How to Make Money on Amazon [Beginner's Guide]

 

For Austin Morreale, functioning as a stower in an Amazon AMZN 1.04%▲ distribution center was hard with the end result of being genuinely unreasonable, yet in any case fulfilling. The hours were  VIP long and the work tiresome. The night shift he took at Amazon on top of his normal everyday employment as a caseworker for a philanthropic gathering was evidently impractical, however, he simply intended to do it for a mid-year, at any rate. He wanted the cash, the quick admittance to health care coverage, and the difference in pace. He endured a month and a half.

Mr. Morreale, 50 years of age, worked at the LGA9 satisfaction focus in Edison, N.J., and expresses that while many individuals he prepared close by quit inside their initial fourteen days at work, he "really had a decent encounter there." But it was difficult to work — which here and there helped him to remember his days as a secondary school competitor. "It was 10 hours of basically mind-numbingly exhausting work, essentially remaining similarly situated for the entire shift," he said. "In any case, toward the finish of the shift, I was soaked in sweat and throbbing like I hadn't hurt since I was playing cutthroat soccer

On Wednesday, California legislators advanced a bill to regulate companies like Amazon that employ quotas and other algorithm-driven work practices at their warehouses.

Knowing that if you don’t make the rate you’ll get a warning, triggered by an algorithm, and if it happens often enough your job is in danger, can be a powerful psychological spur to work harder, and possibly exceed your physical limits, as Mr. Morreale discovered.

One day at the fulfillment center, he pushed himself too hard. Lightheaded and clammy, he sank to his knees, a no-no that Amazon’s performance algorithm treats as “time off task.” Associates aren’t allowed to sit down while on the job unless it’s lunchtime or one of their 15-minute breaks.

“I don’t know if it was overexertion or what it was,” Mr. Morreale says. “My supervisors never themselves made me feel pressure. I put that pressure on myself: ‘Oh, I’ve gotta hit those numbers. Oh, I’m doing terribly.’”

In his six weeks at Amazon, he developed carpal tunnel syndrome, which abated only after he quit the job, Mr. Morreale says.

A floating rate also pits all workers at a facility against one another, says Tyler Hamilton, a worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minn., who was 22 years old when I first interviewed him in 2019.

“If there are people who cut corners, if there are people who take tons of coffee and tons of energy drinks to go faster, that raises the cumulative rate,” says Mr. Hamilton. “Meaning, if you want to keep up with the average, then you have to cut corners and drink coffee and energy drinks at every break.”

Cutting corners and getting juiced on caffeine isn’t just something people do when it’s Prime Day or peak season. For many, it’s what they do all the time. “I mean, the coffee is free out of the machines,” adds Mr. Hamilton. Another thing that is free at Amazon warehouses is aspirin, available from no-cost vending machines scattered throughout the warehouse.

It’s difficult to quantify the impact of Bezosism on workers, but some have tried. In 2019, the last year for which data are available, Amazon reported 5.6 injuries per 100 workers. The average rate for warehouses in the U.S. that same year was 4.8 per 100, according to company and federal workplace data.