911 calls from Amazon warehouses show employees in severe emotional distress & threatening suicide

(Had to truncate the subject line.)

Áine Cain
Mar. 11, 2019, 11:16 AM

Some Amazon employees are reportedly experiencing emotional distress in the workplace and threatening self-harm.

An investigation by The Daily Beast found that "emergency workers were summoned to Amazon warehouses at least 189 times for suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health episodes" between October 2013 and October 2018 at 46 fulfillment centers around the US.

The Daily Beast's report was based on interviews with current and former employees and a review of 911 call logs and police records.

"It's this isolating colony of hell where people having breakdowns is a regular occurrence," the former Amazon employee Jace Crouch told The Daily Beast. An anonymous employee told The Daily Beast that the company treated its workers like "robots."
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www.businessinsider.com...





Apparently a lot of Amazon employees have been reporting that their working conditions are really bad at Amazon. Many have complained that there are no water or bathroom breaks, and if they are able to take a break they have to work overtime to get their quotas for the day.

As a matter of fact, 911 has been receiving a lot of phone calls from distressed Amazon employees who were on the brink of suicide.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Also, Amazon has a diabolical method for calculating pay. People who earn a gross of $15 per hour, actually bring home the equivalent of $8.00 per hour. There are miscellaneous deductions that aren't explained and no one at Amazon HQ will try to explain, when employees call in to inquire.

What a coincidence, I just left a warehouse job where they had changed the work quota system. Yesterday was my last day.

I wasn't working at Amazon, but it is a multi-national company that sells shoes, boots and apparel popular with outdoors people and the military. I won't mention any name, but they are based in Michigan.

I was working 3rd shift (I loving referred to as 3rd shaft) that was typically 9 hour shifts for 5 to 6 days a week. More often than not the overtime was mandatory for 3rd shift, but not 1st, there was no 2nd shift.

As a warehouse associate I did what ever job needed to get done, be it receiving or shipping. That most often meant "picking" orders, "pulling" or "putting away" merchandise on the shelves, or loading semi trucks. While picking orders or putting things on the shelves for picking, I wore a pedometer and averaged about 18 miles a night. After about a few months I lost 20 pounds, after 8 months I wore out two pairs of work shoes and inserts. I kept up a fast pace like we all did on 3rd shift, in fact we did more work per person on 3rd than the people on 1st did. Early on we were praised for the numbers and the amount of work we did. Often we were rewarded with things like free pizza and doughnuts.

A few weeks ago, corporate changed the warehouse management system to standardize the quota system they called the rate, a system for pay incentive if you did better than 80% production quotas. If you couldn't make the 80%, eventually you'd be fired. The changes actually lowered the previous pay rate for the most productive workers and most workers who were doing 100% or better in their department were now struggling to make 80% and falling short. Out of a night crew staff of a couple dozen, I talked to at least 8 who were so pissed at the new quotas they wanted to quit, some were there for over 20 years and near getting their pensions.

All this quota system managed to do in my opinion is get most workers pissed off and worried about their job security. It also created a morale problem were many people became rude, selfish and pushy. This caused a lot of mistakes, unauthorized shortcuts, and made things like safety concerns last. Also, at one of the primary staff meetings about the new system, the workers points about old and outdated equipment and other aspects that tended to slow production were blown off and not properly addressed. After about 6 weeks of the new system, preferential treatment was becoming evident and some people were allowed to bend the rules that we were all to follow.

In my opinion, they seemed to be forcing the issue of introducing robotic automation to eliminate their current human operations. Likely to rationalize the expense of such a change by showing how poorly the human staff could adjust to the new quota system.

Lucky I saw that coming from a mile away and have a new 2nd shift job I start next week. I have been hitting the job boards for about 3 or 4 weeks before I quit, others will likely take it for as long as they can then just stop showing up before they find other employment.

Amazon warehouses at least 189 times for suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health episodes

Is this number greater or smaller for the average company the size of Amazon? With out a comparison sighting the number of occurrences at Amazon is meaningless.

Amazon is a job and a lot of people just can't handle it. Must work for pay and no trophy at the end of the week. Welcome to the real world. We haven't hired young people in a year just too much work to get them to work. I have friends in the Amazon Army and they work hard but make a lot of money for 3-4 months work.

originally posted by: mikell
Amazon is a job and a lot of people just can't handle it. Must work for pay and no trophy at the end of the week. Welcome to the real world. We haven't hired young people in a year just too much work to get them to work. I have friends in the Amazon Army and they work hard but make a lot of money for 3-4 months work.

I knew someone that worked in a system similar to Amazon.

You are wrong. It's not just a regular job and they should just yuck it up.

They basically want you to be like a robot, but humans aren't robots.

a reply to: carewemust

I believe the issue is that in announcing the pay raise Amazon then discontinued stock options and bonuses which many employees feel will reduce their income rather than increase it.
It has nothing to do with deductions.
Unless you have a source for your story.
www.nytimes.com...

Yes, Amazon is increasing wages, which will benefit most employees. But it will no longer give out new stock grants and monthly bonuses. Some workers believe that means their total compensation will shrink. Whether Amazon finds a way to close that gap will be closely watched in Washington. On Thursday, Mr. Sanders, an independent from Vermont, sent a letter to Jay Carney, who runs Amazon’s public policy, “asking Amazon to confirm how the total compensation of employees who would have received stock options — those with the company for two or more years — will be affected as a result of the recent changes,” according to a copy provided to The New York Times.

I would question this story since it comes from Bezos hating Fox and Daily Beast... both conservative venues who support trump.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

At Amazon you get ONE job task, and arent allowed to switch to a different task even if the machine they start you out on literally makes your brain hurt all week (that is on the job and all week at home too).

Its bizarre because when you go in they never even ask you anything related to education and prior job experiences so that they can put you where you can best serve the facility. Then they just stick you somewhere random and once there not even an injury will alot you a different task (that gets you a de facto termination).

Then they all up your snip to perform a certain rate. Except for every station in the building has technical issues; every single night you on a new station and it has different issues. This point here is an EXTREME oversimplification of the matter, where what it PROVES is that performance isnt actually the true objective.

The true objective is subjectifying humans, washing them 'all' out except for the 'cream' of the crop it yearns for amassing: workerbee drones that just so happen to be well suited for Amozon's most insidious submission while also up to the spec of being able to perform..... AND THEN of course psychopaths true true psychopaths for the management type positions (the sorts who are naturally charming while also being down with firing people at a constant weekly revolving door machination of scene).

In each 'cream case' there we're talking maybe 5-10% of the population maximum that could ever fall into those two groups.

Its fricking BIZARRE the model, the most anti-human thing I've ever seen. I can go on and on and on (and intend to eventually...).

A story I found says the Daily Beast story covers a five year period and 189 calls to 911 from differing warehouses.

Still distressing to say the least.

My ? would be is this something that is unique to Amazon or is it being blown out of proportion because it's Amazon? Amazon is one of the largest employers and they have a reputation for hiring just about anyone for their low level jobs. Therefore, it's more likely that they're going to hire some mentally unstable people than, say, Starbucks or someone who won't hire just anyone (I don't reckon a strung out suicidal person would last too long in a swanky Starbucks joint with demanding dirtbags yelling at them about messed up orders).

Frankly, I doubt these people would fare much better at any relatively low level job where the stress level (and pressure to perform regardless of working conditions) is high. Such jobs are not known for being very forgiving in terms of what it does to your state of mind to be living paycheck to paycheck and still working as hard and long as you can.

Also, Bezos has not been shy about his dislike for Trump so that doesn't go over too well when he's just another liberal hypocrite.

originally posted by: DanDanDat

Amazon warehouses at least 189 times for suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health episodes

Is this number greater or smaller for the average company the size of Amazon? With out a comparison sighting the number of occurrences at Amazon is meaningless.

You'll know how bad it is if they have to start installing suicide nets,



Man, ATS could really do with a good UFO sighting or some cute cat videos today, depressing

originally posted by: MerkabaTribeEntity

originally posted by: DanDanDat

Amazon warehouses at least 189 times for suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health episodes

Is this number greater or smaller for the average company the size of Amazon? With out a comparison sighting the number of occurrences at Amazon is meaningless.

You'll know how bad it is if they have to start installing suicide nets,

Man, ATS could really do with a good UFO sighting or some cute cat videos today, depressing

The most depressing thing about that pic is that building isn't even high enough to guarantee success even if the suicide nets weren't there (especially if they couldn't get all the way to the top for some reason). More likely a jumper would just break every bone that isn't critical to life and survive in some kind of hellish crippled state for decades.

All those 911 calls could be coming from agents provocateurs 😎

Amazon should just replace all the unhappy workers with robots then they won't have to listen to the endless bitching.

You would think these people are being forced to work there against their will. If it is so horrible why don't they just find another job?

Mr. Bezos is a very thirsty man. We can see he recently began drawing his water from another man's well.

Money is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you get.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

So this company worked on a 27 hour day!
Good luck with your job search!


I worked at UPS once and literally asked the boss outside for a fight it was so bad. And he didn’t even fire me! I had to quit. If Amazon is anything like UPS then their savages.

Jeff bezos has said that it was his main goal to have his employees in fear for their jobs on a daily basis. Amazon is begging for this scenario to unfold by using fear as a motivator. Corporations like Amazon make me think twice about letting them operate here next, if not totally, tax free.

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

So this company worked on a 27 hour day!
Good luck with your job search!


I worked at UPS once and literally asked the boss outside for a fight it was so bad. And he didn’t even fire me! I had to quit. If Amazon is anything like UPS then their savages.

What? Do you have a math problem? Use a calculator at least, you got some wires crossed buddy. At the very least read what I actually posted.

On 3rd shift we typically worked 9 hours for 5 days a week, usually 1st shift followed the same schedule. THERE IS NO SECOND SHIFT as I pointed out early on. When things got busy we'd be required to work Saturdays for a 9 hour shift. That would make an 18 hour day (19 if you include the unpaid lunch break) for both shifts 6 days a week when they were busy.

Did I clear that up for you? Please tell me you understand now.

Basically this would mean working every day when that was happening, otherwise we would have Friday and Saturday nights off and start back again on Sunday night. However, first shift would often not follow this schedule and had Saturdays as volunteer, third never had a choice concerning over time due to the reduced staff number.