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Amazon on Panorama

Its another example of totally unacceptable conditions set by employers. I have seen a rise in this treat em mean method of management since the late 80s. Its always been there but things are getting much worse again.

You see its a no win situation for employees just like a leading question in an interview. Fear should not be a method of motivation. Its like working for someone who doesnt give a F who you are.

There has to be a point at interview stage where they assume you can do the job and are welcomed as an employee to a friendly working environment. People are not robots 365 days a year.

Ive seen these ever increasing targets for no extra pay. Ive seen firms where they enjoy sacking people. If you set the target too high in the first place, its a way of keeping people rushing around feeling suitably inadequate.

The reality is that the management are secretly happy with less and anything else is bonus time if you know what I mean

There should be some flexibility.Timing people to the second for a complete shift is not right.

If you dont value your workers as people its a very lazy and dishonest style of management.

Some fools on here think its a situation to be praised. Others have it right by saying the baseline is a Chinese sweatshop so british workers like this are F****ed
 
Coda II said:
Would it be totally impractical to do your own fulfillment? List on Amazon but ship them out yourself - if they are ordering in ones and twos anyway.
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Actually I am not sure....I see loads of dodgy vendors that amazon annoyingly seem to plug on my listing. Vendors that go down to the BBC and scoop up the promo discs I send and then list them for about 2 quid. Maybe I should set one up my self, sell them trade to amazon for 20 quid and then compete with the riff raff underneath.
 
Before we get to misty eyed about poor Amazon and MacDonalds lets us pray they dont deforest the Amazon with their other 'portfolio' of income streams for their owners

They are nasty corporate players with very little to be proud of as they scale up.
Here in blighty its Natural for the BBC to be pointed at them. Its still David and Goliath

.. I have had it re. the 'too big to fail thing'. However only Last year it was Murdoch in the stocks, now its vaguely Amazon etc. Vaguely

Storm in a slaves teacup

sadly
 
Minstrel SE said:
Its another example of totally unacceptable conditions set by employers. I have seen a rise in this treat em mean method of management since the late 80s. Its always been there but things are getting much worse again.

You see its a no win situation for employees just like a leading question in an interview. Fear should not be a method of motivation. Its like working for someone who doesnt give a F who you are.

There has to be a point at interview stage where they assume you can do the job and are welcomed as an employee to a friendly working environment. People are not robots 365 days a year.

Ive seen these ever increasing targets for no extra pay. Ive seen firms where they enjoy sacking people. If you set the target too high in the first place, its a way of keeping people rushing around feeling suitably inadequate.

The reality is that the management are secretly happy with less and anything else is bonus time if you know what I mean

There should be some flexibility.Timing people to the second for a complete shift is not right.

If you dont value your workers as people its a very lazy and dishonest style of management.

Some fools on here think its a situation to be praised. Others have it right by saying the baseline is a Chinese sweatshop so british workers like this are F****ed
Click to expand...

If you are paid to work for 8 hours, you should work for 8 hours.

Chris
 
Minstrel SE said:
Its another example of totally unacceptable conditions set by employers. I have seen a rise in this treat em mean method of management since the late 80s. Its always been there but things are getting much worse again.

You see its a no win situation for employees just like a leading question in an interview. Fear should not be a method of motivation. Its like working for someone who doesnt give a F who you are.

There has to be a point at interview stage where they assume you can do the job and are welcomed as an employee to a friendly working environment. People are not robots 365 days a year.

Ive seen these ever increasing targets for no extra pay. Ive seen firms where they enjoy sacking people. If you set the target too high in the first place, its a way of keeping people rushing around feeling suitably inadequate.

The reality is that the management are secretly happy with less and anything else is bonus time if you know what I mean

There should be some flexibility.Timing people to the second for a complete shift is not right.

If you dont value your workers as people its a very lazy and dishonest style of management.

Some fools on here think its a situation to be praised. Others have it right by saying the baseline is a Chinese sweatshop so british workers like this are F****ed
Click to expand...

I worked for a few companies before deciding I could do it better myself and started my own print company.

I wanted to treat people better than I was treated and I went too far and was taken advantage of. I'm more even handed now and that means we all get a good deal.

There are awful companies with or without terrible management and I feel sorry for employees who are stuck there - if they really are. With a bit of lateral thinking, leap of faith or a degree of risk they (90% ?) can be off somewhere better in an instant
There are some awful individuals who are bad beyond imagination. I've employed a few of them.
Good companies are hard to find.
Good employees are hard to find.

Add to that
Good customers are hard to find.
Good suppliers are hard to find.

It's life. There's good, bad and indifferent out there
 
Mescalito said:
If you are paid to work for 8 hours, you should work for 8 hours.
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When was the last time you actually worked 8 hours? I never did more than about an hour and a half actual work any given day in IT, and had I been expected to I'd have gone elsewhere! Typical day: make sure everything is running ok, swap the backup tapes, grab a coffee, get any fresh builds out of the way & roll 'em out, put feet on desk and browse t'internet or play Quake for following 6 hours assuming nothing falls over. Home time! Anything more than that and I'd put in a justification for expanding the IT dept!
 
Tony L said:
When was the last time you actually worked 8 hours? I never did more than about an hour and a half actual work any given day in IT, and had I been expected to I'd have gone elsewhere! Typical day: make sure everything is running ok, swap the backup tapes, grab a coffee, get any fresh builds out of the way & roll 'em out, put feet on desk and browse t'internet or play Quake for following 6 hours assuming nothing falls over. Home time! Anything more than that and I'd put in a justification for expanding the IT dept!
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More than semi retired now, Tony, but when in harness, I used to average a 60 hr week. It was the nature of the job. And most of that was spent actually working.

Chris
 
With pick up centres now opening up everywhere, soon the rug will be pulled from beneath the feet of the Royal Mail and whatever comes after. I assume they will be using their own shipping company to deliver to these new pick-up centres.
A mate of mine bought some jeans, went to the local co-op where they have a pick-up centre, put his debit card in the reader and a locker door automatically opened, and there was his parcel. Sounds ideal. One at every Tube station I hear.
 
Rasher said:
With pick up centres now opening up everywhere, soon the rug will be pulled from beneath the feet of the Royal Mail and whatever comes after. I assume they will be using their own shipping company to deliver to these new pick-up centres.
A mate of mine bought some jeans, went to the local co-op where they have a pick-up centre, put his debit card in the reader and a locker door automatically opened, and there was his parcel. Sounds ideal. One at every Tube station I hear.
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I prefer to have 90% of my stuff delivered to work.
Much easier for me as I'm at work or at home, rarely anywhere else and going out to collect is a PITA
 
Tony L said:
Typical day: make sure everything is running ok, swap the backup tapes, grab a coffee, get any fresh builds out of the way & roll 'em out, put feet on desk and browse t'internet or play Quake for following 6 hours assuming nothing falls over. Home time!
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An interesting style of implementing new 'builds' - arbitrarily rolling them out in the middle of the day, when everyone out there in 'user' territory is working... hmmm

Not too many years ago, the large-scale projects that I helped to build for a large financial services company had to be uploaded and tested when the rest of the company was offline. That usually meant turning up on a Saturday afternoon and finishing early on Sunday morning. If anything had gone wrong and it had to be backed out, that would have to be completed before 8am Monday, so we finished later on Sunday.... That was when the online day was 8am-6pm, and Sat 8am - 1pm.

They've probably moved to providing 24 hour phone support now, so I shudder to think how the IT folks manage there today....
 
In days gone by, young boys were sent up chimneys to sweep them, as their masters wouldn't fit.

Miners spent the day underground, breathing in coal dust, and spending a happy half hour or so cleaning themselves of it before they went home.

etc. etc.

Men died in the process of making engineering icons such as the Forth Bridge, the London Tube Network, and others .....

These people walk around a (presumably) air-conditioned workspace, pick up some stuff at various locations, put it in a trolley, and deliver it to another place within the workspace. Are they REALLY treated so badly?

They're not dealing with anything hazardous, they don't need to decontaminate themselves after their shift ....
 
Tony L said:
When was the last time you actually worked 8 hours? I never did more than about an hour and a half actual work any given day in IT, and had I been expected to I'd have gone elsewhere! Typical day: make sure everything is running ok, swap the backup tapes, grab a coffee, get any fresh builds out of the way & roll 'em out, put feet on desk and browse t'internet or play Quake for following 6 hours assuming nothing falls over. Home time! Anything more than that and I'd put in a justification for expanding the IT dept!
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For most design jobs I reckon not many people can do much more than the equivalent of two three hour exams every day, any more time than that and people start making mistakes and its counter productive. Sometimes it necessary to do long hours but not more than a couple of weeks otherwise people burn out.
 
formbypc said:
An interesting style of implementing new 'builds' - arbitrarily rolling them out in the middle of the day, when everyone out there in 'user' territory is working... hmmm.
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Depends entirely on context. Sure, if you are dealing with a major one-hit departmental IT change then that obviously needs proper planning and a full user training strategy. Not so much if you are dealing with say a remote travelling salesforce etc, then it makes more sense to just have the laptop ready for each given rep when they return to base and deliver a bit of one to one training at that point. Also means you can use a small section as guinea pigs and adapt / improve future builds. I always preferred doing roll-outs fairly slowly, just gently bringing new stuff in area by area with no great shocks and a much reduced risk of major error / outage. Users seemed to like it too as once the first couple had been done the rest got to see what was coming.
 
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