A visit to the Amazon

This is exciting. Natalie Orenstein, sister-in-law to the stars, is peeling back the curtain on what really goes on in those giant Amazon warehouses. Turns out, DVDs are still a thing! ESCANDALO!!!

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Two weeks ago I spent three days working in one of Amazon’s largest warehouses, or as we call them—fulfillment centers. I learned how to do all steps of the fulfillment process—from receiving products from vendors to packing orders onto the outbound trucks. See photographic evidence below.

The overall experience was amazing—they do public tours there, so this writer from Wired magazine was able to capture the experience in detail. Here are a few of the trip highlights from my perspective:

1) A lot of people still buy DVDs. And I mean a lot. I couldn’t believe how many copies of Friends Season 5 I came across. All you have to do is turn on TBS and you can find it. Throw Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Instant Video in the mix and you have all of that on demand as well. But I guess there is something to actually owning the DVD that has still not lost its edge…

2) A desk job it is not. By 10:30 in the morning on my first day, I had already clocked over 13,000 steps on my Fitbit. For comparison, it is now 1:00 in the afternoon, and after rushing from meeting to meeting to picking up my Jimmy Johns from delivery downstairs, I have clocked in a whopping 2,500 steps. Given the start time in the fulfillment center was 7am and I didn’t get going until 9 today—but still. It is a workout. I spoke to someone who lost 70 pounds in his first three months on the job there.

3) Phoenix is flat. That’s where the fulfillment center is. Even with the pretty desert nighttime sky and warm temperature, I prefer Seattle. Give me rain and mountains any day.

Should've been a cowboy

I wish I'd trained to be a cowboy, rather than going to college and majoring in journalism.

I'm not really sure how cowboys make their money, but you can't beat the lifestyle. Your office is the wild wild west. Your work clothes are jeans and cotton shirt. You're in naturally good shape from lassoing cows, jumping on horses' backs and repairing broken fences on your ranch.

What's not to love?

I'm two days into a three-week copywriting gig and I'm confident that the contemporary office environment is killing us. I know, I know. Scientists have warned of the dangers of a 'sedentary lifestyle' for years now. But I'm only just realising how right they are.

How on earth are people are expected to live happy, healthy lives when they're forced to sit at a desk all day? I'm perplexed!

Save your rebuttals. I already have rebuttals for your rebuttals. Rebuttal THIS:

• YOUR SOLUTION: Just walk to work, take lots of short breaks during the day, go to the gym during your lunch, walk home and plan fun activities in the evening.  

• MY REBUTTAL: Thanks, Yolanda, but that's far too hard. Especially in the winter when the only daylight hours are the exact hours you're expected to work.

• YOUR SOLUTION: Get a job with a company that allows you to work flexible hours and makes it easy for you to work from home when you need to. 

• MY REBUTTAL: Great idea, but those companies are few and far between. I could probably get a job at one, but I'm brilliant.

• YOUR SOLUTION: Sit on an exercise ball instead of a desk chair!

• MY REBUTTAL: I've tried it. Not sustainable. Looks stupid. 

Luckily, a lot of people I know actually do work for those nice companies that "care" about their employees' "work/life balance" and prove it by offering "perks". (Remember, those perks are the least they can do. Don't boost a company's ego by praising it for not treating you like a workhorse.)

Also lucky, I've managed to find a line of work that allows me to avoid the 9-5 grind most of the time. Still, I often wish I did more physical labour. I said that to Andy once and he read me the riot act. I was looking enviously out the window at some builders working on the scaffolding across the street. Here's a taste of that conversation:

Me: "I really wish my work involved physical labour. Don't you? I mean, like, I crave lifting things."

Andy: "No, absolutely not. That's ridiculous. Listen to what you're saying! It's easy to romanticise the idea of physical labour, but they're outside in the cold and you're inside in the warm. You get to sit inside, on a comfy chair, sipping tea and typing on a computer for a living. You should be grateful!"

Me: "But I mowed lawns for the Vancouver, Washington PUD for a month in 2009 and I loved it."

Andy: "You wouldn't love it for the rest of your life."

Me at the 'Couve PUD.
No, I never got to actually drive that thing.
Yes, I ate a Kashi 'Go Lean' bar for lunch every day and was rurrrrrl skinny!

Hmmm. Come to think of it, cowboys do have to smell a lot of cow poop. And again, I'm still unsure about how they get money.

Lots to ponder,

Margaret

HTM-Hell

Oh god. Oh god! Noooo! What happened to my day!?

I'm building a website on Squarespace for a new business venture that you will hear more about very soon.

Just as the ads on This American Life say, Squarespace allows you to create "a professional looking website in minutes" with their handy "drag and drop tools". However, if you want the site to be exactly to your specifications, you need to customise the code.

Do I know how to write CSS? No.

But do I try anyway? Yes.

I sit in a chair and troubleshoot for hours. Google search after determined Google search. Trial, error. Trial, error. Trial, error. It's endless. But I NEVER give up.

Today I spent approximately four hours trying to make one of the headers white. FOUR!

I had to do it. All of the headers were blue and I wanted one to be white. I needed it to be white. So I guessed and checked different pieces of code until finally one worked. It was light out when I started and dark as raven's blood when I finished.

Image by Trance-Plant via Deviant Art

Now it's nearly bedtime and I'm struggling to write a sentence. I spent the entire day in a trance and haven't fully emerged out of it. This has happened to me before. I inherited it from my Dad who will head down to the basement to make an iMovie and not return for weeks.

After a session like this I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am angry that so many hours of pure concentration added up to so little. On the other hand, I am elated that I made the header turn white.

Time to rest,
Margaret

P.S. Andy came up with the title for this post. He's a whiz with puns. I was working with CSS, not HTML, but you get the idea.

Think about this at work tomorrow

The thing about freelancing is, the longer you stay on a project, the more it starts to feel like a 'real job' and the closer you get to freaking out. I'm used to short projects. Write. Send. Edit. Send. Take a Real Housewives break. And then on to the next gig.

When I work on something that drags on and on, I get stressed and itchy.

Still, I do really like my non-job. Note: I didn't say I love it. I've always thought it's obnoxious when people say "I looooove my job". Love? Seriously? Only Beyonce gets to say that. The best us commoners can ask for is 'really like'.

Anyway, yes, I really like being a freelance writer. It sounds fake, like I'm just making something up while I look for a job. It's so mysterious. Freelance writer. What does that even mean? How does it work?

I like writing it down on my customs declaration card when I fly back into the UK. It makes the airport officials more skeptical of me, which makes me like it more. Like how Andy used to hold a calculator up to his ear while walking down the halls of his high school, just so he could be like - HA!' - when a teacher yelled at him for being on his phone.

Yeah, right. Where are the queues? Where are all the queueing people?
I don't buy it. This was staged. It's a staged image! STAGED.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

So tomorrow when I crack open Google docs and get back to work, I'm going to remind myself that I LIKE my 'job'. You should too. Or if you don't like your job, apply for a new one. Sure, there's something to be said for character building. But you should only have 'character building' jobs when you're a teenager and don't know any better. If you're 25 or older and you don't like your job, find a new one.

Just look at these guys. Let them inspire you.


 



Wow! I'm preachy today. This is what happens when there's a giant, Oprah-sized hole in our daytime TV schedule.

Cheers,
Margaret

Source: Reddit 

(Madgespace is becoming the new Buzzfeed, where I blatantly just share stuff from the front page of Reddit.)