It is great when your Amazon order arrives the next day, but it can be tough for the fulfillment facility worker that made it happen. The Verge has shed a light on just how tough it could be. It outlined how the company monitors and fires workers.
The system goes so far as to track “time off task,” which the company abbreviates as TOT. If workers break from scanning packages for too long, the system automatically generates warnings and, eventually, the employee can be fired. Some facility workers have said they avoid bathroom breaks to keep their time in line with expectations. Amazon says retraining is part of the process to get workers up to standards and that it only changes rates when more than 75 percent of workers at a facility are meeting goals. The bottom 5 percent of workers are placed on a training plan, according to the company. An appeal system is also part of the termination process.
Check It Out: How Amazon Monitors and Fires Its Employees
As with any job, manager and upper management have to keep an eye on their employees. This doesn’t mean we are being treated badly, it just means we are paid to do a job.
I have been with Amazon for almost 3 years. I have always made rate and stayed on task. Even stopping to talk or use the bathroom, I keep a good rate and stay on task.
Being fired for being off task, well, you have to be off task a lot of minutes or hours in a 10 hour shift. And we are not being written up by robots, our managers are humans. They are the ones with the grueling task of walking employees out when they are let go.