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Comment by silverquiet | Hacker News Reader

I think Amazon is actually among the best compensated of the "shit jobs" out there, but it is about the shittiest (certainly it's the pissiest; I've seen the bottle bombs their drivers like to leave since they don't really accommodate bathroom breaks).

I don't even really find much hypocrisy amongst the upper class here; they'll outright say that these are shit jobs not intended to provide a living wage; certainly not something you can raise a family on. Probably said as, "those people should have gone to school".

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Amazon warehouse jobs are so bad the company has to have contingency plans for when they have burned through the entire available labor force. Walmart does not have to have such plans.

The Walmart distribution center built around where I grew up was not known as a hub of shit jobs. It was a source of envy. Amazon warehouse worker pay, in contrast, lags behind Walmart by several dollars per hour and offset several years. And that's assuming you're actually hired by the company directly, rather indirectly as a second class worker brought in through the timeless scam involving contractors employed by staffing agencies.

I work for staffing agencies at I like it. Please do not assume everyone wants a traditional 9-5 job.

Total anecdote but had the opportunity to chat at length with an Amazon warehouse worker (in the UK) over the holidays. They said it’s hard work but they got various perks, decent pay, they didn’t even want to be a supervisor which they had been offered, and liked it.

Would I want the job? Hell no. But this is an intelligent person who is doing this because they have no other option.

The UK has social safety nets that Americans don't get when they have a job. Amazon isn't allowed to play the same game in countries with worker protections.

I can certainly believe there are issues for Amazon workers in the US that don’t apply in the UK to the same degree. Although Amazon does seem to have various heath insurance plans for US workers. I assume workers have to pay some amount in as is the case with most jobs, including white collar ones, in the US.

Amazon management has to routinely come up with contingency plans after having burnt through/burned out the local available workforce. I have never heard of any other company ROUTINELY has that issue.

Working through a staffing agency or not and working "a traditional 9–5 job" or not are two totally separate subjects.

Didn't Walmart get caught locking people inside their facilities?

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4146540

What's your point? Because _my_ point is that if you think about Walmart and however bad you know (or heard) that it is, Amazon is worse than that.

Amazon does not have a physical whip yet, but they do have a mental whip of tracking every minute of every day you do at work, and ranking you among all the others working there.

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