Do Not Call 911! The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp (huffingtonpost.com)

theodp writes: Earlier this week, Amazon sicced former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on the NY Times and the ex-Amazon employees that were interviewed for the NYT's brutal August 2015 article about Amazon's white-collar workplace culture. So, one can hardly wait to see how Amazon and Carney will respond to The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp, Dave Jamieson's epic new HuffPo piece on what the future of low-wage work really looks like. Jamieson tells the heartbreaking tale of Jeff Lockhart Jr., who through some workforce sleight-of-hand was working-at-Amazon-but-not-entitled-to-Amazon-benefits when he met his maker after he collapsed in aisle A-215 of Amazon's Chester, VA fulfillment center and laid unconscious beneath shelves stocked with Tupperware and heating pads.

Lockhart, whose white work badge distinguished him as a member of the Integrity Staffing Solutions temp worker caste as opposed to a blue-badged Amazon employee (Google yellow-badged its benefits-less temp workers), sadly left behind a wife and three kids, the oldest of which is legally blind. Jamieson writes, "Whoever found Jeff on the third floor apparently alerted Amcare, Amazon's in-house medical team, which is staffed with EMTs and other medical personnel. In the event of a health issue, Amazon instructs workers to notify security before calling emergency services. An employee brochure from a facility in Tennessee, obtained through a public records request, reads: 'In the event of a medical emergency, contact Security. Do Not call 911! Tell Security the nature of the medical emergency and location. Security and/or Amcare will provide emergency response.'" If you're pressed for reading time, Salon's Scott Timberg has a nice TL;DR recap.

Comments

Pretty standard procedure on a large campus

[Anonymous Coward]

Security does the same where I work. Call them first get trained medical personnel there faster and then they direct 911 since the place is so damn huge the ambulance could have serious issues finding the person who needs help.

Re:Pretty standard procedure on a large campus

[Macman408]

Yes, this and many other things. I volunteer on my company's Emergency Response Team, so I get some exposure to this sort of thing. There are many reasons why they have you call security first:
1. Security is much closer. Even for us, where the fire truck and ambulance are only a block away, Security (and the ERT) can respond at least 3 or 4 minutes faster.
2. Security has a "go bag" that contains a defibrillator, oxygen, and a lot of other useful equipment.
3. If you call from an office phone, the address that shows up at the 911 center is our main visitor entrance. We have about 15 different buildings, and if you go to the wrong one, it'll take you an extra 5 minutes to drive to the correct one. Security knows how to direct 911 to the right place if you call them first, because they know to ask you which building and which cubicle you are located in.
4. Security can meet the ambulance. They get their vehicle out to the street to meet the ambulance and escort them to the door that is closest to the emergency. Then, they can provide access to the building and escort them directly to the emergency, since all entrances are normally locked.
5. Not all emergencies are necessarily worth calling 911, and Security has training on which ones are likely to be critical. Obviously, if someone is unconscious or not breathing, 911 should be called immediately (and that should be communicated to Security). But what if someone is just feeling a little off? Our company has a list of about 10 things that we must dial 911 for (things like chest pain, loss of consciousness, etc.); other things are up to our judgement as to their severity - but with the knowledge that it's always better to call 911 and be wrong about it being an emergency. The ambulance will show up for free, they only charge you if you go away with them.

At my company, Security is pretty much always the first on the scene, since they're always communicating via radio. A couple minutes later, people with some basic medical training (first aid, CPR, AED) from the ERT show up after getting an E-mail/phone/SMS page. And a few minutes after that, the ambulance arrives. That's even the case when somebody calls 911 from their cell phone (as long as they eventually call security too) - it's better to get our first responders on site early and get everything prepared for the ambulance to arrive, rather than to have the ambulance wandering the parking lot trying to find the emergency.

About that 911 thing....

[dfenstrate]

You don't call 911 because at large and complex sites, other employees are required to guide emergency services in to the particular location of the injured or ill person. In addition, these sites- as the summary suggests- have their own EMTs in order to bridge the extra time required for the Ambulance to arrive.

It's not some sleazy cost saving measure.
Security calls 911 right after they send the site EMT to the scene, and then they send another employee to bring the Ambulance crew to the right spot. Why would you think you could call the city EMTs and adequately describe, (for a 500,000 sq ft + facitlity), the correct location and entrance to use? And what makes you think the dispatcher could then accurately relay this information to the Ambulance EMTs/Paramedics ?

Re:About that 911 thing....

[ShanghaiBill]

How about "Call 911 AND Security", or is that too complicated?

In a medical emergency, the most important priority is getting the first trained people to the patient. The first people to arrive are going to be Amazon's in-house EMT. By calling them second, you are delaying medical care, and endangering the patient.

Re:About that 911 thing....

[the_nightwulf]

Former security dispatcher for a large complex of manufacturing plants here, and this is absolutely correct. We know which of the multiple entry gates the ambulance should use to get to the complainant in the most efficient manner, and it isn't necessarily the one the reporting party uses to get to work every day (likely the only one he/she knows). We know the physical addresses of those gates, which few other people do, so emergency respondents know exactly where to go.

We contact the appropriate response (not always "911" -- usually more efficient to call the ambulance service directly) immediately. A guy with a broken finger doesn't need or want all of the response 911 will bring. Large-scale incidents, confined space rescues, etc.? That's when you want the whole cavalry. Often one dispatcher would initiate the ambulance response while another was still talking with the reporting party, so any questions about the complainant's condition could be answered.

We then work on the logistics of getting the response to the complainant. This usually involved sending one roving security unit to actually find the complainant, and another to the gate to escort the ambulance to the proper location. Once the first unit assessed the situation, they could advise the other via radio of exactly where to bring the ambulance. Depending on the response gate and time of the incident, we might also advise the local rail services to hold traffic. During times of heavy truck traffic, we'd advise the guards at gates in the ambulance's path to hold traffic, so there wasn't a mile-long line of semi trucks blocking the way.

Everyone involved was very well-trained and incidents almost always ran like clockwork. You know when they didn't? When someone called 911 directly and an ambulance showed up at a gate and no one in security knew anything about it.

911 Call

[theodp]

From the article: "It isn't clear from any of the official reports on Jeffâ(TM)s deathâ"Amazon's, the county's or the state'sâ"how quickly Jeff was found and treated. The Amazon report says that he was discovered at âoeapproximately 2:30 a.m., which is within one minute of his last reported pick.â Yet according to a county EMS report, the 911 call came in at 2:39 a.m., suggesting he may have been down for several minutes before he was found. Amazon said CPR and the defibrillator were "quickly provided" by its in-house team. However, the ambulance didnâ(TM)t get there until 2:49 a.m.â"nearly 20 minutes after his last apparent pick, a significant amount of time in a cardiac emergency."

Re: 911 Call

[ModernGeek]

Also it's worth noting that many in emergency seevices hold multiple jobs, just like you. Someone that is an EMT at a plant may also be on an ambulance several days a week. That way they have more experience in a busy environment and are able to sit and relax at a job where there are fewer calls. They all generally have the same training regulated through a state ems board. It's not like these companies just hire off the street and have them go through in house power point training.

This is normal

[FrozenGeek]

Over the past 30 years (dang, that's a long time), I've worked at three multinationals. All three had this policy. It's unlikely that I happened upon three outliers, so I expect that this is the normal policy for large campuses. That being the case, if it was unreasonable, there would have been multiple large successful lawsuits and the lawyers for all the other big companies would have changed the policy. Large companies are risk-averse. The fact that this policy is still in place in many companies indicates that it is the right policy.

I get really tired for people dumping on large companies without warrant. When they deserve to be slammed, let's slam them, but dumping on them when it is not warranted is just as evil as anything they do.