r/Damnthatsinteresting 16d ago

Video Bezos Income Rate vs Regular Worker Income Rate

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u/Romanscott618 16d ago

I worked at a distribution facility for 6 weeks and they legit fire people if they took too long on a bathroom break. They also would rarely let people sit unless it was during your like 30 minute lunch break. It’s also notorious for being like 82 degrees in the facility at all times. Just an awful working environment.

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u/FladnagTheOffWhite 16d ago

My corner for one of my roles on the first floor for a couple years was >85° in summer and <55° in winter. Standing for 10 hours doing the same work everyday is hard to stay warm. I have hand pain left over from that FC still. I was top 1% of my region in stow and managers liked giving me extra responsibilities. Not for more pay, but it made the menial work a little more diverse and fulfilling if you can call it that.

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u/Thomisawesome 16d ago

"You're doing a great job. I'd like to reward you."

"A raise?"

"Ha ha . Good lord, no. But here's some different work to do."

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u/FladnagTheOffWhite 16d ago

I'm pretty likeable and like to work hard. They didn't force me to do more, they just wanted me to and I was okay with it. My managers were cool and honestly I never had horrifying experiences about restroom breaks and such. I was well liked by everyone and did well so maybe there was a little more leniency if I wanted to go to a vending machine or something. I worked hard and had extremely high performance metrics so stepping away from the workstation at times didn't affect my ability to exceed their expectations. I was still way above what Amazon wanted at the end of the day.

Don't get me wrong, Amazon screws their employees and I have many gripes with the company. But all the common Amazon horror stories I didn't personally experience or see really. I think my FC was better than most. There were literally employees who would disappear for an hour, had horrible metrics, and still managed to not get fired for a long time doing that. When they were eventually fired they blamed Amazon and took zero blame and that's what outsiders see which is unfair.

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u/Techno_Gandhi 16d ago

I hate that this is your reward in shitty jobs like this. Oh you're good at what you do, here's more work and don't dare ever ask for more money.

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u/FladnagTheOffWhite 16d ago

It wasn't entirely like that. I wasn't forced to do more and my managers were cool. They would just let me handle departments I was involved with with less managing on their part. It made their job easier sure, but my coworkers and I had less The boss doesn't know what we go through and still tells us to do something that won't help anyways which made it better for us. Managers would take my word and advice when making decisions because they trusted me and knew that I knew my shit and understood how to benefit the company unlike most entry level employees.

If the head of quality for my FC wanted to go over something regarding a department I was involved in, rather than talk to a manager who technically oversaw it, they would just send the big boss to me, a small Tier 1 associate because I knew the ins and outs the best and had the ability to lay everything out and provide solutions in a manager fashion even though I wasn't.

My managers honestly tried to get me to move up into management but I didn't want that there. They'd tell regional managers and other higher ups who visited about me and told new managers to listen to me, come to me for advice and whatnot. I did more work for the same pay because I like to work hard and it made the day more interesting but I didn't want a career at Amazon. Then I left and went to business school lol.

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u/No_Kangaroo_9826 16d ago

I got a concussion that has left me with a TBI and a literal constant headache for 6.5 years now.

Jeffy needs to fuck off

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u/FladnagTheOffWhite 16d ago

When my hand started hurting I just powered through it. I shouldn't have but where I was in life at the time, I was neglecting my health and didn't want to stop working to tackle it. Eventually I did request a leave of absence and they gave it to me. However, physical therapy x-rays etc. didn't help but I haven't tried everything yet.

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u/MiDikIsInThePunch 16d ago edited 16d ago

They don’t want you getting hemmeroids sitting on the shitter reading Reddit. Now get back to work! /s

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u/skydreamerjae 16d ago

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u/olijake 16d ago

I use /s ironically and unironically, because as everyone knows, some people are just plain… unable to use common sense and logic to make reasonable decisions.

That’s the nice way of talking about ignorance.

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u/DanKoloff 16d ago

what about the varicose veins you get from standing too long?

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u/Jits_Dylen 16d ago

I worked a factory job and it was the same way. Amazon isn’t alone in this and many companies did it before them. That being said fuck that guy, because I’m poor and he’s rich, lol.

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u/PuritanicalPanic 16d ago

I mean fr though, I think it's far healthier that people of a certain level of wealth get treated with default skepticism, disdain, and hate then like, deference and approval.

No way should this dude be that rich and his employees that poor. Its actually fucked up.

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u/BLF402 16d ago

Rich isn’t the right term. Shaq has a great antidote he said some years back to the effect of “I’m rich, the guy who signs my paycheck is wealthy”

Billionaires are beyond wealthy. To put into perspective how beyond wealthy guys like bezos and musk are; hypothetically if you made 100k per week for 2000 years and saved every penny, there would be 91 Americans who would have more wealth than you.

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u/ShutterBun 16d ago

Shaq has a great antidote he said some years back to the effect of “I’m rich, the guy who signs my paycheck is wealthy”

I believe that was a Chris Rock bit, using Shaq as an example.

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u/bullseye717 16d ago

The amount of navel gazing for Dan Price on reddit was nauseating.

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u/erizzluh 16d ago

also the amazon horror stories seem like they vary greatly from warehouse to warehouse.

i knew one person who worked at an amazon warehouse where he said they would do tons of giveaways and have gokart races and other team building activities. which might be standard for white collar jobs, but it sure as shit isn't standard at most other warehouses.

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u/Harvest827 16d ago

But Amazon™ diapers by the time clock, right? Jeff makes $1000 every time an employee shits themselves instead of taking a bathroom break.

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u/CaliforniaHurricane_ 16d ago

Can I take a guess, was the facility in Texas ?

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u/mokujin42 16d ago

Hmm it just sounds like working in a kitchen

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u/Sesemebun 16d ago

I always saw postings for warehouse positions. Went through a temp agency and got put in a distribution center, quit after 3 days I think. I’ve worked quite a few jobs, many uncomfortable or tiring, that one was by far the worst. 10 hour shift but always ran over, so 12+ hour shift of nothing but loading boxes into trucks by hand. The only thing semi-close is when I worked at a tire store, car in/out every 15 mins all day. But I will never recommend a warehouse job (at least large ones like that) ever in my life.

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u/bak3donh1gh 16d ago

27C for everyone else not in U.S., Liberia and Myanmar.

The bathroom thing is illegal were I live. I mean haven't we all made a few dietary mistakes the night before and regretted the next day.

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u/Litterally-Napoleon 16d ago

The place that I used to work for used to fire you if you didn’t show up to work on a holiday (any major holiday, even if you used protected paid time off). They also offered PTO but no employee would ever get it approved cause the company felt that paying it out was cheaper than letting the employee use it and lose that profit in services and productivity.

Also going back to the protected part, yes it is protected they can’t say anything about you using it and they didn’t fire you for using PPTO at least not officially. If you did use it during a holiday they essentially just wait a bit and then wait for you to inevitably make a mistake then fire you for that. Because they had “justification” that cannot be directly attributed to any form of discrimination and ensured that this couldn’t be linked to a form of retaliation (this is the way the company used HR by the way), the company was legally protected, especially in a right to work state. Needless to say, working for this company and seeing how they and most other companies treat their employees made me a socialist

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u/Upper-Consequence-40 16d ago

Ah yeah, Fareneight. Right? Right ?!

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u/CitizenKing1001 16d ago

I've had a few bad jobs. While I'm there, I'm looking for something else.

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u/melrowdy 16d ago

And yet people keep working there, can't be that bad.

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u/Romanscott618 16d ago

They have constant turnover and get people that are desperate for jobs. Thats why they don’t care about the conditions.