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

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I was thinking and I worked on a large campus behind multiple security man traps. It was a maze of you weren't familiar. We had the same policy. Security would coordinate emergency response and open doors that would allow emergency personnel access.

Re:Pretty standard procedure on a large campus

[MerlynEmrys67]

I'm not even in a large office building. Imagine you call 911 and say please come to the door of "Company". Firetruck shows up goes to the front desk and they don't even begin to know where to send them. Calling security/front desk lets someone who isn't paniced fill in the details on where to go and how to get them to the site of the problem. Complaining that Amazon says to contact security first is stupid and shows that the person writing the article has never worked in a corporate environment in their life or they wouldn't write it up this way...

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.

Re:Pretty standard procedure on a large campus

[dgatwood]

You don't know if a person on the floor hit their head on something, passed out from exhaustion or low blood sugar, or (worst case) having a cardiac emergency. Rest and a candy bar doesn't require the waste of EMS resources. A bumped head can be a low priority dispatch.

When someone loses consciousness, you cannot assume that it is a low-priority problem. It is always better to have an EMS response, and have them examine the person and determine that the person will be okay than to not have an EMS response and have the person die while waiting for the security people to call for EMS.

The employees followed a reasonable procedure. If the numbers posted above are correct, then Amazon's security staff did not. The moment they heard that there was a medical emergency with someone collapsed, they should have called on their radio to all internal first responders, but afterwards, they should have been on the phone to 911 within thirty seconds. Any delay longer than that is inexcusable.

You don't wait until your first responders get there. You stay on the line with 911 until your first responders get there, and if they determine that no ambulance is needed, you inform the 911 operator that they can cancel the call (which they may or may not do, depending on what your first responders said, but at that point, you've done your job either way).

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....

[Antique Geekmeister]

I can verify that getting to the emergency location can be a problem in a number of large corporate worksites, and some sites do have competent personal who can get there _much faster_ with preliminary support, for electrical issues that may require shutting down power, for flooding, and even for CPR and other urgent medical issues. I applaud their efforts, and I've even been the helpful co-worker when an employee had a heart attack, and we got the victim to where the ambulance could help them immediately, shaving roughly 15 minutes off the time to the hospital for the patient.

However, calling "corporate security" first is also an opportunity to hide illegal immigrant workers, clean up the scene of unsafe conditions, get stories straight about any mistakes that may have triggered the accident, and limit employer liability, and to control the rumor mill. It can certainly be abused.

Re:About that 911 thing....

[dfenstrate]

How about "Call 911 AND Security", or is that too complicated? Call 911 and provide the nature of the emergency and facility address, then call Security and tell them the same and whatever specifics they need.

Name one large site that does it this way, and maybe we can talk. The fact is that you, at the scene, will not be in a position to escort outside EMTs to that location. Security will be the group coordinating with the outside EMTs, so let them coordinate with the outside EMTs.

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.

Re:About that 911 thing....

[felrom]

Pretty much.

I read the article. It's all about feelers feeling feels. There's not a bit of objective wrongdoing even hinted at on Amazon's part. They provide a facility that can employ 8% of the unemployed people in the town, and HuffPo acts like they're awful for it. It's strenuous physical labor, and some people can't handle it, especially when you're obese (6'3", 300lbs = 37.5 BMI; for his height, 200lbs is his healthy weight).

HuffPo is just trying to ride a wave of anti-Amazon sentiment to get ad-views.

All the feelers at HuffPo can rest easy though: when the robots replace all of these people, there will be no need to bitch about the working conditions any more!

Re:About that 911 thing....

[Solandri]

It's not some sleazy cost saving measure.

In fact, the sleazy cost-saving measure would be to fire all the company's EMTs and medical staff, and tell all employees to just call 911 and wait for the city's EMTs to arrive.

Re:About that 911 thing....

[stephanruby]

911 first, always.

Don't be stupid.

If you've been trained to call security first, ask them why during that training. During training, they can answer all the questions you want.

If corporate has EMTs on staff 2 minutes away, and you bypass them, you could be killing the person you're trying to rescue.

Right call

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I love bashing Amazon for its cruel working conditions, I don't see anything wrong with not calling 911. If they have a trained EMT team on location, then it's the right thing to call them, instead. We have the same policy in our office.
The local team should then immediately call 911., And if I look at the response time (20 min), then they probably did this. 20 min to a remote location like an industrial plant or warehouse is not excessive. In fact, kudos to Amazon for having properly trained and equipped EMTs!

Re:Robots

[Fire_Wraith]

According to the one article, he was already making $12 an hour, which is well above minimum wage in Virginia. I'm sure we could debate whether his benefits were adequate or not, but probably the biggest challenge he faced seems to have been making the cut to be a permanent rather than seasonal/temp worker.

Even that aside though, I don't think keeping the minimum wage down is going to do anything but delay the inevitable. As robots get cheaper, what are we supposed to do, keep lowering it even further to keep pace?

The bottom line is, no matter where the minimum wage lies, the day will come where we just don't have any work available for people like this guy - not because he's lazy, or doesn't want to work, but simply because he has no skills at tasks that a machine can't do better and cheaper. What do we do then? He still has to eat, as do his kids.How is he supposed to make a living, in a world where robots gather the raw materials, process them in factories, drive the delivery trucks, etc?

At some point we'll probably have to start talking about switching to a Guaranteed Basic Income, or something similar, because there just won't be enough demand for unskilled/low skilled human labor anymore.

Robots @ Warehouses

[seven of five]

Several if not all of the Amazon warehouses now use robots to move shelves to the pickers, instead of the pickers running to the shelves. The sad story of a hard-working Joe who wanted to feed his family & died on the job is becoming the sad story of even the crappy jobs disappearing.

This is an interesting social post

[SensitiveMale]

The "all corporations are evil" liberals immediately think and post that Amazon is trying to hide something and is using cost cutting to put their employees lives at risk.

Now, if someone spends even a minute thinking about this first, they'll understand that Amazon, and other large companies, have gone to considerable expense to keep medical staff in house. That calling security first puts EMTs on the scene faster and sets up the environment for security to direct outside help to the scene.

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

[O('_')O_Bush]

You're talking out of your asshole. I work on a large campus, and besides the fact that an EMT can't get through security to get on site or into the closed areas, we have full-time, actual doctors on site.

The advice is to call the security in an emergency, as they can move people out of restricted access areas, provide first class first response, and move them into places where the ambulances can reach.

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.

Re:Similar, but slightly different

[Mondragon]

This is really 100% a logistics problem determined by both the size, layout, and "unusualness" of the establishment. For giant warehouses, dangerous manufacturing facilities, places with rail lines on site, etc., with multiple gates and physical building doors, the reason you don't call 911 is because you probably can't tell them anything useful about how to efficiently get to you, and once you call 911 the next call from the people who *do* know is possibly not going to go well (as they will instead try to reroute the emergency team you led to the wrong place, except maybe no one can actually figure out where they currently are in relation to where they should be). For smaller buildings or those that are more familiar (or with regular layouts like office structures with numbered floors and offices), the first call being to 911 is absolutely the right thing.

If a company has published internal documents and pamphlets that say to call security, and specifically to *NOT* call 911, then that is because they are either a) guilty of gross negligence (very unlikely), or b) have a plan in place to address issues in a way that is most efficient - sometimes developed in partnership with the local emergency services - and have qualified emergency response personnel on staff.

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.