Last we heard, life as an Amazon warehouse worker will challenge you physically but the income is worth it. The company has a special name for their workers, Amazonians. These workers are on their feet for the whole day. They receive, stock, pack, ship and problem-solve hundreds of thousands of orders that are processed through these massive facilities. Each facility is up to 800,000 square feet and can employ more than 1500 full-time workers.
The pay is constantly going up these days. In fact, Amazon recently raised the hourly wages anywhere from 50 cents to $3 on top of the $15 for up to 500,000 workers. According to previous employees, if you can get over the manual labor, you can find some benefits.
Employees, current and former, were willing to share their thoughts on working with robots and what Amazon vest life looks like.
Sex Toys
When amazon said they were the everything store, they weren’t kidding. According to a current employee who preps orders for shipping, sex toys are bought more frequently than you think. He says he pulls out at least a dozen every night and tons of items he’s never even heard of.
Robot Co-workers
If you feel like your co-workers are standoffish now, be thankful you aren’t working in an Amazon warehouse. In hopes to take some of the burden off the item pickers, Amazon created a robot. These robots can reach 8 feet tall carrying various items loaded by the stowers to a picker’s workstation. The company tries to make it a little more motivating by giving the chance to have your name on one of the robots, however, to get that you have be picking around 5,000 items within a 10-hour period.
Medication Vending Machines
Working in a warehouse alone is exhausting and straining so you can only imagine what it’s like to work in one owned by Amazon. Between the bending, lifting, and moving, this is a physically challenging job. To help the employees out a little, along with candy bars and chips, you can now find medicine in the vending machines. It’s stocked with single dosages of things like Tylenol and Advil. This can really come in handy for the forgetful people who don’t bring medicine to work.
Break Times
Due to Amazon monitoring all activity, employees breaktimes tend to be adamite, meaning they need to take their required 15-minute and 30-minute break. The issue with this is these warehouses are so giant it practically takes up half of your break to use the restroom or walk from point a to point b.
Taking a load off is prohibited. They don’t allow leaning or sitting at your workstation and don’t provide any chairs nearby and it takes 5-7 to locate the breakroom or your car.
Amazon Mascot
Peccy is the Amazon employee mascots name. They even have little pins with him on it that are gifted as a reward for things such as perfect attendance. The orange blob was named after Amazon’s self-described peculiar ways. Peccy has become a hot topic amongst the employees.
Amazon Prime
Lastly, the question you’ve all been asking. Do Amazon employees get prime for free? The answer is, no. Employees don’t get any free two-day delivery, in fact, the only real benefit they get on the Amazon site itself is a yearly $100 discount that can only be used on items sold directly by Amazon.
Working for Amazon has its benefits and most certainly has its down sides, it’s all about weighing the pros and cons and figuring out what you need to be happy.
If you have an upcoming interview, check out “Easing the Interview Nerves.”