Working at Amazon’s Workamper Force…

I was staying at Fallon RV Park, (they have no web site) and the Amazon warehouse was in Fernley. It’s around 30 miles away, and like I said last post, I did try to find somewhere to park my RV in Fernley with no luck. For the first time in many years, I had to get up at 5AM, dress, eat, check my em, make my lunch, then go to WORK. Gah! Not fun. The 10 hour work shifts weren’t all that fun either. Then the warehouse is sooo large that getting to break rooms, or lunch rooms, took such a long time that you’d end up with a shortened break. And you have to go through a metal detector whenever you leave so I soon found out that I’d have to get a plastic belt to avoid having to remove and replace my leather and metal belt 4 times per day. The kind of belt that holds up a guys pants. Turns out that the stores don’t carry all plastic belts any longer. They use to, but I couldn’t find any. Eventually, one of my co-workers mention I could find plastic knapsack clips and braided belts in the sports sections of WalMart. And, Walmart was just across the street from the Amazon facility. I could, I bought, and made my own plastic belt. That saved some time heading to break, lunch, and home.

The break room was nice and compfy, had plenty of refers to store your lunch, or you could buy the prepackaged crap that’s available. I prefer, and recommend you bring your own halfway healthy lunch. There’s also sugar and chemical infused ‘drinks’ available but I stuck to the free coffee.

The job I was assigned to be doing is ‘Picking’. In the morning, you’d walk in the plant, put your stuff into your assigned locker (anything metal, and your cell phone because cameras are not allowed – you can get fired for taking a picture inside the plant), put on your vest, grab your box cutter and gloves (provided free), walk inside and pick up a UPC bar code scanner. The scanners have the old Microsoft CE software in them so they were always giving us trouble and would just stop working or would go nuts. So you’d have to walk all the way back to one of several scanner kiosks and pick up another one. Then you’d assemble in your area for any announcements. Anyway, after that meeting and recommended stretching before work (which was fine, I enjoyed that), you’d turn on the scanner, enter your employee info so they could keep track of your picks per hour, and it would check via WiFi where you were to go for that session. Then you’d walk over to the area and start picking product (go to Amazon dot com to see what kind of products), and loading it in tote bins. Which when full would be placed on conveyors. Super boring work. Sometimes, well, many times, the picking area would be up 2-4 floors. You would pick there for 30-45 minutes then the scanner would send you half the way across the plant to another area. And usually up 3 flights of stairs. The facility is so…behind the times. First off, they are still using Microsoft CE UPC scanners. Gah! Then, they don’t even have CD/DVD automatic picking carousels. Such an easy product to handle automatically…but here instead, we humans were trying to sort through randomly placed CDs in a shelf bin looking for the right one out of 5 or 10. Nor do they have automatic pallet wrappers, which are an industry norm…they’re still having 2 to 3 people wrap them with clear plastic by hand. I was not impressed in the least with Amazon’s seemingly antiquated warehousing techniques.

 

It only took two work days for me to realize that my feet wouldn’t take the pounding of walking on hard cement for 10 hours per day with the shoes I had and after my first two 10 hour days, I had Wednesday off so I spent hours driving around shopping for decent shoes. Finally found a pair which seemed like they would work and I also bought those gel inserts…just in case. Found them over at the Walmart store across the street from the warehouse so that made it handy a few weeks later when I returned them for a refund. They were really clean so I didn’t think much about it.

The next work day, and my feet are killing me near the end of the work shift. Even with the new cushy shoes and the inserts. Yikes! Not sure I’ll make it to the end of the season (Xmas Eve). So, I try different tricks in an effort to reduce the amount of walking I’m having to do. Like quickly becoming more efficient in my picking, and asking HR to be transferred to a different work crew. Some of the work crews only have to walk a max of 5 miles per day. Pickers walk 5 to 18 miles per day. But no, I’m told, can’t transfer. Can’t get on the forklift crew (my certificate is expired). Can’t be a tester of returned or damaged items. Damn.

It was at the end of the first week that I remembered something. I have totally flat feet! Born with them. That’s why I can’t walk all those miles on cement. When I joined the Navy as a reservist, and went to boot camp, I only had to run over to medical and get excused duty…because of the blisters, but the docs knew I had flat feet too so there was never a problem getting excused. I’d get an excused duty chit without even having to go to medical. So I’d end up only marching a few minutes, get excused, and just hang out while other recruits marched for hours. Not bad.

But the thing is, my flat feet had never been a problem for me in the 50 years since boot camp in anything I’d done, so of course I’d forgotten about them. Now here at Amazon, it was quickly becoming a big problem. With the 10 hour days, and 4 day work weeks to begin with (as it gets closer to xmas we were told there would be mandatory overtime up to 60 hours per week), I’d work as long as I could, then just walk off the job and punch out. Usually one half hour up to two hours before my shift was officially over. And occasionally, I’d go talk to human resources about the problem and my wanting to stay, but only with less walking. Even tried to get onto the IT crew. Nope, no help at all. Funny though, no one ever called me in their office to fire me or ask why I was checking out early…possibly because they already knew it was my feet. Since I wasn’t shy about telling them in the office that was the problem.

The reason I took the job to begin with was I wanted to make a few thousand quickly to help pay for my European tour. Now it was looking like I wouldn’t make it. At night, after the shift was over, even though I’d knocked off an hour or so early, my feet would be killing me. Wouldn’t be until after a night’s sleep that they felt, OK. Not great, just OK.

Then there was the absolute lack of help from the Workamper office liaison with the supposed ‘shuttle’. I was lucky to find someone in the Fallon RV park I was at that had my shift and would be able to give me a ride every day. Lucky for me I’d arrived 4 days before my Amazon 1st shift…that gave me time to search out someone to get a ride with. But I received scant information from Amazon’s HR about the supposed ‘shuttle’ AFTER I’d gotten there to work. It’s like they hold out this carrot on their web site and in the employment info they’d mail me…”Oh, there’s a shuttle folks”…but it turned out to be BS. There was a shuttle from one RV park in Reno last year. But it was a private venture and no one at Amazon had bothered to call them this year. If they had, they would have discovered that it’s out of business. The Amazon website (in early 2013) doesn’t mention that, or the fact that it only went to one RV park in Reno when they are sending workers to other parks in Reno, Fernley, and Fallon. Dumb asses. Every time I tried to get info about the shuttle in the first week, I always got the run around, they didn’t even know the name of the company that was doing it. They’d just point me to the sign up boards that people used outside the lunch room to fill in their details and whether they were looking for, or providing, a ride to one of the many RV parks or just a nearby town. Finally figured out that I’d have to get the info myself, which is when I finally discovered it only went to one RV park, and wasn’t in business any longer. If you’re going to tout a shuttle to induce people to drive hundreds of miles at their own expense to work for you, they shouldn’t be mislead. That’s just wrong. I’m aware that many RV’ers have trucks or towed vehicles, but I’m not one of them and I was counting on the shuttle when I accepted the job. It was just luck that I found rides when I needed them.

The Fernley fulfillment center is 750,000 square feet and runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was instructed to show up on a Monday for orientation. It’s there that they complete the paperwork for you and issue you your badge. The orientation was helpful, but as you know, orientation anywhere is usually lacking in real information. To give an idea of what it’s like there, on your 2nd day, you park in the huge employee parking lot, walk into one of two employee entrances, scan your badge, walk into the hallway and there’s an employee lunch room, the bathrooms and inside those, your assigned locker. Store your stuff, dropping off your phone, any metal you’re carrying, and grab your provided vest, box cutter, gloves and whatnot. Walk inside the main warehouse area and pass ‘by’ the metal detector you’ll have to pass ‘through’ anytime you leave the warehouse. Stand in line at the electronic scanning timepunch machines until time to check in. Walk quite a ways to a central area and grab a UPC code scanner. Then walk to the meeting area for your crew. Listen to daily announcements while someone leads everyone in their stretches. After that, turn on your scanner and walk to wherever you’re suppose to start picking product. There are handout guides to the many different sections of the warehouse and it’s fairly confusing at first.

Now in my 2nd week at Amazon, I’m punching out early occasionally. And my ride tells me that they got their preferred shift so wouldn’t be able to take me to work any longer. Damn. On the very last day they would drive me, when I was thinking I’d have to drive my RV to work for a few days, I ran into a couple that were staying at Fallon RV park that could take me in for 2 more days, at which time they were moving to the RV park in Reno. Hmmm. I had made a reservation for the following Monday at that very park back when I was having a hard time finding a place to stay…but hadn’t cancelled it…just in case. So I make arrangements, and head over there that weekend. Now I have a permanent ride because they weren’t planning on changing their shift, and the wife was planning on staying at Amazon the entire session. Up to Xmas Eve. Great.

It’s further away so I have to get up even earlier. Gah. Hate that. By now (Oct. 2nd, 2013), it was dark when I got up, and on the drive back from Fernley, it would be dark by the time we got to Reno.

By now, I’m pretty efficient at the job, and I’m not taking too many extra steps to find the appropriate bin that the handheld WiFi picking scheduler is sending me to. But every 30 minutes or so I’d have to walk half a mile to get to a different section. But still, even being more efficient isn’t helping my feet. The pain starts by noon now, in my feet, then progresses up my ankles to knees, to hips. Booo. By the end of the day, I’m limping. And I start knocking off earlier in the day as the week progresses. It was a half hour, then an hour, then 1.5 hours, then 2 hours early.

OK, well, I just can’t take it. So, after less than a month at Amazon, in my first real job in decades, I tell HR that that will be my last week. They aren’t interested in transferring me to another department. OK, bye. So ends my adventure at the Amazon picking facility in Fernley, Nevada. It wasn’t just me, by-the-way, the dropout rate is pretty high due to the 10 hour work days, the odd shifts including weekends, the amount of walking necessary, the mandatory overtime close to Xmas, and the lack of up-to-date courtesy info.

(On Edit: Seems as though Amazon is going to be closing the Fernley facility and moving to a newer plant in Reno. That’s not good for Fernley, disastrous actually, but this will give Amazon an opportunity to modernize).

Some good things about the experience were that I made a few friends (not the kind to hang out with at a bar though), had my RV space rental paid for 2 days before, the entire time during, and 1 day after I worked there, and made a little extra money. Over a thousand. After I moved to Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, I had some fun over in their casino. Played $20 one afternoon while I was waiting for the buffet to open. Hit a winner on my 4 spin somehow. Couldn’t figure out what I’d won, but it seemed good. The lines flashing and bells dinging went on for quite a while. The machine only shows you the credits you’ve won and not the total in dollars until you cash out. When it finally stopped, I just pressed ‘Print ticket’ and it shows $820 bucks! I thought it was going to be $80 or so. So, nice surprise. Went to dinner, then home, and put all those nice hundred dollar bills in a kitchen drawer.

Mary was my ride to work for the final 3 weeks at Amazon. We were both now at Reno, and there was a company get together and she invited me to ride with her. The Amazon maintenance manager always had a BBQ for workers around this time of year and I thought I’d be able to talk to him and see if I could get into the maintenance department.

He thought it was possible that I could move over to maintenance since I have an electronics degree, worked as an electrical contractor for several years, and the like.

But the next work day, in HR, they were less than encouraging. Even dropping names didn’t seem to generate interest. Gah! My overall feeling was that the HR department was just south of competent. Or there were rules they were too timid to tell me. (My pick counts based on picks per hour were good). Either way, I was disappointed that I couldn’t stay and work longer. The BBQ was nice though.

Above is a shot from my RV spot. I didn’t have to walk to the casino, they’d send a guard in a golf cart to pick me up. I really started to enjoy my stay there because of all the things to do on my days off. There is also a sports bar to the right of the hotel where I went several times to watch pro football. They also had Taco Tuesdays. Yum.

Over to the left is a driving range. The holes are out in the water in this large man made containment pond on these floating (man made) islands, and if you were practicing your drives, and happened to sink a shot, you’d win a prize. I happened to be sitting at one of the tables watching people shoot when a guy whacked a great drive, it hit the green, bounced once, then rolled in the cup. Won a trip to Hawaii for two. Huh. Cool. Here’s a close up shot of my space in their nice RV park:

I was within spitting distance from the WiFi antenna but GSR has one of the worse WiFi setups ever. It was just dropping off the air all the time. I’d have to call the office, if it was open, they’d call the casino’s IT guys, they’d reset it and it would be back up for a few hours. Terrible sometimes because it would be off for hours at a time.

I paid for a few days space rental at GSR after I’d quit the job at Amazon and had a nice relaxing time. I didn’t really need the money from the job, it just would have been nice to have had in my pocket. Plus, I wanted the working experience since I haven’t had to really work hard for 20 years…thought it would be good for me.

But, it came time to leave Reno, and off I headed back south with an idea of staying in a small mountain village. I chose Beatty, Nevada, which is about 6 hours drive from Reno. It has an interesting history and is a small, quaint town. The kind of place I prefer.

I found an older RV park right in downtown (there are a couple on the outskirts of town too) named the Space Station RV Park. It’s rough around the edges and may not be appropriate for youngsters (though there were a couple families there enjoying themselves) but I enjoyed the hours I sat at the picnic table outside the convenience store BSing with the locals and sharing a drink or three. Especially enjoyed Don’s company. He’s an old timer that has lived in Beatty for most of his life. Came here just after he got out of prison for larceny back in the 40’s. Went straight, married, raised a family, and did some gold mining in the hills. Great stories.

It was a little cooler here in mid-day, cooler than Reno, but since it’s in the mountains, it gets very cool at night.

And here’s a shot of the casino that the towns asshole big shot millionaire tried to put in.

The story was that the guy owns most of Beatty, including one of the three casinos in town. So he was pretty successful and talked up the older owner of one of the other two casinos in town. The guy was close to retiring so he sold it to this guy…who everyone in town knew to be an asshole. Cruel to his employees, vindictive, a harasser and bully if he didn’t like you, black balled employees that disagree with him, etc. You know the type. Anyway, so he had two casinos in town, and worked the last independant owner until he too sold to him. Now that he had all three, he shut down the two he’d just bought. Put over 700 people out of work. Since there wasn’t any more casino jobs in town with just one casino, many moved out of town. No work. Then the ripple effect through all the other businesses that lost work caused around 1300 people to move out. But, he had what he wanted. No competition, to hell with those out of work.

Well, anyway, he owned the flat property across the street from the RV park and decided to build a brand new casino. He knew that the hills that edged his property all belonged to the US government and that his building permit specifically forbade any construction that would dig into the hills. But being the person he was, once he had the permit, he ignored the rules and had the construction crew start digging into the hill for more parking for the casino. The ‘guvment shut his ass down. After he’d probably paid 10’s of thousands for the work that had been done. HAH! Got his comeuppance. The people in town that knew him, had a great laugh about it all.

Spent 6 nights here when I’d only planned on 1 or 2. Would have stayed longer but they had reservations for the entire park because of some rally of some kind. Anyway, next time we’ll visit with some feral burros.