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BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness"
Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that an investigation into a UK-based Amazon facility has uncovered conditions that experts believe foster mental illness. At the root of the problem seems to be unreasonable performance expectations combined with a fundamentally dehumanizing environment. From the article: 'Amazon said that official safety inspections had not raised any concerns and that an independent expert appointed by the company advised that the picking job is "similar to jobs in many other industries and does not increase the risk of mental and physical illness."'"
Oh, is your employer the one that held a food drive for you because you wouldn't have enough food for thanksgiving with the shitty pay you get, or was that a different wal-mart?
Also, I don't own a kindle, and I'm aware of, and try to avoid the modern slavery in electronics production.
Why would you two trade families when you can get married and have the worst of both worlds at the same time?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I once accidentally worked for the US Postal Service for a year and a half and my job involved walking that much every shift; I must say that I was probably at my best physical shape of my life outside of military service...
It turned into a liberal vs conservative issue because those who aren't in favour of workers not being made ill by their work needed a way to justify that, and therefore did their best to associate it with what's commonly seen as an extreme, and slightly insane political affiliation. They then burned this straw political affiliation man at the steak to demonstrate how dumb it was to support the idea of workers not being made ill by their work.
I would argue that very few jobs are actually "good" for you.
But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
Quite the conundrum.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job. Until then its just finger pointing at a big target.
What prompted this investigation? Sounds like a news crew just looking for a story they can call big.
I wouldn't class stress or depression as a mental illness, it is a physical one.
AC, at least the BBC have the balls to do this, unlike other commercial broadcasters.
Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.
And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
That's reasonable to consider, but strong enough correlations say something. Not necessarily causation, but implies a relationship of some kind. Thankfully us plebs are spared the actual p values to make a judgement for ourselves.
In-Laws: because we're not happy unless you're not happy.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.
What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.
Ezekiel 23:20
Then, some Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians come in, get the same jobs for 70% of the initial wage the UK natives were whining about and work harder and are happier with 0% insanity.
That's because they're getting paid ten times as much as a doctor would in their own country for doing menial work, and can save enough in a few years to go home and set themselves up for life.
If 'Lazy Britons' could earn $1,000,000 a year for fifteen hour days cleaning offices in Poland, they'd be out there with a big smile on their face eager to do as many hours as they could.
Thanksgiving: It's like the /. comments, but with turkey.
Amazon is working on it, it is just a matter of time.
Working at hopelessly automated amazon warehouses where you are treated as a physical automaton with no free will is "similar to" working in a traditional warehouse in the same way ozone is "similar to" O2. It's made of roughly the same thing, but isn't exactly good for you.
My experience as a warehouse worker consists of exactly 4 days from almost 30 years ago. It was a distribution warehouse for a major NJ supermarket chain and reading this article immediately brought me back to that experience.
I was in college and I needed a summer job, as the land surveyor I had worked for the previous summer wasn't hiring. The warehouse job was available and conveniently located so I took it figuring 'how bad can it be?' My recollections:
1) The job was basically to drive a pallet jack up and down endless rows of various products; pick A number of B product, C number of D product, etc.; stack and arrange the boxes so that they didn't all fall off as you continued picking, then bring it to the wrapping machine and finally drop it off in the loading zone. For every pallet you got a computer printout noting the maximum time allotted to fill the pallet. By the end of the fourth day, I was still struggling to get the orders picked in even TWICE the allotted time. It was far and away the suckiest work I ever did.
2) On top of that, the people who worked there were just sad and pathetic. The 'old-timer' union guys looked like they were entirely used up even though none appeared to be past their mid-40s, to a man they all appeared lifeless, joyless, and miserable. Then there were the younger guys, not in the union yet, mullet-headed yokels who *aspired* to be among the 'old-timers' with the blank gaze of death. I was struggling with the idea of tolerating the job for the summer...how one signs up for a lifetime of that...I can't even imagine.
Luckily for me, the evening after that 4th day the surveyor I worked for the previous summer called me and said they had a guy quit and if I still needed a job. I said unequivocally 'Yes!' and called in 'quit' at the warehouse the next morning.
That was a 'traditional' warehouse job, and I can fully relate to how it would affect workers precisely as the article states. I can only imagine how much worse it is now.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.
And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
just started reading from that link and then I found this paragraph in the story:
Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across America. But the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of the century had caused a number of important changes. Eventually, there were video security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every square inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone conversations and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought about starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and preemptively put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are impossible.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
I do this all the time and nobody has sent me a paycheck yet!!!! Fucking monster.com..LIES.
I read the article. Some guy worked 2.5 hours of overtime one day and got sore feet. He spoke of "hobbling" so he probably just didn't feel good that day, and he described feeling "absolutely shattered" because of his feet.
According to the article, his average speed for his shift (11 miles in 10.5 hours) works out to about 1 mile an hour. My walking speed is 4.5 miles per hour. I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes. The truly ironic fact is that my job involves sitting all day and is way less healthy than his. However, I can understand why he might complain about the sore feet, which would make his job more difficult and less pleasant.
The "mental illness" of the title was just a generic embellishment by some professor. Unfortunately, he didn't specify what characteristics he thought were risky about this job, so I didn't learn very much.
I felt bad for the man who had no signature, until I met a man who had no comment.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave, By Mac McClelland, March/April 2012 Issue, Mother Jones.
"My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine."
I assume that he was simply unused to being on his feet all day or maybe overweight or has badly fitting shoes.
Or maybe...like many if not the vast majority of warehouses, they have hard concrete floors, which are brutal on the feet. The husband of one of my co-workers' works at Home Depot with the concrete floor, he is slim and in good shape, and has tried every orthopedic shoe solution available and still it's problematic. And I know for me personally, I can walk or hike for hours on end without a problem, but more than 30 minutes in a Home Depot or Costco on the concrete floors and my feet and calves are aching.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
"My liberal family members are hypocrites, therefore all liberals are hypocrites"
Your conservative reasoning is awesome.
Not just that, but "correlation is not causation" is only true in that those could be correlated due to a secondary cause. The phrase isn't meant to imply a complete lack of connection, just that the connection isn't necessarily the intuitive one.
"For example, Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours"
Not true at all.
- signed, an Amazon warehouse employee
What do you mean "intended as humor"??? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAAAAAAHHHH!
*runs away, hands flailing*
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
To go hunting and foraging you need to own the land or have the permission of someone who does. Even on public lands such activities would be restricted. You might get away with breaking the rules for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's allowed. Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging. Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging.
Amazon employees face a zero tolerance policy to talking to each other during work hours. Speak to anyone, lose your job.
Well that just seems like it would shut the warehouse down in a hurry.
First, one guy talks. "Man my legs are killing me!"
"You're fired!" says his supervisor... who is now going to get fired for talking on the job.
"You there, talking supervisor, you're fired for talking when you fired that guy!" And now *that* guy is next, and up it goes until Jeff Bezos finds himself out of a job.
I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.