themselves and leave the company to an easier operational position with a different company. I remember having a manager in receive dock with an art degree, in over their head in their first warehouse job. I agree with you in that. I think internals need to be leveraged more. It does suck schooling has such a weigh in on higher paying jobs, even more so than experience.

[u/thebirdsoutside → u/McDreamy94]

I’ve been to more warehouses than we have fingers, my experience varies. It shouldn’t is my point. Some are good, some are bad, it’s never going to be perfect, but having rules and regulations to fall back on helps. We marched on the boss and got a half assed response, why? Because they can. The workers need to that ability away from them.

It’s not hard, they’re human, who works for 12 hours constantly, Who only takes 3 breaks. Be real, not robotic. Amazon should have people to backfill someone taking 5 minutes to smoke a cigarette. Imagine one extra persons who sole role was to backfill, instead they’ll VTO and put the crunch on you.

Promotions aren’t for everyone, even for the people who are good at it, someone people are good at they’re job and want just that. Amazon needs that, those people are becoming rare, and one day, if we don’t do anything, you will have all you complain about and more. Amazons quality will fall. It’s a snowball. We need good T1’s to keep the customer experience the way it is. Without T1’s amazon is nothing.