The Amazon megacycle

[MillCreek]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gk3w/amazon-is-forcing-its-warehouse-workers-into-brutal-megacycle-shifts

The article mentions this may be the wave of the future in warehousing and logistics.

[just Warren]

Wouldn't it be nice if there was such a labor shortage that these workers could easily find other jobs?

[Ben]

I may have missed it, but I didn't see how many days in a row they work that shift.

When I was a young buck in the oil patch, when I was on an offshore rig, I often worked on morning tower crews: 1800-0600, week on, week off. I hated it with a passion, but that was the job.

When I bettered myself and got a job at the county dump, I worked four 10 hour days. In my first few years as the new guy, my three days off were split to Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday. Later I was able to get three days in a row off, Thu-Sat. I loved it. The 10 hours was nothing, and I was doing physical labor. It was way worth having the extra day off every week, and having a weekday off let me do all kinds of things, like fishing, without crowds. I often ended up working one of the days off for OT.

Maybe these evil jobs that let me save money for college traumatized me without me knowing it, and I need to have a PTSD therapy session with AOC in DC. 

Edit: Oops, I meant 1800-0600.

[Ron]

When I was a young buck I remember "four twelves" being a thing in the Pipefitting trade.

Usually that was power plant or steel mill work.

[Boomhauer]

Dear god a whole 10 HOURS!? How brutal!!! As I said in another thread cue the bitching about having to work. Talk about living in a nation of pussies...

I would LOVE 4-10s and have wanted them ever since I started working

[HankB]

I didn't have night shift work, but back in my high school days during summer "vacation" I worked in a warehouse and my normal work week was 60.5 hours - I got time and a half for anything over 40, so I was making decent money, even at that day's minimum wage. And on a few occasions when things were really busy, I got to work as much as 70 hours.

Elsewhere, my paternal grandfather worked the night shift - different job, different company. And an uncle on my mother's side worked nights for the Tribune newspaper in Chicago.

So I'm not going to shed many tears for these Amazon workers.

[Northwoods]

Those people are way too soft.  When I was laid off from Boeing I took a job at a juvenile prison.  Paid the same an unemployment, but hey, at least I was working so I felt a whole lot better about myself.  Anyway, being new I got the shifts the people who’d been around for a while didn’t want.  I never said no to a shift.  Not unusual to work doubles (so 16 hours) with just a single 8 hour shift off before working another double.  I do that as often as they’d let me.  Got in trouble a time or two for getting over 40 hours in a week before they realized it.

[MillCreek]

So right now at my leadership level, between COVID, mass vaccine events, and the normal course of business, almost all of us are working from 0700 to 1800 or so with no breaks and I eat lunch while doing even more Teams meetings.  I have been up since 0600 here and while waiting for the biscuits to bake, am catching up on my email at work. It is clearly different sitting on my butt in front of a computer as opposed to slinging boxes in a warehouse, but it is a good thing we are all salaried so the System doesn't have to pay us overtime.

[Angel Eyes]

Dear god a whole 10 HOURS!? How brutal!!! As I said in another thread cue the bitching about having to work. Talk about living in a nation of pussies...

I would LOVE 4-10s and have wanted them ever since I started working

Same here.  Used to work a 4-10 schedule at a certain employer many years ago.  Loved it.  Three-day weekends every week. 

[Ron]

So right now at my leadership level, between COVID, mass vaccine events, and the normal course of business, almost all of us are working from 0700 to 1800 or so with no breaks and I eat lunch while doing even more Teams meetings.  I have been up since 0600 here and while waiting for the biscuits to bake, am catching up on my email at work. It is clearly different sitting on my butt in front of a computer as opposed to slinging boxes in a warehouse, but it is a good thing we are all salaried so the System doesn't have to pay us overtime.

As you know, even though I spent most of my life in the trades I've been in a retail environment for a while now.

It's not the same exhaustion as in the trades but it is still exhaustion working long hours in a non physical job.

Public facing is in many ways the most draining, soul crushing thing I've ever done.

Continually, I have to ask God for grace to not despise my fellow man.

[RocketMan]

Before I retired from Target I was working 4-10s as a salaried systems engineer.  Did that for sixteen years.  That didn't count being on-call 24-7 for systems problems the mechanics couldn't deal with.  It also didn't count the many 16 to 30 hour work days when things went truly fubar with our automation.
Of course, being in the military years back brought another whole level of suck to the number of hours in a day one could be required to work.

[charby]

My brother is a food service delivery driver, he goes to work at 12-2am (depends on the route) and usually works until 2-3pm most days.

[BobR]

Nursing schedules. So many.

I have worked over the course of my Nursing Career; 7-a 3p 5 on 2 off, 7p-7a 6 on 6 off, 7p-7a 7 on 7 off, 7p- 7a 5 on 2 off 2 on 5 off, 6:30a 4P M-Thu one week M-Fri the next. If you can dream it up I am sure somewhere there is a hospital that would accommodate you just to get another body. During those long stretches off you can count on a couple of phone calls to see if you want to work an OT shift.


bob

[Perd Hapley]

My brother is a food service delivery driver, he goes to work at 12-2am (depends on the route) and usually works until 2-3pm most days.

You'd think they would be worried about having their drivers on such long shifts. Just from a safety/insurance POV.

[K Frame]

In the 1890s workers in the Carnegie steel mills in Pennsylvania had a 24-hour shift at least once a month...

Yep, they worked 24 hours straight.

In a steel mill...

[charby]

You'd think they would be worried about having their drivers on such long shifts. Just from a safety/insurance POV.

Nope, pretty typical in the food service delivery industry. Most places want delivery before they start breakfast (restaurants) or after lunch time (schools and senior living). It's pretty cutthroat business, you can lose a customer by pennies or not delivering at the proper time.

[AZRedhawk44]

In high school and the first half of college, I worked summers in an eastern Oregon vegetable cannery.  Work was cyclical and highly flux.  Some weeks the plant may only run day crews for less than 30 hours.  Other weeks the plant would run 3 shifts 24 hours straight, seven days a week, and ask some shifts to double-up if possible to process everything coming in.

There were some weeks that I worked 16 hour days, 7 days a week.  It'd only last like that for 2 weeks tops before slowing back down, but that's a 100+ hour work week.  IIRC they paid time and a half from 40 to 60 hours and then double time for anything above 60.  Despite only being 18, I got asked to do this frequently when it came up because I was bilingual, I was a local rather than a migrant (small town), could drive a forklift, and knew most of the processes at the plant because I had been working there since I was 15.

Working four 10-hour shifts that straddle graveyard and day shift is nothing.

[dogmush]

 I will say that working nights/graveyards sucks, and takes a definite toll on your health.  I've done it, and could feel it drag my health down.  A close friend and my father both worked nights for more than a decade, and both reported that within 90 days of getting back to days they were happier and healthier, and losing weight.  It's kind of a dick move of an employer to just unilaterally make everyone work graveyards, with no consideration for the rest of their lives fitting in.  And if that schedule is more than 40 hours a week it could definitely suck.

I work 4-10s (days) now, and love it for the extra free day.  5 or 6 10's would get real old real fast.  (In fact it does.  We've had things happen here that required mandatory overtime for up to a month.  10 hrs a day, 6 days a week for a month.  By the end they can keep their time and a half).

I remember working 60-70 hour weeks in my 20's as I built up my skillset, and while it's doable, I won't pretend it was fun with no consequences on my life, so I sympathize with these workers for their angst.  Not enough to use the force of .gov to make their employer change it's ways, but I sympathize.  They need to decide how bad they need this job vs. their life.  At least those hours will work with a community college schedule if they need new skills.

I've done 6 on/6 off Watch Officer on a ship underway for 3 weeks straight before.  That was hands down my worst work schedule ever.

[RoadKingLarry]

I was the happiest when I was working the graveyard shift, 10p-6a. We worked a straight 8 with no lunch break on that shift, "lunch on the job". I sometimes went whole weeks without having to talk to another person while at work. Also gave me plenty of time during the day to work my side lines and hobbies.
When I was force relocated to my current location 3 years ago I went on the regular day shift, 8a-5p which includes a mandatory 1 hour unpaid lunch break. Between the added commute time and the lunch break I lost about 18 hours a week of free time. I'm not a fan and it's one of the reasons I have decided to retire now.

The Navy was really the only time I ever had really shitty work schedules. 18 hour days towards the end of our refit in the ship yard were pretty normal.
12 -14 hour days in the weeks leading up to a major deployment with a 24 hour duty day every 3rd or 4th day was just the way it was.
Underway standing "port and starboard" watch rotation got to be real suck-tastic but was doable by us young bucks. 6 hour on, 6 hours off. In your "off time" you had training, drills, divisional work, meals and the weekly "field day". 18 hours between getting to hit the open rack in the torpedo room you shared with at least one other guy was the norm to get maybe 4-5 hours of rack time (rack time, not necessarily sleep) . That would go on for weeks on end.

[Brad Johnson]

I grew up on a ranch. Dawn to dusk the norm whether it was ten hours or sixteen. Anything not during daytime hours was usually because something bad happened, and probably in conditions bad enough the weatherman was screaming to take cover or the postman got to stay home. In any case, any nighttime work outside shop or house was pretty much guaranteed to be be a long, sucky, miserable experience.

You might get a "kinda" break on Saturday if there was some kind of social thing that evening. Sunday was usually the only day without any planned work, at least when cows weren't calving, you weren't sowing or harvesting, wind hadn't blown down a couple of windmills, cattle hadn't gotten out, fences hadn't gotten pushed over, water gaps hadn't been washed out, etc. etc. etc.. Still had to get up and feed those damned horses, though.

Brad

[kgbsquirrel]

 

Twelve or more hours per day, seven days a week, six months between days off.

 

[kgbsquirrel]

I was the happiest when I was working the graveyard shift, 10p-6a. We worked a straight 8 with no lunch break on that shift, "lunch on the job". I sometimes went whole weeks without having to talk to another person while at work. Also gave me plenty of time during the day to work my side lines and hobbies.
When I was force relocated to my current location 3 years ago I went on the regular day shift, 8a-5p which includes a mandatory 1 hour unpaid lunch break. Between the added commute time and the lunch break I lost about 18 hours a week of free time. I'm not a fan and it's one of the reasons I have decided to retire now.

The Navy was really the only time I ever had really shitty work schedules. 18 hour days towards the end of our refit in the ship yard were pretty normal.
12 -14 hour days in the weeks leading up to a major deployment with a 24 hour duty day every 3rd or 4th day was just the way it was.
Underway standing "port and starboard" watch rotation got to be real suck-tastic but was doable by us young bucks. 6 hour on, 6 hours off. In your "off time" you had training, drills, divisional work, meals and the weekly "field day". 18 hours between getting to hit the open rack in the torpedo room you shared with at least one other guy was the norm to get maybe 4-5 hours of rack time (rack time, not necessarily sleep) . That would go on for weeks on end.

This man has seen the sleepy elephant. 

[dogmush]

Twelve or more hours per day, seven days a week, six months between days off.

 

That's my close to my deployed work cycle, but that seemed like cheating in this compitition.

[kgbsquirrel]

That's my close to my deployed work cycle, but that seemed like cheating in this compitition.

Oh heck naw.  Millions of us been living it for twenty damn years, it counts.

[K Frame]

I always thought that I would make an excellent vampire... I used to LOVE night shift.

Hated mornings, and absolutely despised, with unbridled passion, middays.

Then I started commuting to work with Castle Key when I started on my State Dept. contract and I VERY quickly found out that I really like an early early morning shift, as in getting up at 3:30 to 4 a.m., getting to work by 5:30 or 6, and then getting the hell out and having a nice long afternoon.

I became so good at it, unfortunately, that when I got this job, which has me working closer to a regular 9-5 day shift I've found that I can't adjust my sleep schedule to wake up any later than 5 to 5:30 a.m. Even if I do, Seren hasn't been able to make the adjustment.

So, I get up around 5:30, walk her, get her breakfast, get my oatmeal and coffee started, and run her to day care. Then I come back, eat my breakfast, take care of a few chores, maybe catch a 30 minute cat nap, and then go to work.

I'll be so happy when I can go back to my previous schedule.... I liked it so much more.