What a Ride!

Working Nights

Well, we finished our first week of nights here at Amazon.com. We only worked 5 hours on Monday (orientation, etc,), but we worked 10 hours a night on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We didn’t get to go to “stow” school on Tuesday they put us right into receiving. We worked receiving Tuesday and Thursday and then a division of receiving called “Prep” on Friday.

In receiving we “receive” the products that are shipped from Amazon’s vendors. We then scan the barcode of the shipments for the shipment ID and then remove the products from their boxes and scan the UPC barcode on the individual products, load them in a plastic container called a “tote” and send it down a conveyor to be “stowed”.

In prep, we have to individually wrap products that were sent without dust protection while they are stored in the bins in the warehouse. We have to put them in a plastic bag or heat seal a bag around the product. We then scan them and put them in a tote and send them down the conveyor to be stowed.

We are on our feet the whole 10 hours except for 2 -  15 minute breaks and a 1/2 hour lunch break. We stand the whole time, because there are no chairs in the warehouse. So we get plenty of exercise, maybe we will lose a little of the weight we put on while we travelled to Alaska! :)

Until next time!

The Next Job!

We arrived in Coffeyville, Kansas last Thursday and got settled in at Buckeye Mobile Home and RV Park. Here we have full hookups with 50 Amp electric…. Luxury!

We are parked next to three friends that we worked with last year at Adventureland in Iowa. Matter-of-fact there are many people working at Amazon.com that we worked with at Adventureland.

Thursday afternoon we went to Express Pro Employment, who are the people we will be working through to work at Amazon.com, to complete our paperwork and drug tests. They informed us that we could start work on the next shift instead of waiting for Nov. 8th, which we were first assigned to start work.

Monday night we had orientation, safety class and several other classes.We only worked 5 hours Monday night. Tonight (Tuesday) we still have one more class to go to and then we can stay and work our 10 hours or we can take 5 hours and go home. Since we are assigned to inbound, that means we will be receiving product to put up in inventory. We have to go to “stowing” class since we will be stowing product. We will be using hand scanners to keep track of all the product we will be putting in inventory.

After tonight we will know more about how all this works. We did learn that Amazon.com has over a million square feet of warehouse here and 35 miles of conveyor throughout the building. It is a unbelievable maze of warehouse and conveyors.

The weather has been overcast, but still a lot better than what we had in Crookston at the beet harvest!

Sue wanted me to repost the painting that is hanging on the ceiling in our bedroom since she said she wasn’t finished with it. She painted a “wood” frame around the edge to give it a good finished look.

My buddy Richard King has sent me the rest of the lights that I plan to install in the ceiling in the living room/kitchen. I guess I will be doing that on my days off. Our schedule right now is 5 PM to 3:30 AM on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We have the option to work overtime on Wednesday. Starting Nov. 8th we will be going to 4 – 11 hour days instead of the 4 – 10 hour days we first started with here. I don’t know what they will do about overtime on Wednesdays.

Until next time!