Blood From Turnips?

Wednesday, October30, 2013

Day 2, Week 4.  The four-day workweeks have turned into five-day/ten-hour work weeks.  We had volunteered for overtime last week, but THIS week it was mandatory.  We did get to choose our day (Tuesday).  But NOW, they’re saying “we’re in the overtime situation” and overtime will be mandatory each week from here on out; for our shift the day has been set to Tuesday.  So much for the 40-hour work week!

Also, another treat.  Starting next week,we have to report to work at 6 a.m. and work until 4:30 pm.  That’s to allow us the “opportunity” to work  voluntary overtime of another hour per day.  HA!  So now they tell us we can work up to 55 hours per week.  The only redeeming thing about the new start time is that it coincides with the end of Daylight Savings Time, so with “fall back” we really end up starting work at the same time as we have been.                         

Week 4 – after this week we are supposed to be fully “hardened”.  I don’t feel “hard”.  I feel tired and everything still aches (thumbs, knees, feet in particular).  We seem to be surviving day to day with candy and caffeine for snacks and three squares a day.  8-9 hours of sleep a day helps also.  I guess I’m a wimp because Rick and I are in the lower category of age of work campers here.  And yes, I’d like some cheese with that “whine”.

The space situation (places to put product) has not improved.  There are more people in the warehouse at one time now.  Oh, and they’ve implemented a new “system” on our scanners so they can keep track of how long we take on breaks now too!

Whip, whip!  Work slaves work!!!!

54 total days to go….

8 Weeks to Go!

We SURVIVED Week 3 of five 10-hour days!!!!    Our bodies are adapting and our minds are shutting down and we are becoming Amazon-bots.  It's not so bad.....

I haven't looked forward to 15 minute breaks and 30-hour lunch breaks so much since I started working at age 19!!

Certain faces we see every work day are becoming familiar.  There's Richard, who leads the stretches, always chomping on his gum (or chew????)  Alejandro, our favorite "water spider" (person who loads our stow carts).  Rick, our manager who periodically wears an "eggshell" on his head (impersonting Howie Mandel).  Our "class of 2013" camperforce co-workers - Ed, Carla, Chris, Maximus and many others.

These last few days I have been starting to enjoy certain aspects about stowing.  Namely, SHOPPING.  While many of the items I put away are not interesting to me, there are many that are.  Today I stowed about 24 HUGE bottles of "Passion Lubricant"; these bottles were at least 24 ounces each with pumps.  WHO USES THAT MUCH LUBE?????  IS IT FOR ORGIES OR WHAT????????????  Hey, and THAT sort of item could be stowed right next to several copies of the ESV New Classic Reference Bible....whoa!

I must admit after reading how this company processes orders, it is fascinating ---supposedly it is the only company in the world that can pull an order of up to 30 items together from a 900,0000 square foot building/3 levels high and do it with 45 minutes of getting the order.  FM!!!!  It's a systems masterpiece.

So now we have two days off.  MANDATORY overtime next week, so it's back to work on Tuesday, the start of Week 4.

Hump Day, Week 3

Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013

Today was HUMP day in our five day week.  It was GRUELING!  Rick got assigned to Green transship, and I to Blue transship.  Transship is slow going to start with, then compounded with crowded bins it becomes an exercise in frustration.

I am so tired tonight.  I feel like I’ve run a marathon.  I tried to boost my “numbers” today and busted ass the first half of the day.  Yeah, that got me a miserable 65% productivity.  After lunch, the “water spider” (person who loads the carts) told me to take a cart that has a lot of books on it to boost my numbers.  Well, after doing that, I got my numbers up to 68% -- whoo!

Rick got stuck this morning with carts full of large items and no place to put them.  If someone had mentioned numbers to him I think he would told them to do unspeakable things to themself.   (Don’t blame him.)

The one “joy” I had today was finding an area in Gray (adjacent to Blue) that actually had space, thus reducing my frustrations.  But alas, after lunch break, some person who has more rank than I informed me that I couldn’t stow there anymore and go to Blue (where there is very limited space). There went the day.  By 4:30 pm I was limping around, lamely looking for a large space for a HUGE book.  Nightmare.

All this being said, it makes one appreciate a good meal (which I cooked) and being able to SIT DOWN, and finally, SLEEP.  It never ceases to amaze me how the body regenerates itself.

Making the Big Bucks

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013

So today was an overtime day.  Not too bad since it was the first day of work after a two day break.  What do we do with our days off?  Oh, very exciting things like laundry, grocery shopping, surfing the internet for hours, watching movies, shopping in Reno, going to the Great Basin Brewery and eating Jalapeno Wontons…..the important thing is WE’RE NOT AT WORK!!!!

Today was just the usual….spending hours (10 to be exact) attempting to find locations in bins for hundreds of items.  I had a lot of dog chews and light bulbs to stow today.    Good thing it wasn’t dog jerky from China – we hear on the news tonight that the FDA is investigating the deaths of hundreds of dogs due to bad jerky!

Rick had a lot of black-wrapped sex toys; two of them came up as “high value” and had to be turned over to the problem solver.  Just imagine,  a super vibrator sitting next to a new Ipad in the high value lockup! 

Rick was bitching all day today about how he used to work his ass off avoiding overtime that paid him four times more than what he made today….I asked if he wanted some cheese with that “whine”.

Tonight we are watching Warren Buffett and his son and grandson interview on TV,  their book, “40 chances”, will probably be at our warehouse tomorrow!  Cases and cases….

 

There are a lot of additional work campers appearing now.  We heard that this year they’ve hired 300, instead of 200 campers.  I think it’s because they’ve wised up to how many quit after a week or so!

Getting Paid to Work Out

October 19, 2013

The second week is OVER – only 9 weeks to go!!!  This was our first full 40 hour week over a 4 day period.  That standing, squatting, scanning, bending, lifting, carrying, pushing for 10 hours a day gets pretty wearing long about 4 pm in the afternoon.  But we survived it.  Treated ourselves to pints out and some jalapeno cheese fries at the Frontier Fun Center which happens to be right next door to our RV park.

We muse about the differences in this type of work – private industry where every minute that an employee works is counted and measured – versus government industry which we both used to work in. 

Back then, nobody ever counted the minutes of your break or how many times you went to the bathroom.  Oh yeah, they expected production but it wasn’t fedback to you every day in terms of a percentage.  You could actually “relax” at times, have a conversation with your co-workers.  Shoot the shit.

At the Big A, its run-run-run from the time you punch the clock.  First its morning “stand up” – a meeting of your department where they remind you of safety factors, show you yesterday’s (or the current days) production percentages, how many products are coming in that day,and generally give you the “rah, rah, go get ‘em” speech.  Then we stretch.  Yes, someone up on a catwalk leads the stretching – we move our heads to the left, to the right, bend our hands and fingers in unnatural ways, circle our hips, squat, etc.  This is to limber us up for what’s to come.  Believe me, by the end of the day, you are wanting to stretch you’re so sore and bound up!

What kind of people work at A?  Apparently all kinds.  Big, small, tall, short, fat, thin, young, old, middle aged, women, men, probably transsexuals too, blondes, redheads, bluehairs, purple hairs, shocking pink hairs, blacks, Hispanics, Asians,   One of our supervisors is from Argentina!  There are a lot of work campers right now – mostly older folks who want to supplement their incomes – but there’s also a lot of younger people, some who have been with the company up to 10 years.  We wonder WHY do people work here when they could work…..hmmm, at a casino, fast food, gas station???  OK, I get it – this is one of the best employment ops around this area and it actually pays about 1/3 more than minimum wage.

If you think of it as someone paying you to get in shape….well, it’s a good deal.

9 more weeks to go.  This next week we are going to do a day of OVERTIME!

What Day Is IT????

October 17, 2013

Ok, I don’t know what day this is anymore.  It’s the 3^rd day of our second week.  Right now I am VERY tired – my feet, right knee, lower back and shoulders are sore.  Rick’s feet – especially the ball of his left foot – are giving him grief.  This week started out nice, working in Utah Tan which has lots of space to store stuff in.  But then, part way through the morning of our first day back we were reassigned to the dreaded “transship”, Nevada Green.  Transship is all the shit that comes from other fulfillment centers and it’s a mishmash.  Books,videos, etc are mixed up with TEHKO in small “totes”.  You get 14 totes on a fully loaded  cart.  You have to pick out all the books, etc. and stow them downstairs in the BMVD section, then ship your cart upstairs to floor 2 or 3 to TEKHO.  The cart goes in an elevator, called “VRC” (freight elevator) but you can’t go with the cart.  YOU must climb the stairs; 60 to the top 3^rd floor.  Then you are united with your cart and start HUNTING for bins to stow in.  It’s grueling.  There’s something inherently wrong about storing one little memory chip in a bin that has also 2 flats of dog food, 1 stuffed toy, 2 dildos, and 6 bottles of lotion.  But that’s what ends up happening.  You can only put 5 unique UPCs in a bin and you don’t have time to find the bin that has room and just the right amount of space.  They teach you about “bin etiquette” and making nice for your downline customer (the pickers) but when space is scarce its every stower for themselves!!!   Oh well, one more day in this work week to go.  BUT I signed us up for voluntary overtime on Tuesday next week.  AM I CRAZY?????

One Week Down!!!

Day 5, October 10/12/13

TIRED!!! Today was the end of our first week and a 10 hour day.  Big difference between 5 hour day (yesterday) and today.  All we can think about is getting home, feet up, and beer in.  We worked in the other “state” today – UTAH – which is the complete other side of the facility from where we keep our lunch bag.  So the trek back to get lunch takes 4 minutes out of our 30 minute lunch.  You never really know what side you will work on.  Each morning at the “Stand Up” you have to check a list, find your name, and it tells you where in the facility you are working that day.

We stowed pretty much all day today. The UTAH “violet” area we stowed in had much more available bin space than where we had previously been.  That was nice.  But we didn’t do books, just TEHKO, which is more a hassle than books.  But it was okay work.  Just pretty tiring those last 2&1/4 hours of the day.

So we are “trained” now and starting next week can sign up for Voluntary Overtime (if we wish).  Not sure about that yet.

Books are Good, Trans Ship is Bad

Day 3, Thursday, Oct. 10

Rick got in trouble for grabbing the “Trans Ship” cart to stow.  We don’t know what Trans Ship is, but we’ve been told not to mess with those carts.  However, the cart was in the lineup and had a “Grab Me First” cone on top of it….

I got a reminder on “bin etiquette” today.  She was really nice about it, though, admitted the bins are pretty crazy now.  But still I need to try….

We like stowing books.  The bins are orderly and you can always find spaces for books, CDs, etc. in a row.

Got off at noon today.  The sun was shining.  We weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves.  Decided to wash and wax the car and re-do the Craigslist ad to sell it.  Now just sitting around talking about WORK!!!  Ah well, remember the money and the great trip we will take next spring/summer.  Tomorrow is another 5 hour day.

The Art of Stowing

Day 2 – Process training on STOWING, then STOWING.  Of course, all the STOWING

etiquette you learn in training gets thrown out the window when you actually STOW.

What IS stowing etiquette?  The general concept is to put items in bins in an orderly fashion so that the "picker" (person who picks items from the bin to fulfill an order) an easily find the item and remove it from the bin without jumbling up the rest of what's in the bin.  Also, not stacking one item on top of another item, behind another item.  Not putting similar items in adjacent bins.

Well, the reality is the bins are all very crowded and its hard to find anyplace to fit your products in.  If you have little items, you’re better off.  Larger items – well, you’ll be searching around looking for SOMEPLACE to put at least one of these (and you probably have several LARGE items to stow of the same sort).  If you are an organized, somehwhat obsessive compulsive person you must throw that out the window.  Just find a spot and stick the product in there; hopefully it won’t be in a bin that already has 5 unique products in it.  If that’s the case you get a nasty error “beep,beep,beep” and you must look for another bin.  Oh, and most of the bins you actually find room in are on the very bottom of the shelf (necessitating squatting) or at the very top (necessitating locating a step stool).  It is slow going, especially this first week we are doing “SINGLES”.  That means even though you may have 12 identical products, you must scan each one separately then the bin you put it in.  Next week we will be able to Stow Quantity where you scan the first (of multiple) item, scan the bin you will put these items in, then just enter a quantity.  Something to aspire to!!

We are TIRED after our 10 hours today.  Expected though.  We are told we will be hardened and fully productive after 4 weeks.  One can hope!! 

Tomorrow is just a 5 hour day – yay!  What will we do with the extra time????  

The Beginning of the End

Day 1 of Amazon – piece of cake.  Had 9 hours of sleep, worked during the day.  Actually today was orientation and safety school and we only worked 8 hours.  We are assigned to “stow”, which I believe means putting received items on warehouse shelves so that “pickers” can later pick items for orders.  They tell us that everything changes here all the time, so I don’t expect anything.  It’s best that way.  Tomorrow we work our full 10-hour day, 7:00 am to 5:30 p.m.  followed by two 5-hour days, then another 10.  This is week 1 and our “hardening” week.  After that, it’s 10 hour days, 4 days a week, UNLESS overtime is needed.  We shall see….