I can see my pattern matching skills have completely deteriorated.
Right now there is a co-worker ready to quit because she is being told to move her desk after we return to the shop in a couple of months according to the distancing plan we have.
This will be the silliest reason I’ve personally seen if it comes to pass.
On the one hand, as a gearhead I can empathize. It’s insane the liberties people will take with someone else’s property. I’ve returned to cars to see girls lying on my hood posing for photos, and come out to find strangers sitting on my motorcycle.
On the other, people are people and the world is the world.
However, I had a driver quit at Domino’s Pizza when she discovered she would have to make deliveries to gravel streets and driveways in her new Fiero.
Well, I’m one of the warehouse workers. Really, about 90% of the people working FCs see it as just another job. But mainly people quit because the job can be physical. A lot of people are shocked - seriously shocked - to be sore after their first day. Sore! From working, of all things! The most common explanation I’ve heard from people quitting is “they’re not going to kill me!” Most who stay simply adapt - you wear comfortable shoes, lose some weight and build some muscle.
But a vocal minority, despite adjusting, feel that instead Amazon should reduce the workload by 50% and hire twice as many people, because Jeff Bezos is rich. They aren’t interested in hearing that he’s rich because of the stock market, not Amazon profits, or that Amazon makes most of their profits from web services and Prime subscriptions rather than the warehouse work we do. They’re tired, he’s rich, it’s not fair, period.
Shows how much thought they put into it. “None of these are very heavy. I can pick up a book, put it in a box; not a problem.” Yeah, well it’s not just picking up one book, it’s picking up several books every few seconds again and again and again. It’s not one individual thing that tires you, it’s the repetition; it’s the on-your-feet-4-hours-straight.
That’s a feature, not a bug. He’s building what little profitability Amazon purchasing makes on the back of overstressed workers. Purchase Price consists of three basic things: cost of goods, cost of service, profit. You want lower prices, you have to give on one of those. Packing and shipping is not cost of service - it’s cost of goods (basic shipping. Overnight, etc. is “service”). He’s squeezing pennies out of the COGS by increasing workload and stress. They’re not saying “eat the loss of more workers” they’re saying “hire more workers and increase your sale price.”
Well, you never know when that new Fiero is going to burst into flames and you’ll have to make a quick getaway!
I’d be so tempted to fake a memo giving her the choice of moving her desk to the other side of the room, or into “suite 666”, also known as the broom closet.
(cf. Morgan’s desk on ‘Chuck’)
…
Okay, I have a new mantra…
Any time my family was moving, or redecorating, or donating to Good Will - basically, any time we were putting things in box - my dad would tell, with relish, of the time he and my mom moved out of their first apartment. My mom got a cardboard box that had originally held a dishwasher, carefully filled it corner to corner with neatly stacked books, and then was completely shocked when the box was too heavy to move.
“But books aren’t heavy!” she reportedly protested.
A guy who’s an extended family member worked retail management after getting out of the military. He doesn’t do that any more. I asked him why, once.
His story: he was a manager for a big box store. He said he loved the job, was very goo at it, was well paid (“six figures including bonuses”).
One day it came to his attention that an employee (“a kid”) was slacking off, evading customers in the aisles, pretending to be busy when employees were needed in the stockroom/at the service desk/whatever, the works.
The next day my relative (“Corbin”) collared the “kid.” Corbin explained that it seemed as if the young man didn’t know how to do the job properly; Corbin said he’d shadow the employee for the whole four-hour shift to make sure he was doing the right thing. Teachable moments and all.
The day ended without incident. The next morning Corbin arrived at the store an hour before opening, as usual, and was met by two suits. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“We’re from corporate,” they explained. “We have a report from an employee alleging mistreatment. Mind if we come in?”
“Can I ask who the employee is?” Corbin asked.
“Sorry,” they said, “that’s confidential information.”
“So I quit on the spot,” Corbin told me later. “I said to them, I don’t need any of this political correctness crap. It’s my right to know who’s been mouthing off about me, and I’m not going to take it. I’m outta here. So I handed them my keys, got back in my truck, and went home.”
He got into another line of work, certainly not as lucrative as big box managing and he certainly doesn’t seem to enjoy it. But I guess political correctness was that bad!
(Yes, it’s possible that Corbin did something that he shouldn’t have done during that four-hour shift, and the quitting was to forestall what might have ended in a firing. Thus “political correctness” was a red herring. I doubt he hauled off and clocked the employee, but he could’ve steered him somewhere while grabbing his shoulder too tightly, or not let him take a bathroom break, or called him names–he looks intimidating and he speaks forcefully. So who knows. But the stated reason was that he wasn’t going to be given the name of the complainant at that stage of the game–which just seems bizarre to me.)
That’s pretty typical, and I think actually a pretty good HR policy. It’s a big part of forestalling retaliation against an employee for filing a complaint. If you know that the first thing that happens when you file a complaint against your manager is that your manager will be informed you filed a complaint against them, you are a lot less likely to file a complaint in the first place.
I also don’t know how “political correctness” enters into this at all. From your telling, I don’t know how “Corbin” would either, since he apparently resigned on the spot without knowing anything more than that a complaint had been filed against him.
ETA: and upon re-reading your post, I think that was the same point you were actually making. Sorry!
Oh, I agree with you! I think it’s an excellent (and really important) policy not to reveal the complainant’s name to the manager for exactly the reason you suggest.
As for “political correctness,” that was Corbin’s own assessment of the situation. My guess is that he filed it under “Stupid Rules Made by Namby-Pamby Liberals,” which in his mind probably has a very large overlap with “Politically Correct Crap.” If I had to guess I’d wager that he thought he’d done “the kid” a Good Deed by showing him How to Have a Good Work Ethic and thought the guy should have been down on his knees thanking the big boss for pointing out the error of his ways–and here come these guys from headquarters saying that employees actually have some rights and Corbin isn’t the lord of a fiefdom. Which, I suspect, Corbin didn’t want to hear. Anyway, taken at face value (and I’m aware that maybe we shouldn’t), he didn’t like the expletive-deleted rule, didn’t think that mere employees should be able to hide behind anonymity, and quit on principle. Take that, doofuses! It’s people like you that’re ruining America…
I disagree about the workload and stress. The quotas are set to amounts most everyone can meet - it does Amazon no favors to do otherwise. In fact, those crazy numbers they demand used to be easy to hit - when Amazon let people go home early if they made the days quote early. Everyone slowed down when it no longer made a difference. The people at my warehouse most vocal about reducing the workload aren’t stressed about making quota (rate).
And bear in mind most of what we’re processing is stuff from 3rd-party vendors that Amazon ships for, charging a 30% cut. We’re not the ones being squeezed, imo.
Back in like 1990 I had a good job at a call center (I was 19), and I quit because I had a hangover. No call, no show 
Had an employee who took the option of spending more time on her phone over employment.
Had a dog on the table, paying no attention to it at all, but rather to the phone in her hand. I asked her to put away the phone, and pay attention to the dog in her care. She decided that this was an unreasonable request, and quit instead.
I give reasonable breaks, and I don’t make an issue if someone wants to use their phone between dogs briefly, but I can’t have people letting dogs get injured due to inattentiveness.
I once quit a fast-food job because I was coming down with a migraine. I asked if I could leave, and instead was reassigned to the fry station. I walked over and looked at the fries. With superhuman effort, I did not throw up, but left never to return. They offered my job back to me the next day, but being a teenager, I said, “Nah.”
That’s literally breaking and entering.
At one retail job I briefly had a coworker who was dirty and she stunk. Her clothes were dirty. Her hair was greasy. Her excuse was that her husband was allergic to perfumes. One day she burned her wrist and came in with a big bandage that just got dirtier and started falling off after a few days.
I don’t know if a customer complained or what but the department manager took her aside in private and told her there are unscented soaps and laundry detergent so that she could clean up without bothering her husband’s allergies, trying to be really nice and non judgemental about it.
She took off in a huff and never came back.
So why did Amazon terminate the ‘go home once you make quota’ plan?
I stupidly quit my very first job ever. I had a minimum-wage job as an office boy in an architect’s office (it was on the top floor of a NYC skyscraper with fabulous views). My job was to operate the office equipment like the blueprint machine and to do occasional errands. I didn’t have a supervisor; everyone in the office was my supervisor. One day I had to run two errands to two very different areas of the city. I had a great deal of respect for (and fear of) the two architects who gave me the assignments, and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Any rational person would have worked it out with the two of them, to decide which errand to do first. But I was not a rational person, I was a dumb teenager. So I panicked, went to lunch and never returned.
It’s been 57 years, and I’m still kicking myself for that stupidity.
When I initially got hired 20 plus years ago we were transitioning to direct deposit. I was coming from the army and had direct deposit for awhile so I thought it was a great idea. There was a lot of complaining from the old guys. The main complaint? Now their wives would know how much money they made. Some either lied about their salary or didn’t tell about the several extra checks we got a year (uniform allowance, holiday pay). There were a bunch of retirements around that time. I have no idea if some were hastened by this.