Eye Opener

My son worked for 8 weeks for Amazon last Christmas season. He earned more per hour than he could get at any other entry level job around here. He travelled 17 miles each way to the Amazon warehouse. Fortunately, because it was night shifts, he was able to share my car with me. He arrived home by 7:30am each morning and I left by 8:30am. His biggest problem was meeting the unrealistic targets. For packers like him, it was 150 items an hour. The computerized system monitored it constantly. Failure to meet it meant your line manager would be reviewing you hourly. I believe that target was set to push people to try to meet it with the promise of a permanent job but few ever achieve it. I've heard that if you do achieve it, they just raise it even higher or wait until you're sick or injured to reprimand you for missing it. It seems that they really don't want any permanent workers.

My son lasted the eight weeks but that was it for him. It was a valuable experience as an eye opener for him on the reality of the conditions for low skilled workers. Amazon is probably the worst employer in their treatment of workers, but this will hopefully help motivate him to achieve bigger dreams than being under the thumb of people like Jeff Bezos.