The Amazon.com Chronicles (Part 1)

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that over the last few years I have been working for the Internet retailer Amazon.com. I say "work" but I use the term loosely its far more accurate to say I have had the piss taken out of me by Amazon and the various agencies who have employed me. It looks as though my time at Amazon has finally come to an end and my overwhelming feelings are relief and disappointment that four years of my professional life have been wasted.

I started at Amazon in October 2010, my career had gone into a few dead ends and I was anxious to kick start it and a world wide company like Amazon looked as good a place as any. A day examining the company and career section of its website showed it had openings in areas I was experienced in and they were doing things I'd like to do. My aim was to get in the door and start applying for jobs of which I had experience to work myself back up the career ladder.

I applied for a job at Amazons Fulfilment Centre in Swansea via an agency called Quest Recruitment. I did the required drugs and aptitude test and a week later they called back offering me the position of a picker. My job would be to collect items that customers had ordered via the website. Each team had an area manager (strangely mine was a temp) and some team leaders, there were also site reps on site to represent you on behalf of the agencies. I informed the area manager and site reps that I would like to be kept aware of any job opportunities on site as I was hoping to use this job as a stepping stone. Every week the site rep would come around with each persons score and give you a form with your stats on. Mine were quite good, often between 100% and 110% dipping down as low as 85% sometimes when there wasn't much work or I was injured. For those of you who can't remember winter 2010 was quite a cold one and at one point in South Wales public transport went down and I had to walk to work, during which I slipped and fell down the footbridge going over the roundabout just before Briton Ferry bridge and did my knee in. I was still able to complete my shift and fulfil my contracted hours.

One day I was going along doing a batch of orders in the pick tower and a chap walks up and stops me. He says he's an operations manager and my area manager has just informed in that my poor scores were bringing his teams scores down and that I should pull my finger out if I didn't want to be sacked at the end of the day. I informed him that my scores were over target for this and the previous few weeks and he walked off. I had a word with my site rep and said if my area manager was going to senior management telling them I had poor scores I wanted him reported to HR. (I couldn't go to HR as HR "do not handle temps") Then the following week I was called back to the pick desk with 10 other people for the area manager to give us a "pep talk." He gave everyone their score except me and us we had to improve, I asked for my score and he said 97%. Out of everyone else in that group the highest score anyone else had was 46%. I then asked why I was included in this group and his reply was "you all started at the same time and as a group are low scoring trouble makers." I immediately told the site rep to sort this guy out.

Anyway around this time the Christmas period ended and we moved into January, also the work started to dry up and lay offs happened. In the first week of January everyone else in that "pep talk" group was laid off and we were regularly sent home after 15 minutes of work (shifts rotated weekly between starting at 6AM or 2PM). On the 17th of January I was called down to the pick desk, the area manager told me when I arrived that I was being taken on as a permanent associate and congratulated me. I was well chuffed, I thought to myself "that's stage one dealt with lets get onto stage two and hopefully get my career back on track". A few hours later I had another message on my gun, with half an hour on the shift to go I was called back to the pick desk. The area manager had gone and all that was there was a team lead and cart runner. The team lead took my gun off me and said I was to wait in the drop zone for everyone else, I asked the cart runner what was happening and he said "your going to see HR." I thought, blimey that's quick, I'm going to be signing the forms and transferred from Quest to Amazon before the end of the shift. Myself and a few others then went up to a room in HR where we met some others from other departments. A HR officer then walked in and informed us we were being laid off as the early months of they year were traditionally quiet and the Christmas peak rush was over.

Needless to say I was pissed off, I informed them I had been told three hours previously I was being made permanent. The HR officer said I must have misunderstood what my area manager had told me, I informed her that I had been using the English language since moving on from baby talk and demanded to make an official complaint about my area manager and for him to be sacked. She said she couldn't do anything and that I should handle this via my Agency, now at this point I should say every other agency bar mine was present and as we were being made to clear our lockers and leave I had no way of getting to the agency desk on the Fulfilment Centre floor. The next day visited the Quest Recruitment Swansea branch, they said they couldn't do anything about my area manager as technically I wasn't an active associate on the Amazon contract anymore, however I did opt to put my name on the rehire list for when things started getting busy on the site.

If you'll indulge me ladies and gentle readers I'm now going to fiddle with the narrative. I would come back later in the year and the area manager not only was still there but had now been made permanent. I was told I couldn't make a formal complaint as six months had gone by. However the area manager (one Andrew Evans) wouldn't last long, it turned out his agency and Amazon hadn't performed a thorough background search on him and out of the blue Amazon would get a call from a newspaper asking about this:

http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/Dodgy-family-firms-preyed-customers/story-16819547-detail/story.html

It turns out that Andrew Evans had neglected to inform his employer that he had been done for fraud. Now I'm often one to give people the benefit of the doubt but I have to ask how a vindictive sicko who had tried to con vulnerable pensioners out of their savings can be put into a supervisory position without a background check being performed. Needless to say many complaints from temps had been made against him but they were all fobbed off. However when finding out about the above court case he was thrown out so fast his feet never touched the ground.

Well that's the story of my first stint with Amazon, I'll cover the rest of my time there at a later date.

Recruitment consultants and the recruitment industry

Good afternoon ladies and gentle readers, you'll notice things have been a tad quiet on the blog this month, this is down to me throwing myself into getting back into employment. If you'll indulge me for a moment you may remember a blog entry from last year where I went into detail on my ongoing adventures with HR and recruitment personnel, for this blog I'm going to go into depth on my ongoing relationship with a particular recruitment firm over the past few months. Due to the fact I don't want my potential employers reading this and suing me I'm going to refer to the company in question as Nile and the recruitment agency as Abacab.

In late January I was going about my daily routine working for Nile and I asked my area manager if I could speak to HR. I had some ongoing issues and I wanted to speak to someone officially about them (actually these issues weren't work related, they were personal and I felt it was only fair to inform them), the manager said he'd send a message to my gun later in the day when he could spare me. So towards the end of the shift I got a message on my gun to come down to the desk, stood there was a woman I'd never seen and she said she was taking me up to HR. So off we toddled up to the meeting room which was empty, I asked if it was her or someone else I was having this meeting with and she replied "oh I'm not apart of HR I'm a site rep for another agency, I just brought you up here to be released because your agencies site reps were on a break." Needless to say I was shocked, I'd been meaning to talk to HR about being made permanent after six months of target hitting brilliance from myself and here I was being let go.

After being released I hung around the canteen to have a word with the Abacab site rep, when he saw me he came over and said "don't worry, I was shocked when I saw you were on the release list too, your one of our top guys we're going to get you back in here asap and hopefully within six weeks so you can keep your bonus." Reluctantly I exited the FC after putting across how disappointed I was that no site reps from my agency told me, were not even at the meeting and didn't back me up when I stated my case to the Operations Manager over why I shouldn't be released. The following Monday I took the train to the Neath branch of Abacab to hand in my locker key, boots and hi viz. I had a chat with the recruitment consultants and made sure I was placed at the top of the rehire list then proceeded to sign on.

I then spent the next few months applying for various jobs always calling Abacab once a week. By 12/04/14 I was still looking for work and noticed an advert for Nile on line. I gave them a call again on the fourteenth, the girl I spoke to asked when I'd have my tests (drugs/aptitude/alcohol) done and I informed her I hadn't even been in for one. She then asked how I knew they were a recruiter for Nile and I informed her I had been registered with them for 18 months. We then scheduled my tests for two days time although for some reason which I wasn't told I'd have to go to the Swansea branch. So two days later I walked in to find I wasn't taking the tests and I was being registered as a brand new agent. I was then told that the Neath office had been closed down and for the past few months instead of sitting atop the rehire list I wasn't on the Swansea branch systems and my physical paper file was in a filing cabinet they'd had sent from the Neath office which hadn't even been opened yet. After proving I was an existing agent of there's they said they'd get my tests done asap which turned out to be fourteen days later on the 28th.

After these tests Abacab have one month to register and started with Nile, I gave them a ring to check for news twice the following week and eventually got a call on 09/05/14 saying I'd be starting the following Wednesday. To save money buying food on site I popped to the supermarket where my friend Tes goes and bought two weeks worth of work lunches. The following Monday I popped along to the job centre to sign off, mere yards from entering I got a phone call from Abacab. Apparently "Nile lowered the order they placed" and my spot on this weeks income had been cut. Rather than swear down the phone I laughed it off and then asked them to confirm I was now top of the rehire list and get the next spot in Nile that becomes available. Nile tell the agencies how many staff they'll be ordering, as I post this blog its just gone end of play Friday 16/05/14 and after a phone call I made to Abacab earlier this afternoon I have heard nothing. A week after being told I was employed I am unemployed and sadly nobody else is even responding to my applications.

I hope this goes some way to explaining my contempt and loathing for recruitment companies and recruitment consultants. I'm off to boot next doors dog up the bum, here's a video of Abacab by Genesis:

The Truth About Panorama and Amazon

For those who aren't aware in late November 2013 the BBC's long running current affairs program Panorama broadcast an episode focused on the Amazon Fulfilment Centre based on the outskirts of Swansea. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this episode it can be viewed via the following youtube links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jg-dRm2mN4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5olLpopZ8s


I have worked for Amazon on and off for the past few years and wanted to do a blog focused on this episode at the time but the lack of time and being partially biased to my employer put me off. Now however I've been laid off and have some time on my hands I'm going to give you the opinion of someone who worked for Amazon.

Mainly I'll focus on the individual that Panarama sent undercover, Adam Littler who is a 23 year old graduate. He first appears on the screen doing a bit of cross country running and puts over he has a history in manual jobs all of which puts over to the viewer he is a healthy fit individual.

Adam gets a job as a picker which coincidentally is also what I was doing up until recently for the past five months, therefore I have a bit of knowledge of what he went through. The first thing the show focuses on is the handheld scanner (I'll be referring to it as a gun) and the countdown that flashes on the bottom of the screen counting down to when you need to pick up the next item. This countdown is a load of rubbish, everyone ignores it and its possible to reach your target without picking an item before the clock reaches zero. In short its a piece of software that was put on when the guns were upgraded and bears no relevance whatsoever to the job. Everyone gets told this when they start so its a bit bizarre Panorama didn't show this.

Moving on, we are then told that Adam is wearing a wristband that measures his mileage. Then comes the moment of this episode that amazed me, indeed my flabber was well and truly ghasted. Readers brace yourself for this - in one day Adam had done 6 miles! Yes you read correctly 6 miles, lets get this straight I would absolutely love a shift where I only walked six miles. What an absolute lazy sod this Adam must be, for a start the average person does about 3 miles an hour - how the hell did he manage to stay employed for the month before filming started only covering six miles a shift? Lets do the maths, a shift at Amazon is 10.5 hours, with one hour for breaks, this means that he was doing 0.57 miles an hour. Wasn't he doing cross country running at the start of this? That's what it looks like on the link yet he seems to be going at the pace of an arthritic pensioner.

The show mentions that Adam is feeling the strain due to his heavy trolley. What a load of bull! If you find your trolley to heavy you can put the trolley safely in the drop zone and continue your batch on a second (and if needed a third) trolley. Again i don't see any mention of this on the show.

At this point Adam says he is now walking 11 miles now that he is on the night shift. Again lets do the Maths, now he's doing 1.04 MPH. Now as someone who did the same job as him and on top of that walked 4 miles a day into work this is still remarkably slow. Now Adam has been put over on this show as a fit and healthy young man but doesn't seem to be handling the job. I however am 5'3, weigh 9 stone when soaking wet and am marinated in alcohol yet have no problem doing the job. On top of that I've got paper work that shows I can hit target.

Adam then complains about his feet and goes to show them while peeling off one of the thinnest socks I've seen in my life. Seriously Adam, sort yourself out - get thicker socks and comfy boots.

We then get one of my favourite moments of the show, Adam is seen walking through the pick tower complaining that the lights don't work. Most of my time was spent in the pick tower, mostly you set the light off by walking into an aisle and triggering the motion sensor. When this doesn't work you just scan the ceiling with your gun - instead of doing this Adam simply complains about the dark. Why is he not using his gun to trigger the light or reporting to his AM or TL that the lights don't work?

We are then told that Adams target is 110 items to be picked an hour, the picture then speeds up to show him speeding to pick up one item per location. What isn't shown is that multiple items can be picked from one location, IE two different books or six bottles of tablets. Also not shown is the fact that sometimes targets are lowered due to lack of work - I've got a number of feedback forms that say the target is 95 however at the time of my exit it had gone back up to 110.

The show then decides to focus on the gun again, in particular the noise it makes when you scan the wrong item or location. Now when you make a mistake with the gun it makes a louder than normal beep, by mistake I mean scanning the wrong location or item. As can clearing be seen when Adam holds the gun up to the camera the location is clearly and boldly displayed on the screen - along with a description of the product to be picked at that location. Its not rocket science you see the location, you go to the location and scan its label, every now and then you may scan the wrong one through not concentrating maybe due to chatting with someone or being distracted by it nearly being break time. Adam seems to be scanning the wrong thing a lot! I mean a lot, way way way more than I've seen anyone do in 3 years at Amazon. Now I can't help wondering can Adam actually read? Surely he can, he's a graduate as mentioned earlier. This either makes me think Adam is not the brightest spark in the box (see him being unable to turn the lights on) or that he's playing up for the camera's.

Adam then complains he couldn't sleep due to the guns beeping noise going off in his head. Personally I've never had this problem, in fact I don't think the beeping is that loud. To put it into context I think the beeping when a train door opens is a lot louder.

We then go back to Adam moaning about targets, he's averaging 80 item an hour when he should be doing, which bearing in mind he travels at the pace of an ice age is actually quite remarkable. In a surreal moment he stops to ask a stower (shelf stacker) about the stowers targets, the stower then points to the lack of space on the shelves. Given that Adam is stood next to shelves shouldn't he picking some of those items and creating space for the stowers? Little bit of logistical common sense for you there.

Adam then goes into some cod philosophy that "we are all robots and don't think for ourselves." After seeing what I've seen so far I think one of the key topics Adam should be thinking is "maybe if I scan the right thing I wont have this beeping in my head when I go to sleep" or maybe something simple like "move your legs faster." This attempt to be deep is quite frankly cringe worthy viewing and makes me weep for the future of humanity.

Adam then goes to visit an expert on stress who watches some of Adams "secret filming" footage. The first focus is the stress of the countdown - which I've already said means bugger all. This expert then says that this working environment is bad for your health, well my last shift was last week and I've just been for a 90 minute jog, done a bit of job search and some shopping and am bearing no ill affects. In short I find this highly dubious.

We then go into Amazons disciplinary points system, which includes various things like a point for absence and half a point for lateness. In all honesty I'm not familiar with this system as I don't think I've ever got a point, also I'm pretty sure in an all hands meeting about four months ago we were told the point system had been changed. I'm pretty sure this part of the show is out of date but not 100% sure.  Adam however has clocked up 1.5 points for being late and didn't know about one of them despite the fact that a defining characteristic of a clocking in machine is a clock. This clocking in machine can be seen at 9:59 on the first of the above videos.

Adam then resigns after encountering some illness and being unable to continue the job. During the show I was on twitter and saw a lot of tweets along the lines of "I can't believe Amazon treat their workers like that." Watching this show again the only thing I take out of this show is Adam Littler is lazy and inept. We're given the impression early on that he's a fit and healthy individual yet he obviously can't do a job that I can when I am in nowhere near decent shape and survive on a diet of chips and fried food. Adam can't grasp the concept of turning a light on with his gun or reading a screen to make sure he's scanning the right thing. In short I came away thinking three things:

1. This is a shoddy piece of journalism, some people walk far in a job - big deal.
2. Panorama have been conned by someone whose lazy.
3. Adam Littler has made himself unemployable.

Personally I don't think Amazon is that bad a company to work for, yes they do a lot of things wrong and I think they treat some workers with a lack of respect but its nowhere near as bad as this program makes it look. I do however say this Amazon is a young company and is still finding its way, during the time I've worked there there have been a lot of changes and a lot of improvements. However I also believe a lot of work is needed to improve its relationship with the workforce, a lot more work than perhaps Amazon itself thinks.