Imagine for a moment that it’s December. You have a lot of Christmas shopping to do.

You’ve decided that this year you don’t want to stress yourself out too much, so you are just going to get each of your friends the exact same present.  You are going to get everyone in your life, A DVD Box Set, A Kindle, and a pack of Dove Soap and a boardgame.

You are a very popular person. You have 250 friends.

You have tape, and 250 boxes, ready to assemble and fill with presents. You got your labels ready the night before.

Now it’s the night when you’re going to pack the presents.

Question: Do you think you’d be able to

·       Assemble the box,

·       Put in the 4 presents,

·       Tape up the box and

·       Apply the label

and do all 250 in one hour?

Could you assemble, pack,tape and label 250 boxes in one hour?

Well, that is what you would need to do to be considered a good employee who is meeting quota at an Amazon warehouse.

I can only speak for the Amazon warehouse I worked at.

That is what we were constantly told that others were reaching every day and marked down for not keeping up with.

After experiencing working at an Amazon warehouse for several weeks, part of which was during prime week, I came away with a statement I’m standing by.

Working at an Amazon warehouse is modern day slavery.

Very few humans can keep up with these quotas and expectations.

This is why the Amazon turnover rate is so high.

According to a Forbes article, it is 150%.

This means during the course of the year eventually that new hire is going to say, “Sorry. I just can’t do this any longer.”

I am not too surprised because when you go to apply for a job at Amazon, no one interviews you. They just check your ID, social security number and if you have a pulse.

If you have a pulse, you’re in.

According to some sources, conditions are equally harsh outside the warehouse but not just harsh, dangerous.

If you believe the Megacorp Podcast or this Forbes Article, then Amazon drivers are being forced to pee in bottles to make sure they make their deliveries on time.

Amazon prides itself on being the most customer-centric on earth.

That’s great but when drivers routinely endanger their lives to get you a same day package, this customer-centric value becomes questionable.

This puts Amazon in a bit of a quandary, because getting things to customers fast is what makes Amazon Amazon. Customers can press a few buttons and have a package in two days, sometimes even the very same day.

Does Jeff Bezos Know?

For the first few weeks at Amazon, I kept walking around wondering, “Does Jeff Know what’s going on here?”

By around week 5, I realized that Jeff Bezos did know and things were exactly how he wanted them.

He’s giving customers what they want.

Customers around the globe love this.

I am sharing my experience working at an Amazon warehouse to let you know the price that others have to pay for you to get your Amazon package in two days.

It is a steep price. It is an inhuman price. It is a dangerous price.

Increasingly it is a price that seems like modern day slavery done in the name of fast packages.

Whether you want to deal with it or not, when you order your next package from Amazon consider the working conditions that make receiving your order quickly even possible.

 Question:  Have you ever worked at an Amazon warehouse? What was it like? Why did you end up leaving? Did it feel like slavery?

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