Ignoring the math, it’s hard to imagine that pace. Are they forced to continually be moving? Or is the person counting picking up, say 15 usb chargers as 15 separate things?
Here's a story about a patent on a wristband that enables this kind of tracking: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/amazon-wa...
It is humanly possible. As a teenager, I worked at UPS, where I was expected to stack boxes real-life-Tetris-style into a van at a rate of 45 per minute. They could get as heavy as 30 lbs. I actually got to enjoy it after a while (biceps!), but I could never get the hang of memorizing the zip codes (every truck has a list of 1-30 that we were expected to memorize instantly).
Comically enough, the part that stuck with me the most was how bad I was at memorizing the codes for the various trucks/locations as well.
What it ultimately comes down to, I think, is: we have enough wealth as a society that if we wanted to, we could allocate resources and labor in such a way that nobody (even unskilled workers) would have to do work that miserable, at that pace, for that low compensation. But it's not an emergent property of the market, and we'd have to sacrifice some economic growth, and some payout for people higher up the ladder, to do it. We have to collectively decide whether that tradeoff is worth it, and these folks (understandably) are arguing that it is, and asking the rest of us to have some empathy.
We do exactly that every day. Price discovery in the market is the result of collective actions that determine if a tradeoff is worth it.
I agree it would be great to divide resources and labor in a more intelligent way I'm very open to ideas, but for now the reality is that some jobs are shitty and some are far better. And all the perks and benefits tend to come through hard to attain and coveted jobs. In my opinion you can't just create a system of equality, true equality will never exist. So why not just let it play out naturally? Drawing a line and effectively taking from people higher up is an astonishingly difficult line to draw and the overhead from a change like that could be devastating in itself, especially considering how Govt's are run in general.
An item every 8 seconds is a rapid pace, but at least when I did it, the orders are sequential based on the layout of the warehouse. You grab one item, look at the next item, walk an aisle or two down, grab that item. I would estimate something between 10 seconds between picks?
It is physically demanding work and boring as hell, but you end up in great shape! A couple decades ago when I did it the work paid really well for an unskilled job. Made putting up with it bearable.
Which they do. Amazon has both human and robot pickers.