“Relentless” logistics

In 1990s Jeff Bezos started Amazon in converted garage of his house in Seattle,  with first desk build out of cheap doors he bought from Home Depot.

Twenty years later Heike Geissler’s book, Seasonal Associate, goes to a selection day for a Christmas temp job at an Amazon warehouse in Leipzig, eastern Germany and notices in the lobby is a desk made of door on trestles. Amazon trainer Robert explains that the door-desk is an homage to Bezos and a reminder that “ the customer is King”.

“Is it important to the customer that I have a mahogany desk or that he gets what he wants for a good price?” Robert drills into new recruits. “ Does the customer want us to be sitting here on comfy sofas? Does the customer want to pay for smart offices for us? Exactly.”

Bezos motto is “Amazon is a “Missionary not a mercenary” – its mission being to delight customers in ways no one else dreams is possible. That meant innovating and involving taking risks very few will take. It meant better efficiency, cheaper and deliver faster than anyone else. This time last year  staff in 10 Amazon  warehouses across  North America and Europe picked, packed and delivered more than  1million customer packages on a single day. The final order through Amazon’s Superfast “Prime Now”  service was delivered  to the customer in 58 minutes  and arrived at 11:58pm  on Christmas Eve. Bezos early ideas  for the company’s name was relentless and ty0ping relentless.com will take you to Amazon’s home page.  

Geissler applied to work at the Amazon warehouse on the edge of the city which maker her “the beginning or the evidence of a slide down the social ladder”.

She writes about the wind  that  whips across her workstation from the broken warehouse door and how when the snow settles over the skylights , it feels like being inside a “ giant igloo”. The process of logging inbound products to the warehouse , following a computer’s instructions is meticulously recorded.

When a  customer emails a complaint directly to Bezos, who forwards it to  the relevant team with a single ominous question mark. When the teams receive a question mark  email, they scramble as they only have few hours to solve the problem and figure out how it happened. Bezos Mottos is “ Ensure potential problems are addressed  and that the customer’s voice is always heard inside Amazon”.

Amazon Christmas 2018 -Can you feel it!

 

Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, translated by Katy Derbyshire, Semiotext(e)/Native Agents $16.95/£13.99, 240 pages.