Sick at Work at Amazon
I work at the Amazon warehouse in Robbinsville, New Jersey, about an hour south of New York City. The sickest I’ve ever been was my first winter there. I’d applied earlier that year, in the fall of 2018, because the four-day workweek was appealing, and the wage was better than the temp construction work I was doing through an agency called Labor Ready. When I showed up to my first day of work, I was informed that the four-day work week was sometimes five, due to mandatory overtime, or MET—Mandatory Extra Time—in Bezos parlance. Come Thanksgiving, MET was in effect. It included not only the extra day, but also an additional hour tagged onto each 10-hour shift, so for at least a month we’d be working 55-hour weeks. That winter... Read more...
