A four letter word

WORK

We started work last Tuesday. We are both working 11am to 4pm  Monday-Friday. We are working in quality control and we count the items in the bins to verify that they are correct. The days go fast, but there is a lot of bending, stooping, walking, and for vertically impaired people stepping up on a stool or step stool to reach higher areas.

The plant is enormous….850,000 square foot on the main floor. That is approx. 17 football fields. It is about 50 foot high and some areas have four levels of storage. There are over 17 miles, yes miles, of powered conveyors. There are millions of things here….if you can imagine it, it is probably here. Including some porno stuff. I came across my first one the other day….male porn stars nude calendar, ….moved on real quick!!!

In the next two weeks they will be bringing in about 2000 additional workers for the “peak”, which starts on Thanksgiving.

There are about 450 work campers here, and apparently Amazon loves us….because we have: good work ethic, are reliable, do not steal, show up every day. People from the temp agencies do not have those qualities.

We started 2 weeks later than we thought, but are working 5 hours more each week, so it should work out in the end.  It pays $9.90 per hour, plus free camping and electric, plus a $250 each bonus if we stay till the end, plus we will get $50 each for two friends that we recommended if they also stay till the end. The end is Dec. 23rd and we will stay here until the 25th and have Christmas with our friends here.

Everyone is tired at the end of the day, especially those that are working the 10 hour normal shift. Linda and I are both tired and Linda has has some sore back problems. For me, my hamstring muscles are sore because of the way I have to get into the lower bins, which are on the floor. The highest bins are about 75 inches up. The basic shelving is about 4 foot wide and 7 foot tall, divided into 7 rows high and several rows wide. There can be up to about 75 bins in a row and up to about 150 rows in one section and go up 4 stories high.

Material comes in on trucks and the skids are broken down and boxes put on conveyors where they go to the “receivers”, who open the boxes and scan each item in the box. They put the parts on carts and “stowers” take the carts and using their scanner put the parts in the bins. Stowers walk several miles a day. “Pickers use their scanner to get parts from the bins and put them in bins that go onto the conveyors to go to shipping. Pickers walk 11-15 miles a day and more. Shippers put the parts in boxes, but the labels on and put them on another conveyor where they go to the “sorters” who take the boxes off the conveyors and put them in area appropriate boxes that go to whatever shipper the customer specified…UPS, USPS, or other.

The computer system must be huge, as everyone in the building has a scanner that is used to show the current location of any item and there are hundreds of workers now.

See ya

Jim