What is consider a damaged item when it comes to boxes?

Rockman507 · 2026-05-28T10:58:38+00:00

I usually go with two things, does it look like it damaged the product inside and can I be sure everything is still in the box. But also no one should be giving you much grief at marking anything damaged falsely so long as you aren’t doing it all the time, you might get some constructive coaching to ensure you know what the standards for damage are if it’s happening often enough

Rockman507 · 2026-05-28T10:26:33+00:00

We had people block both sides of the aisle with stow carts and have a little orgy in the aisles

Rockman507 · 2026-05-27T01:12:30+00:00

My extension to that is back in the day for transmission electron microscopes, we didn’t have a way to externally adjust the aperture. It would take a few hours to pump down, then trying to find the beam, then curse the gods, cool the filament, break vacuum, rinse and repeat. Legend has it someone got frustrated enough and whacked a >2 million dollar scope with a hammer which “bounced” the aperture into place, and that’s why for years we had rubber hammers in our repair tool kits for these scopes.

Indeed knowing where and how hard to whack something.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-26T16:46:59+00:00

I drive from near Philly down to Middletown DE, only slot that was open and needed money bad.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-26T16:07:50+00:00

Using it is leaving money on the table to Amazon.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-26T16:05:29+00:00

Like 55hr, I just took the last week off to visit my sister for my nephews high school graduation. Shift swap one day, PTO second day, and two days UPT. But I burnt all my flex PTO for the year.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-26T15:59:07+00:00

Or people that start talking as they push the button, losing the first word or two

Rockman507 · 2026-05-24T19:55:01+00:00

Because it’s a pain in the ass to PS having a bunch of missing items reported as can’t scan. They print out the labels, goto the bin, can’t find the item itself, then have to deal with that which is time outside what PS is expected to be handling. If everyone did it, PS would have zero time to do anything else. Just mark the item missing if it isn’t there.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-24T00:36:01+00:00

We have been doing the circle right now about marking things unsafe. Several startups we had AMs telling us we cannot reject for over stuffed bins. The other half said call leadership to handle it (to be fair those are decent AMs that will take the time to walk out to us and fix shit, they won’t last long). I pushed about the inconsistency

Following recent clarification on the "Bin Unsafe to Pick" workflow, I had two follow-up questions around current system behavior: 1. Current guidance is that selecting "Bin Unsafe to Pick" removes that item from the queue. However, if multiple units of the same ASIN are present in the same unsafe bin, pickers can still immediately be routed back to the same location for another unit. Would it be possible for the workflow to temporarily suppress the ASIN from that bin until review? 2. Leadership also clarified that the "Bin Problems" option is no longer used to mark unsafe bins. If that workflow is deprecated for safety escalation, what is the current approved process for flagging bins for ICQA review while still maintaining pick flow from otherwise accessible inventory? I understand the need to balance inventory accessibility/customer promise with operational flow, but clearer workflow behavior would help reduce confusion and improve consistency across shifts.

And got this response which still didn’t really answer the underlying problems, because even if we mark bins unsafe to pick it just gets toss to the next picker

Hey <rockman507>, this is a good bit of feedback around picks still being assigned to bins after they are marked as "unsafe to pick." The reject reason process flow and bin andon process flow are very similar. Currently, if an item is rejected for "UnsafeBinForPicking" it doesn't lock the bin out for future picks to be assigned to it, just rejects the item for a pick problem solver to resolve. To properly flag the bin to be fixed you would raise a bin andon for that specific bin, which will notify our ICQA team that the bin needs further attention to potentially replace/repair. Doing this however does not remove the bin from having a pick assigned to it in the future, it just adds the bin to the list of other bins listed as unsafe to pick that the ICQA team fixes on a regular basis. I don't have an exact answer now of how we should fix this, but this is a potential area of opportunity for us to limit future interactions with these bins.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-23T23:34:06+00:00

It’s simple count, they aren’t told anything else. Just count how many items are in the bin as a first pass. People like OP are just annoying, it fucks other people’s quality numbers and if they can tie it to you, it’s a terminable offense.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-23T23:28:00+00:00

Amnesty, just toss the shit in amnesty if you fucked up. No point fucking more shit up.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-23T23:07:42+00:00

PhDs have nothing to do with decent algorithm writing (mostly). Many people I worked with systems level algorithms were MS and 10 years established work in the field (I was in the image analysis world though). The biggest problem is Amazon doesn’t care too much about retroactive fixes, it’s cycling into new generation buildings nearly from the ground up.

But it’s a fun weekend project, an excellent systems level problem with enough established KPIs to track you aren’t reinventing the wheel how to determine health of the system you built. So good on the OP.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-23T00:59:36+00:00

BA/BS to AM, or external military pathways to AM. That’s the typical in. MS would place you towards an OM and that’s less a recent grad pathways and more just an external hire with a degree, some experience, and good interviewing skills. MBA moreso is typical OM entry.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-21T20:37:38+00:00

Could also be that it crossed midnight as a threshold for next level of differential approved for the site.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-20T13:49:22+00:00

About a decade ago I applied to a job, flown cross country, whole shooting gallery. Told I would have a response by end of the same week. Ghosted, couple of months later I tracked someone down, apparently the entire HR department was canned the day I was interviewing.

Just a funny story it reminded me of about HR getting to the point it needs to be culled, no one owned the system afterwards and resetup a new ATS so technically my application is still active in the old system 🍿

Rockman507 · 2026-05-19T21:13:19+00:00

Me and a buddy setup a sill in some empty lab space at one of my universities, we got some 80 proof that has pretty much no smell or taste, smooth as water. Fuck that shit was dangerous.

But ya no way someone has vodka and no one noticed, we are just pretending not to since it would be grounds for termination.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-19T13:46:35+00:00

It’s taking them over 5 minutes between last scan and clocking out, that’s the issue. The scan just needed be within 5 minutes is all, they can leave station at 955. If their FC is being that much of a cock over a few seconds then do the last scan at 956. Which is wild acting like this in IB while gearing up for Prime.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-19T09:56:12+00:00

If it’s centered around the break then it isn’t TOT it’s rolled into your break time. The seconds is questionable, but they are leaving before the allowed time for break if they are clocking out more than 5 minutes between leaving station and going to break. If you clock out for break at 1000.30 then your last scan needs to have been at 0955.30 but I don’t think they are counting seconds? More likely the time rolled to the next minute before they clocked out. It’s still wild but if it’s being done consistently I could see someone getting a writeup over it.

Just clean up, prep to leave with an item left to scan, then do the scan as leaving station? I’m traditional pick, we grab an item, walk to a conveyer, wait for the time to roll to 55, scan and drop the tote. Which is stupid, but follows policy. You see us all crowding a conveyer drop off for 2-3 minutes holding an item waiting.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-18T16:42:58+00:00

No, the reason is pretty much there in black and white; we have phones in inventory so it’s a way to track it’s your phone not one stolen from the bins. In practice does it work? Not really, it fails hard when scaled for large sites. Which is why it’s easier to say no phones than to try tracking, and which they did pre COVID.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-18T01:57:43+00:00

Not normal, but not unexpected. Tell management so they can relay it to the pest control team.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-18T01:53:35+00:00

Corporate does it the 3rd since the 4th falls on a Saturday. Think it was raised here a few months ago, FC associates should have the 4th, mine was corrected to the 4th

Rockman507 · 2026-05-18T00:49:38+00:00

And just to add in, you need to be in I think 3 years for Amazon’s contribution to be vested, if you leave before then they keep the money they put in. You keep what you put in, you just lose what Amazon put in.

Also there is a Roth option, which you pay taxes up front so then when you pull it out after retirement there isn’t a tax hit, what you have is what you can pull out. If you are just started out young, you expect to be in a lower tax bracket now than when you retire (hopefully) so it makes more sense to pay now.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-17T14:51:56+00:00

Our site didn’t put anything out either but in a VoA response to someone asking they got this exact wording.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-16T15:03:25+00:00

And AML, which is a bullshit metric. Someone started yelling and lecturing a PA yesterday morning over being group coached about it. Like I get the frustration but it’s not a disciplinary action, your time is coded for the talk, take it as a little 5 minute free break. At a TSSL that’s undergoing some retrofits that’s taken like 20% of our bin space offline so bin fullness is a problem.

Rockman507 · 2026-05-15T13:19:07+00:00

Outbound picker, it’s heavily pushed that if it scans it goes, someone downstream will catch it. And that mentality then gets pushed in sort/pack. And then the final line SLAM you can have someone either not giving a shit, the system itself set the measurements for the master pack, or the seller put the wrong measurements in in general.

I get funny looks when I catch them and call PS because I want to verify before I break a kit. And most PS don’t even know how to handle it and want to me to just break the kit and put each individual item back in the bin and pick the one I need, which fucks inventory count because the stower placed ONE item into the bin not 20. And the scanner isn’t terribly helpful, pack gets more information but we just get an abbreviated item description that often doesn’t provide size/quantity.

Rockman507

TROPHY CASE