I might get to ask questions. I’ll report back later.
update
The tour was interesting.
Some dude got a little aggressive with a pallet jack and tried to muscle through our group. Not sure what his deal was (other then obviously being stuck working at Amazon) because once he got past us he was just lingering around watching us. Sounds like he is going to be in the shit as a result. According to the tour guide, upper management was already talking to the guy by the time we got back.
He did try to push a full size pallet jack through a pack of 4th graders, and we did ultimately move out of his way. The tour aids tried to get him to just wait and chill but he persisted.
It was a tight space too, so there weren’t any other places he or we could go. The kids were ultimately fine, I don’t even know that they were aware it happened. All the other workers were super chill, waving and smiling at the kids, and after that I tried my best to make the little squirts bunch up if we were stalled in place.
That situation aside: The whole thing does feel like corporate propaganda. They talked about all the break rooms. They talked about the “wellness centers”, they talked about the on site doctors, they talked about the shelters for storms, they talked about the vending machines for food or equipment.
At some point they mentioned that the people either picking or placing get to “play video games at work” and that’s when kids were like “yo can I work here?”. The video games were some kind of gamification system where you win amazon slop murch. They talked about how everyone who starts a shift does stretches beforehand and during their shifts.
They did a lot of talking about the robots which was the real showcase of the tour. That stuff was really interesting. It’s a real shame these systems are used to displace workers and monopolize the distribution of goods across the economy instead of being used to free workers from tedious labor and democratize the distribution of goods. These automated systems are wildly impressive for sure.
On the placing inventory stations you could see that the guy was being timed for each place he was doing. Tracking how quickly he can get items into the racks.
Kids asked some funny questions like “how many people get hurt here every year?” And the guide said “oh uhh you know, I’m not sure. If people are doing their stretches it’ll help keep them from getting hurt!”
Some of the girls asked the guide “do the robots have genders?” And she was like “uhhhhhhh no… No we just… Their just it, an it.” And the girls were like “uh don’t do that. Don’t call them it. Maybe Them, yeah Them, call them Them. It is not cool.” And the guide said something like “I’ll keep that in mind”.
one kid asked the guide if she knew the names of the people working here and she paused for a beat and said “No. I mostly recognize their faces.”
Someone in the comments asked if we paid to take the tour: No. They do this for free.
Visiting a warehouse for a 4th grade field trip sounds bleak af.
I remember a school field trip to a mushroom farm where we got to see a literal dump truck of fresh animal shit unload outside of a large barn, and then we got to go inside the barn where it was barely lit and there were just shelves of mushrooms growing out of literal animal shit.
My school went to a box factory once. Just like in the Simpsons! It was super boring!
MY BOY IS A BOX!!!
I thought it may well prove fascinating
In 4th grade we went to a Chupa Chups factory, like a normal school
“You will spend most of your life in here! …What do you mean half the class is diagnosed with Depression?”
It’s the progress class. It’s what they’re destined for.
Make sure to identify weak points in the structure and security so your future antifa supersoldiers know where to attack on their next field trip
Rodger that comrade! ✍️
Download Wigle wifi and let it run while you’re inside.
What is Wigle wifi?
It’s a wifi (and Bluetooth) mapping app.
Pretty sure all that opensource wardriving shit got fed directly into the NSA.
Doesn’t detract from being useful to us.
How?
OUIs give us an idea of what hardware they’re running and what may be exploitable. SSIDs give us naming conventions and an idea of how their network is organized.
The entrance have barricades in case someone tries to drive their car through the door. There’s sometimes enclosed smoking areas with chain link surrounding it but the best way to get inside would probably be cutting through the bay doors for the delivery trucks.
ooh what about a trojan horse? drive up with a delivery truck, park in the truck bay, and then when they open the door your Greek soldiers are waiting inside the truck and run into the warehouse to break shit?
In middle school, we went on a trip to a factory that produced fresh and canned fish products. After guiding us through some of the worst-smelling rooms in existence, and getting our shoes wet with fish guts, they ended the tour by offering us their home-made fish burgers: a piece of bread with a fish burger patty on it, decorated with a single leaf of lettuce.
I guess it still beats visiting an Amazon warehouse
That sounds like it should be from a Simpsons episode.
reminds me of the youtube video where they show a bunch of kids how chicken nuggets are made and then all the kids still want chicken nuggets
Those kids were from a school in a high poverty area in Northern Virginia if I remember correctly. And here comes fucking Jamie Oliver stroking himself off to how they’ll definitely want to eat organic chicken breast drizzled with olive oil after he shows them how treats are made.
it’s like money laundering for animal abuse
lmao that is fucking brutal.
in the course of my degree, i toured several food processing facilities, including those for animal products. these were not tours for the general public, so definitely a behind the scenes peek at some occasionally rough stuff. literal “how the [breakfast] sausage was made” stuff for some not-premium brands.
even in those scenarios, and even in the ones that were remarkably less gross than the one you described, none of them were so fucked up as to try and get us to eat something prepared on premesis, lmao.
the only exception i can recall was like a milk processor had those sealed little wax paper cartons of chocolate milk or a little sealed up of sugary yogurt we could take on our way out the door for the ride home.
few people take them, just because we just spent the last hour smelling this faint odor of slightly off milk.
Lmao, and i thought my middle school trip to an aluminum wire factory sucked. At least it didnt smell bad.
Were the wire burgers any good?
It was pretty bad, but the bits stuck in my teeth worked as braces for a while, so that was nice.
I’m assuming the school had to pay Amazon for this privilege? lol
No they do it for free. It is definitely propaganda and PR for Amazon. I just finished the tour. Several kids said they wanted to work there.
Several kids said they wanted to work there.
definitely propaganda and PR
Alright yeah, that makes sense. I guess it’s working too…
Amazon has done guided tours for years for the retired boomers who want to get a glimpse into the Rube Goldberg machine of human suffering they unlock everytime they order a can of tube socks.
Interesting, I didn’t realize that’s something they have been doing, but I believe it. Like OP said it’s a propaganda tool that apparently worked on a few of the students…
I hate it here.
They said on the tour there are maybe 57 FC world wide that do tours.
Judging by your tour and what I know about the non-toured FCs in my area, that makes sense. Those places are nightmares with no amenities and usually no AC.
one kid asked the guide if she knew the names of the people working here and she paused for a beat and said “No. I mostly recognize their faces.”
Hijack the bus. Take the kids to a park.
^Fucking legal disclaimer and shit. It’s a joke.^
we disavow
Some dude got a little aggressive with a pallet jack
so I don’t work at Amazon but from what I’ve heard about the way they do metrics this dude might have just been screwed because his options were 1) be patient and get dinged by the computer or 2) be aggressive and get dinged by the boss
Yeah the most obvious metric tracking was in the inventory station where there was a timer counting how much time it took for you to put things on the racks.
The building “has cameras everywhere” though according to the guide. So who knows if they’re tracking these people that way.
They wouldn’t be using cameras and facial recognition to track people. Too server intensive. What they are used for is anything involving legal. Besides, there are easier ways of doing this.
The employees have RFID chips in their badges, which is used to track their location, how fast they are moving, how long they stay in one place, how quickly they complete their tasks, how long they spend in the bathroom, etc.
In normal factories, these RFID chips are usually used exclusively for inventory control, normally tracking pallets and products that require a continuous chain of custody for insurance (think caustic chemicals, nuclear material, or more typically, car and airplane parts).
Amazon always has to push the envelope with this technology though, applying it in new, misanthropic, dystopian ways.
They wouldn’t be using cameras and facial recognition to track people. Too server intensive.
Facial recognition might be too hard but simple movement tracking would be feasible. Chipotle uses cameras to track worker position behind the counter. Allegedly each are supposed to stay in invisible 4’ boxes because that’s the most optimized layout.
Simple Boolean programs like that are pretty easy. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have multiple levels of these systems running simultaneously. Amazon loves to collect extraneous data to justify their middle management.
Taylormaxxing
they talked about the on site doctors
When I worked there I came limping to the first aid station because my knees are fucked and I explained it was mostly an old injury and I just wanted ice they immediately looked disinterested and told me I’d have to fill out a stack of documents, obviously just to get me to go away so that an injury wasn’t logged.
That isn’t surprising to me. She framed it as “Just like you have a nurse at school, its like we have nurses here.”
At some point they mentioned that the people either picking or placing get to “play video games at work” (I didn’t see a single person playing these games) and that’s when kids were like “yo can I work here?”. The video games were some kind of gamification system where you win Amazon slop murch.
Lol I was there when those were released and I remember them either not working or at most 2% of people using them.
Update!
![[Update] I am on a field trip today to see the inner workings of an Amazon Warehouse with 4th Graders.](https://thelemmy.club/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2Ff8db0948-3f02-4f92-89cf-a8c2d77910dd.jpeg){kind=link}