ONJava.com -- The Independent Source for Enterprise Java
oreilly.comSafari Books Online.Conferences.


AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Weblog:   Ask Jeff Bezos, Adam Bosworth, John Doerr, Eddy Cue...
Subject:   ask Jeff Bezos
Date:   2008-06-04 12:24:34
From:   gslone5742
Response to: ask Jeff Bezos

The reason they can't get orders out the door any sooner or faster is because anyone with any brain cells that works at Amazon.com they fire or let go. I have worked at the Amazon.com plant in Lexington, KY 3 times. I worked 1 year in rebin, 1 year in pack on the autobx, and for a couple of months in the new pack area, that had been only up and running for a month when I started in that department. Other than working for Amazon, I have worked in a dozen warehouses. Also, I have an associates in marketing management, and like 8 classes finishing a bachelor's in computer science. In the new pack area, when I started in nov.07, they had 95 people packing downstairs and 95 upsatirs, and where only doing about 7,000 shipments a day. The first week working in kaos with no order, they had 105 switcheroos in one day. The reason was because they had 2 or 3 people to each station, and every time the line stopped because slam was backed up, everyone kept packing and was pushing the boxes on the conveyer back and making them fall off. I told Sara, the area manager my suggestions, they put one person to a station,instructed everyone to stop packing when the line stops, and the next day we had 5 switheroos. Sara, Eugene and Travis all where saying no one knows anything about this set up yet. I kept telling them it will never work set up like this. There is too many people triping over each other to do this job. They kept hiring more people and getting no where. Finally after several weeks Eugene started to listen to me and tried my suggestions. He walked through the stations with a legal pad writing down my suggestions. Each side of a rebin wall has 65 bins in it. A regulation rebin cart has 60. The stations just look so much larger because some of the bins are larger, to hold large items. I suggested that we put one person on each side of a rebin wall, two ambassadors floating for each line, and only one person rebining, instead of 2. He tried what I suggested, not only did we have fewer errors, put out more shipments, everyone's productivity rate went up as well. After trying what I had suggested a week later we were doing 35,000 shipments a day, instead of the 7,000 they were doing when I started in that department. Their labor cost dropped tremendously, since we went from 190 people packing to 80, and from 76 to 38 on the rebin side. Times that times 11.00 an hour, and that will tell you how much money I saved them. All of the operations managers knew that these suggestions were my idea as well as, Eugene and Sara. They even station me on station 1 with a desk set up beside me, with an opps manager who stood there watching my every move all day and taking notes. Even though I saved them thousands, and made them thousands by getting more shipments out and fewer errors, I got let go 2 weeks before Christmas, with me a single mother and 2 kids. Travis verified I made 2 mistakes and so gladly come to throw it up in my face, mainly because he was intimidated by me. So he moved me to loading boxes on a box trolly.Even though the mistakes were later proven to be software glitches, I still got left loading boxes. Not only am I smarter than most of the people I was working around, but also one of the very few people in the department that had any warehouse experience. But Jeff Bezos so happily called up Eugene to congratulate them on what a wonderful job they were doing, and he came into the standup gloating, saying he couldn't be happier. Which is why I had to be fired so no one but them would know it wasn't their idea, and make them look like the idiots that they are. It's one thing to be good at managing people, but another to have practical common sense and logic. Since I busted my but for them for 2 and half years, and got treated so poorly, I hope one day to find there number one competitor, become an area manager for them and kick Amazon's ass.