Well we had an interesting time yesterday with visiting Amazon. Rachel and I were fortunate in being able to tag onto a tour of Dunstable’s Fulfilment Centre. Quite an eye opener but few surprises….
The tour had been organised by our chum Sandie who runs employability courses for needy people in Dunstable. Rachel helps with most of the courses and I sometimes make an appearance too. The tour coincided with the end of the current course as a kind of finale.
We all assembled ready for the tour and once inside the building, surprise surprise, one of the group declared she was in need of a cigarette and disappeared. She managed to get back in, only by the skin of her teeth.
The tour was a slick operation. As we were checked-in with our photo ID being cross referenced with the information already supplied, we were shown into a briefing room. Once in there we were issued with hi-viz jackets and headsets. Reminded me of being a tourist in Rome last year and listening to those tour guides!
Naturally the building was massive, the footprint was the equivalent of 4.5 football pitches and had 3 floors above. The adjacent building was even bigger. They are a very significant employer of folk in the local area and creator of lots of traffic!
We were shown the whole process of goods being checked as they were processed in the “inward” section and we had a little glimpse of the cathedral-like warehouse with pallets going right up into the sky. Huge. Interestingly small goods are often stored in yellow pockets on tall trolleys, each with many barcodes.
Nobody pushes these trolleys around; there are robots silently working underneath and they simply lift the trolley up by about 1cm and then move it by gliding around an invisible grid system. They all know where to go, how to avoid bumping into things and each other. When they get low on power, they go off to be recharged and exactly the same if they need fixing in anyway. Only certain humans are allowed in the robot areas and, it seems, only on a need-to-know basis.
Naturally the robots make room for a few humans to fit in. These humans do some of the more intricate tasks such as chucking small items into a machine which then sandwiches the item in an Amazon jiffy bag before being labelled and dispatched, all by conveyor belts and other machines.
Most of the humans were young. Everyone stands, most wear gloves and are at a workstation doing repetitive work. Our guide assured us the human workers could try different work stations to do what they can do well. The guide also stressed the welfare aspect of the operation (as to address any bad press) with “physicians regularly walking around checking on people” and “toilet breaks aren’t timed”.
I would love to have absorbed a few facts about the operation but the guide didn’t know what to say, or perhaps unable to give too much away. Simple things like how many orders are fulfilled each day? How many people are working in here right now? How many robots? Who’s in charge? What about taxes? I did pick up there were something like 13 miles of conveyor belts in the building, all trundling around with boxes and packages being delivered here and there.
All pretty impressive and maybe a place the delegates on the course would aspire to work there. Certainly some were asking how they go about applying and how they progress from being a temporary member of staff to a permanent worker. The picture being painted was Amazon is a great place to work, you have “made it” when you get employed there.
Myself? I don’t think I could cope in a job like that, at least not full time. Sure it is quite physical, standing all the time but that’s probably okay. But it is the repetitive nature of the job, the lack of day light, the lack of human interaction, the sense of pointlessness.
And yet for most of the group, if they were to land a job there, it would be a dream come true. A regular job, with a regular income, a chance to have a career there, a prestigious company (debateable), a sense of purpose and hope.
We are regular customers of Amazon. I had mixed feelings about that before and nothing has changed. However you weigh up the pros and cons of online shopping against our crumbling High Streets, it is an impressively efficient and high tech operation.
At least the robots give the humans a few jobs these days……
Back in the day, I had a summer job in a bread factory. Clearly conveyor belts were much simpler in those days and I was employed to turn robotic like, moving a loaf at a time, between outstretched hands from the belt leading from the baking process onto the one leading to the slicing and packaging machine. Strangely it was never as tiring as I subsequently found office work and, of course, despite the machines (or maybe because of them) the factory still needed to employ a lot of people!
Ah yes, back in the day…. I guess most of us will have had a job like that and to be honest, I think it’s a good thing to do for a number of reasons. It is good to bring a different perspective on life, jobs and the careers of others. I once had a summer holiday selling ice creams on the sea front, in those huts built by the council many years ago. Certainly taught me a lot!