The Best Thing About a Manual Labor Job is The Camaraderie
The great people I’ve met at Amazon and Walmart
During the thirty-minute breaks as an Amazon warehouse picker, I like to complain with some fellow workers.
We complain about some of the robots malfunctioning or big boxes of items jammed into a bin that’s impossible to get out. Because we’re assessed on our productivity and times, having a missing item and having an item jammed into a bin that’s impossible to get out becomes a big nuisance.
However, it’s been two weeks and I love Travis and Kim, two of my fellow pickers who got hired around the same time I did. We joke, complain, talk during breaks, and engage in the best thing about our manual labor job — camaraderie.
It goes without saying that working a 10-hour-shift doing anything can be pretty taxing at times. When it comes with a lot of physical labor, it becomes even more taxing. Being a warehouse picker is a pretty isolating job. You don’t really interact with anyone unless there’s a problem or there’s something wrong — most of the time, you’re just at your own station, by yourself, trying to keep yourself occupied with a boring and not-so-stimulating task.
That’s what makes the human interaction so special. Of course, we’re dealing with a worldwide…
