‘My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.’
June 21st, 2012The pickers are being replaced by robots.
Instead of people walking around and picking products (as described in the piece below), robots pick up the racks and deliver them to a queue where a handful of remaining human workers box up the orders.
The main player in this type of automation is Kiva Systems, and they were recently acquired by Amazon:
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is making its biggest acquisition since the 2009 purchase of Zappos.com, agreeing to pay $775 million for Kiva Systems Inc., a maker of robots that move items around warehouses.
The all-cash deal for closely held Kiva will close in the second quarter, Seattle-based Amazon said today in a statement. Kiva’s orange robots, which can slide under shelves and bins of products, are used by Quidsi Inc. — the company behind Soap.com and Diapers.com that Amazon acquired for about $545 million last year.
Via: Mother Jones:
At lunch, the most common question, aside from “Which offensive dick-shaped product did you handle the most of today?” is “Why are you here?” like in prison.
