return2ozma‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility
“Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work,” Sam recalled the manager saying.
partial_accumenThe extra context from the article makes this a much more human response from both people:
Sam, who has CPR training, asked her supervisor if she could assist. The supervisor watched the woman heaving her weight into the man’s chest and gave no response.
“I start sobbing and said, ‘I want to help, please!’ I know she’s going to get tired and need to be subbed out,” Sam told The Western Edge.
The supervisor, who Sam perceived to be in shock, had a simple reply: “It has to be management or safety team. Please get back to work.”
“I need to help,” Sam said.
“Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work,” Sam recalled the manager saying.
This wasn’t some cold calculated policy cooked up in a conference room by lawyers or executives. The supervisor themselves was clearly not prepared to be dealing with just watching someone die at work under their management. The supervisor was stunned and trying to come up with an answer to a situation they were not prepared for. I don’t think they acted this way out of indifference or malice, but just being unprepared.
I’ll say Sam was also stunned and unprepared. Why ask permission to help someone? I would like to think I’d just run over a do it. However, just like the supervisor, Sam feel back on asking for permission to help from a superior instead of acting. I don’t blame Sam at all in asking. Sam was stunned too.
We’re also left with only a partial account of what happened. Were there other management and safety team members attending to the victim by this point? We don’t know. Again, no blame to Sam, but I also don’t see the supervisor’s reported statement automatically as cold-hearted indifference.
When the rules are sensible generally, but should be adapted for the current scenario, I tend to be slow on the uptake. Reading this story a few years ago made me realize that I personally am susceptible to losing sight of whether something is actually worth fighting- like I can imagine myself getting stuck on “it’s a fire aisle and now these customers are annoying,” and missing that the other side is thinking “it’s my wheelchair, we need to figure out a way for me to use it.”
Anyway, imagine my surprise when exactly no one, online or irl, even expressed understanding for the actions of the worker at the theater. I don’t think it’s because their actions are incomprehensible to people, but more that, even though this is a very human mistake to make, we’re expected to be able to evaluate whether the rules are picky little bullshit that’s only really important for order or whether they actually matter and should our actions.
All that is to say: yes it’s a very human mistake to make, but it’s important for management to be able to determine what rules matter in a life or death scenario. To be clear, I’m definitely not calling this manager a murderer, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that they knew how they would react, but Amazon should probably roll out some judgment training for managers.
jordanlundMy daughter in law worked at that facility for a year as a manager and noted multiple OSHA violations. Doesn’t sound like much changed…