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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>Their most frequent topics of conversation are how they get bathroom breaks, the pleasant temperature of the warehouses, the excellent benefits and suitable wages, friendly management and how the job isn’t monotonous or tiring at all.

In other words, they took a list of everything everyone complains about, and just decided to refute them point by point in the most condescendingly Orwellian way possible, rather than fixing them, because "disagree and commit" and I guess "frugality uber alles."

Sounds about like Amazon, yep.

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...it sounds like they did fix them? People used to complain about not getting bathroom breaks and unpleasant temperatures. Either they're lying, or they did fix those things and are informing people of it.

> it sounds like they did fix them

On what basis? All we have is PR talking points presented, deceptively, as genuine opinions of real employees. That doesn't seem like evidence.

If you're accusing them of lying, that's fine. But what you claimed was that these are just talking points "instead of" fixing the issues. So, they are claiming they fixed the issues. Are you claiming they are lying about that?

Plenty of untrue statements are asserted as fact in good faith and without intention to deceive. Asking for evidence is not the same thing as an accusation of dishonesty.

Um, what? These people are representing themselves as employees of Amazon, who work in these factories. Unless they are lying about that, then they are in a position to know. Therefore, if they are making an assertion and it is untrue, they are lying. This isn't that complicated.

Is it possible that two employees at an Amazon facility might disagree about the ideal temperature of the facility?

Sure, but whether or not they get bathroom breaks is objective.

No. Different people have different opinions as to whether they get enough bathroom breaks.

You added a word there. The prior claim was that they didn't get them, fullstop.

This is a really weird line to take. Obviously by "rather than fix" he means fix and demonstrate. Otherwise, why is is up to anyone but Amazon to prove that they have fixed the issues? You are misdirecting the burden.

> what you claimed was that these are just talking points "instead of" fixing the issues.

I didn't say the words you quoted.

>...it sounds like they did fix them?

Kind of to a point.

People get bathroom breaks, but those count against your rate, and people do sometimes get written up for taking them, although that's as much a matter of Amazon encouraging ruthlessness in management as anything. I know of one anecdotal story of a worker who was apparently written up for the time it took them to clean up after their own nosebleed.

In the FC where I work, the temperatures are definitely not pleasant, but HR insists we simply aren't aware of how perfect the climate control is.

I think it's one of those things that depends on where you work and who you work under.

Ya, that seems like the most reasonable explanation.

Somebody complained about the heat on the board* a while back, and the site lead said it was up to code. They have their network-wide internal standards. I forget what the ceiling for acceptable temperature is, but it gets pretty hot in the summer, especially if you're doing inbound. I don't worry about heat-related injuries or anything, but I wouldn't call it comfortable.

* What is it, Voice of the Associates? Something like that. It's a big whiteboard in the breakroom. You write down your login and a message for management/IT/HR and they write a response.

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