fcthrowaway

I'm basing this on the articles about it. I've never personally seen it happen. I've seen people duck out to the bathroom to take phone calls and they don't seem to have run into any trouble over it; but where I work, the bathrooms aren't far from the floor.

If you have to go down four stories to get to the bathroom, on the other hand, it'd be pretty hard to maintain the rate, and if you don't maintain the rate you'll probably get written up for that.

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.

"FC Ambassador" is Amazon jargon. An FC is a fulfillment center, and an ambassador is an L1 associate who's gone through training for coaching new hires... or something like that. They don't really have added responsibilities where I am. I've heard the role is a bigger deal in distribution centers.

They wouldn't offer a bonus. They'd offer entry into a drawing for an Amazon gift card. But I haven't heard of any such program either, nor of any attempt to get us to run PR for them, other than occasionally sending out emails asking us to review Amazon on Glassdoor.

(IME, most FC associates never check their Amazon email accounts, so they wouldn't see that.)

(I've worked in an FC for over a year. I'm an L1, not a PA or manager.)

Most functions in FCs are "direct": they have rate expectations that are automatically tracked. Every minute you're in a direct function counts toward your rate. You can go to the bathroom whenever you need to, but it'll lower your rate. (Some functions are "indirect", meaning that they don't involve use of any digital tools and so can't be tracked.)

"Time off task" is also automatically tracked. If you go some amount of time without scanning anything -- I think it's five minutes -- that'll show up on your time. Managers know that people have to go to the bathroom and usually won't make a big deal out of it, but if you take an unusually long time in the bathroom you might get written up. TOT writeups are supposed to be automatic but I think managers have some discretion.

I think I was written up for a bathroom break before -- I'm not sure, since my FC isn't very good at delivering feedback -- but I was in there for half an hour, so it was sort of understandable.

There haven't been issues with bathroom breaks where I am, but there's only one floor. The site in the story with associates peeing in bottles apparently had multiple floors, with bathrooms only on the bottom floor. It'd be difficult to take a bathroom break while maintaining the expected rate and low TOT at sites like that.

I think rate expectations are consistent across the network, meaning that managers, or even site leads, can't adjust them to account for things like distance to the bathroom.

In short: you won't get written up for taking a bathroom break, and you can just go to the bathroom when you need to, but you might get written up for low rates or high time off task, and you might end up with low rates or high time off task for going to the bathroom if it's far away or you take a long time.