A lot More. More than we’d even expected. It was just… not really the type of More we’d had in mind.

(New here? Click to review Part I and/or Part II.)

On the plus side, this post conveniently doubles as our 4th quarter update, because we stayed in Tennessee for these jobs, from mid-September all the way until December 24. Other 2017 quarterly reviews are at 1, 2, and 3.

I am now typing at you from our frequent home base of San Antonio, TX, where we are looking forward to a delayed holiday celebration with my side of the family and both of our boys next week. Both of them!

But back to my Amazon Camperforce wrap-up. I’ll start you off with some statistics.

• Where we worked: Amazon’s BNA-3 Fulfillment Center in Murfreesboro, TN
• Department: picking
• Weeks on the job: 13 (starting dates are flexible; we chose a 3-month window)
• Number of days we reported to work (most, but not all, were full 10-hour shifts): 57 for Tim, 56 for Emily. I took one unpaid day off for my annual girlfriends’ weekend, which they conveniently held in Nashville so that I could maximize my escape/drinking time.
• Number of hours worked: 562 for Tim, 552 for Emily. For each of us, 47 of those hours were overtime, for which we were compensated at time and a half. We also earned 5 hours each of paid time off, which we took on one gloriously lazy Thursday morning.
• Gross pay at $11.50/hour (wage varies by Camperforce location and shift, so do your homework): about $6700 each
• Completion bonus: about $575 each
• Total combined gross earnings: about $14,550
• Additional compensation: As part of the program, Amazon paid our campground rent for the duration, saving us about $1500.
• Miles walked: 660 for Tim, 463 for Emily (average was about 8 miles/day), and yes, I literally walked my butt off. Had to buy all new pants!
• Number of items picked: Maybe 800/day each? I’d love to be able to give you a specific total for each of us, but our numbers varied widely depending on which part of the warehouse we were working in, and neither one of us kept daily track of the amounts shown on our scanners. I can give you a range though: a “slow” day would be about 600 items over 10 hours. If we were really hot and got lots of multi-picks, we could handle upwards of 1000 items per day, each.
• Most frequently-picked item: socks

But as Tim pointed out, there is a less labor-intensive way to do this. It just requires having a large chunk of cash lying around. “If someone had invested $50K in Amazon stock in mid-September, and sold it the day our jobs ended, they would have made as much money as Emily and I earned, combined.”

So how’d I do with my three predictions from Part I?

1. We will be using our time off for little other than subsistence chores and recuperation: cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, eating and rest. TRUE. We did all those things on our days off, and very little else. We broke with our usual travel tradition/preference and did no exploring of the area beyond running essential errands. Not only that, but our work evenings took on a very set routine of setting out the next day’s clothes, packing lunches, and doing everything possible to minimize morning trauma before our 30-minute commute and 0730 clock-in time.

   

2. Social media and overall computer use will decline. Markedly. TRUE. OwnLessDoMore’s presence on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram dropped to 2-3 posts/week, instead of my usual goal of 1/day. Not only did I not have that kind of time, I also lacked resources on my camera roll, and photos are necessary to grab social media interest. We hardly went anywhere but Amazon, and we were not allowed to carry phones/cameras into the work areas, so I relied heavily on throwback posts and memories.

   

3. We will complete this deployment. By comparison to the ones Tim made during his military career, this is a short one! TRUE. We did it. We performed well, exceeding minimum requirements by far, and we stuck it out until the final clock-out at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 23. We’re proud of what we did, and we have no regrets.

   

That said, we also have no intentions of doing this again. I discussed a few reasons why in  Part II. Here are a few more.

• This job is not a good fit for someone like me, who tends to hate all the things everyone else just loves and thinks are so amazing (I even hate the word “amazing”) and must have because they are trendy. Like tutus for grown women. Seriously? I guess those were a thing back in the fall, and I picked dozens and dozens, each one making me twitch a little more than the last. Actually, I’m not a big fan of things, period, and being surrounded for so long by so much evidence of consumerism took a mental toll.
• On a related note, it didn’t even feel like we were helping deliver Christmas joy for the season, by picking things like children’s toys, winter coats, the year’s hottest electronics and games, etc. There were some of those to be sure, but mostly we picked socks (have I mentioned all the socks?), underwear, items for overindulged pets, and an occasional sex toy. Not that we’re opposed to sex toys — you do you, and have a very Merry Christmas while you’re at it  — but I’m pretty sure that was not in the proverbial brochure.
• And finally, the way Amazon crams merchandise items randomly into overstuffed bins might keep their company-wide productivity and efficiency levels high, but it’s very difficult on the individual worker, worrying about making quotas, and knowing how much easier it would be if things were organized in a better manner. Many times, I became so frustrated, I had to mentally repeat the following mantra until I calmed the hell back down: It doesn’t have to make sense. I don’t have to understand it. I just. Have. To do it.

  

I won’t end on a negative note, though. Here are some things we liked:

• The Camperforce program makes it easy for couples to work the same schedule — a great perk for RV-dwellers, most of whom share only one vehicle.
• Being on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, we were able to leave work at work. All the pressure we felt to make quota disappeared the second we clocked out for the day.
• The entire application process was handled online, and we were able to have our mandatory pre-employment drug testing done quickly and conveniently, where we were parked at the time in August.
• Neither one of us got injured or fired, and Tim’s the only one of us who got sick, with a minor head cold during the very last week.
• We made some great friends!

  

And hey, we now have a never-ending source of campfire stories. “Oh. You ordered something from Amazon today? Let me tell you a little bit about the time we worked there…”

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Notes:

This is the “After” installment in my trilogy chronicling our 3-month gig with Amazon’s Camperforce. Other chapters quite logically include the “Before” and “During.” All should be linked to each other now; let me know if I missed one.

For more information, feel free to dig around on the Camperforce web site, and to check out this exposé that appeared on Wired, or these articles from The Guardian, Marketplace, and Ozarks First. And if you search Google for “Camperforce,” you’ll also find a lot of personal blogs written by other RV’ers about their experiences. Mine is definitely not the only voice in the chorus!

Here’s the Halfway Q&A.

I’ve interviewed myself for you. Seemed like a good format for breaking up the text a bit, since I’ve got no photos to accompany this post. We can’t take our phones anywhere in the building other than the one lunch room that’s located outside the security check point, so my camera roll is suffering from neglect.

(To review Part I first, click here.)

Do you like your jobs?

No.

Tell me again what you’re doing there?

The job we chose is picking, meaning we walk all over the cavernous fulfillment center — up to 12 miles/day — pulling items off shelves and out of cardboard bins.

We’re pretty sure that most items we pick are for pending orders, but sometimes we get requests for such large batches of a single item that we suspect we’re just pulling non-sellers off the floor in order to make room for newer merchandise.

We see no customer information whatsoever, so we can’t use that as a clue.

(Note: there are other positions available to Camperforce associates; please keep in mind as you read that I’m speaking only about picking.)

Are you going to quit?

No.

We believe in honoring our commitments. We are not being mistreated, and we do not feel unappreciated. We just don’t enjoy the work, and that’s not a good enough reason for us to bail.

This is a temporary situation, and the end is in sight. We will continue to do our jobs, and to do them well. We are both consistently meeting or exceeding our weekly quotas, and we feel good about that.

So what would you consider “good enough” reasons to quit?

Hmmmm. Accident, injury, serious illness. Family emergency. Unsafe or intolerable working conditions.

Look. We knew going in that these would be tedious, clock-punching, entry level jobs involving repetitive physical motions that might cause stress and/or pain. What we did not know was what it would be like to do that kind of work for 40-60 hours/week. Now we do, and we don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t stick with it.

What are some of the good things that have come out of this so far?

We’ve made new friends.

We’ve learned a lot about our own strengths, and the bonding that’s built by sharing the same work experience with one’s spouse — which is new to us.

We have a deeper appreciation for the hourly blue collar workers of the world, who come home after a physically demanding day to the even further physical stresses of cooking, cleaning, laundry, household repairs, grocery shopping, kids’ school and extracurricular commitments, etc. We thought we had a clue as to what that might be like. We did not.

We’ve also learned a lot about how this one small part of a very complex global corporate operation works. It’s really kind of neat to be an insider, and when we look back on it later, we will harbor no regrets about accomplishing this task. We just probably won’t repeat it.

Is it worth it?

Financially, not so much. As I mentioned in Part I, we took these jobs for the experience, not the income, and we know we are privileged to be able to make that choice.

Without divulging specific numbers, I can tell you that Tim’s military retirement pension pays more per month for him to sit on his ass, than these jobs do for both of us to work our asses off, full time, at $11.50/hour.

However, as part of the Camperforce program, Amazon also pays our campground fees, so we are living rent-free for three months, and that’s a valuable perk! Also, we’ll both be eligible for a completion bonus of $1/hour worked when we’re done.

So what’s it really like to be a picker?

Well, it’s kind of like being a personal shopper. We push carts up and down aisles filled with merchandise, and we get a list, but our list comes to us one item at a time, on the screen of a hand-held bar code scanner. We don’t see the next item until we’ve correctly picked the current one.

The scanner also tells us where to go to get the item, in a numerical code that gives us the specific building section, floor level, row, aisle, shelf, and bin — kind of like going to find a book in a library. But unlike a library, where all the books in section are going to have something in common (topic, author, genre, etc.), merchandise bins are a hot mess.

In a single bin, we might find four cell phone cases, a multipack of toddler socks, two women’s high-lo swing tunics in turquoise, a handbag, a pair of flip flops, a pair of leggings, a set of false eyelashes, 2 boxes of granola bars, an 8-pack of AAA batteries, and a bottle of shampoo. Imagine a Costco filled with kitchen junk drawers. Multiply its size by at least ten. That’s our workplace.

If you’re picturing the final warehouse scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, you’re in the ballpark. In fact, I hum the theme song in my head fairly often while I work.

And then? Realize that this. never. stops. This process goes on around the clock at this single Amazon fulfillment center, which is but one of many around the globe.

Here. This video will show you.

So are you just in daily, miserable pain?

For the first week or two, yes. Yes, we were. Lots of ibuprofen went down, and we really regretted not having a bath tub to soak in.

We invested in good shoes (Asics gels for me, and a pair of Brooks runners for Tim), so foot pain has not been much of an issue.

However, it took several days to get our forearms and wrists used to holding scanners — which are surprisingly heavy — for several hours at a time. The key for me has been to switch my scanner hand from right to left several times throughout the 10-hour shift.

Most days, we come home with tired legs and sore necks/shoulders. I can usually cure mine with some stretching, and be pain-free and ready to go at it again the next morning. I take ibuprofen only at work, and only if I feel I can’t make it through the rest of my shift without it.

Can you take overtime or time off?

Yes, but we haven’t. We have chosen thus far not to take voluntary overtime or time off, although both have been offered at various points during the 6 weeks we’ve put in so far. For this experience to be worth it to us, we plan to work our guaranteed minimum 40 hours/week; and for it to be bearable for us, we plan to work no more than that unless we have to.

As Christmas approaches, we do expect overtime to become mandatory, and we will of course put in those extra hours as required.

Would you recommend this job to others?

Sure.

Understand that you’ll work hard, that you’ll be on the B-team, that you will have to obey strict rules with regard to scheduling and quotas, that you may not feel like your work has value or meaning — and that it’s temporary.

That said, we do feel valued and appreciated by the management team. They seem genuinely happy to have CamperForce workers onboard to help them through the holiday shopping season, known on the inside as Peak.

And Amazon does offer some onsite niceties that make these jobs easier to handle:

• Free coffee and cocoa in the break rooms
• Free feminine hygiene products in the ladies rooms (when you’ve got only a 15-minute break, and your purse is in a locker nearly a quarter mile away, this is really helpful)
• Water dispensers throughout the warehouse
• A health center with a small selection of free OTC medicines, and certified EMTs on duty for more serious needs
• Rows of microwaves and fridges, plus napkins and plasticware in the break rooms
• Free PPE (personal protection equipment) machines, containing belts, compression sleeves, gloves, utility knives, reflective safety vests, and even ponytail holders
• Sanitizing hand gel dispensers throughout the building
• A food truck in the parking lot at lunch time on weekdays
• And we were able to get free flu shots there too!

What’s the most memorable item you’ve picked?

A red iPhone home button sticker.

Talk about a needle in a haystack! Imagine trying to find that little circle, measuring 3/8” in diameter, in a teensy clear plastic pouch, in your deepest, most chaotic kitchen junk drawer. I’ll wait.

Honorable mentions:

• gladiator sandals for a toddler
• a corset in size 5XL
• a multipack of men’s thongs in XL
• a box of tissues
• various ummm… battery operated marital aids
• a pair of spats
• a harmonica
• a 5-lb bag of plain white all-purpose flour
• and lots and lots of tutus, bras, and underwear

Got more questions? Ask below, and I’ll do my best!

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Notes:

This is the “During” installment in my trilogy chronicling our 3-month gig with Amazon’s Camperforce. Other chapters quite logically include the “Before” and  “After.”

For more information, feel free to dig around on the Camperforce web site, and to check out this exposé that appeared on Wired, or these articles from The Guardian, Marketplace, and Ozarks First. And if you search Google for “Camperforce,” you’ll also find a lot of personal blogs written by other RV’ers about their experiences. Mine is definitely not the only voice in the chorus!