Amazon Recap Part I

Location: Campbellsville, KY (High 50, Low 25)

Well, now that we’re getting towards the end, I feel like I have enough of our Amazon experience under our belt to summarize our time here. We have one partial day to work on Saturday, and maybe overtime on Friday. We have to wait and see if we get the “you get the day off” phone call!

When we came to Campbellsville, we were both a little apprehensive because we had heard/read how difficult the job is, and we weren’t sure whether we were up to it. Although I think we both adapted to the work, there’s no getting around it – it is hard work. In Receiving where we were, we were sometimes lifting really heavy boxes, sometimes 30, 40 pound boxes, for hours on end. But all of the jobs have their own particular thing you have to deal with. Towards the end, I spent a lot of time working as “pg”, and although the lifting part was less there, I spent the day walking around on concrete, pushing carts of product etc. So my legs had to get used to that. The last few days we were working in packing, and there our hands got a workout. But it can be done - there are a lot of campers working there who are a lot older than Harry and me, and they all seem to do well.

Another big thing about working at Amazon is that we had to be flexible. They kind of move people around like pieces in a game depending on what the needs are at that particular moment. In the morning, we would get our assignment for the day, but we learned that only meant you started there. An hour later, we might be sent somewhere else, and then a couple hours later, over to a third place. It didn’t bother me, but I saw some people who would get frustrated because they’d only been somewhere a short time, and then would be told to go do something else. Nope, have to go with the flow…

We’ve been here since early September, and we’re definitely ready for a change, but overall we really enjoyed our time at Amazon (again with the caveat that the days are long and we come home tired and ready for bed). The people are great. We lucked out and had great managers to work for. We got to know the fulltime employees that were our coworkers for the three plus months, and had a lot of fun laughing and having a good time during our shifts. And of course we made some great friends among the other campers who were on the same shifts as us. We got together for dinners at local restaurants at least one, sometimes two nights a week over the past few weeks, and we had a great time each time.

Also, Amazon really does a great job showing appreciation to its employees. Throughout peak there were scheduled events, like a baked potato and chili lunch which was yummy. (And because we had overtime we got to enjoy it twice.) They did raffles for prizes, like each week during peak that you worked all your scheduled time, they gave away gift cards, and not small ones, $100 and more. And then there were surprise treats, like yesterday during second break when we arrived in the break room to find out they were giving away pretzels and cheese, or nachos and cheese. Or another day when we arrived at the break room to find people at the door passing out fresh fruit. And then there were the Campbellsville bucks that can be used to buy stuff at HR – Harry and I went this past Monday to cash them in and we each got a t-shirt and a couple chip clips. There were many times during our months there when there were things like that for the employees to break up the day to day routine and do a little something special for the workforce.

I think this is probably long enough for the first installment, so I will continue this in my next blog with some of our favorite and not so favorite aspects of life here in Campbellsville and working for Amazon…and after the new year when we get our last paycheck I will give some details about the financial aspects, as a few people have asked about that.