Ask the Amazon.com employee
 

This ought to spice up the GF a bit. So, I don't remember doing ask me threads before. If this is the first one, I hope it spawns more. If not, I hope it continues a fun tradition.

So, I work for Amazon.com. Right at the moment, I've been picking orders, which means I go up and down isles of shelving all day grabbing your orders and putting them on a cart for shipping.

What do you want to know? Ask away.

Do you get a commission if you pack a certain number of orders without mistakes? Cause I've been using amazon for a good 6 years now, and I swear I've never had a wrong order :p

Also...do you laugh when you see the items for certain orders? ;) Like do you nudge the person next to you and say "Look at what this clown ordered" and CHUCKLE? ;)

Well, kind of. Everyone gets a small bonus depending on several factors evey month. Mistakes are part of that, but with the scanner technology, it's pretty hard to screw it up.

As a matter of fact, that's some of the best entertainment we have. Although sometimes it's hard to single out orders because we pick several at a time to be packed, it gets pretty suspicious when I pick 9 childrens books & 3 dildos in the same order. Some of it transcends bad taste. On the upside, you also give a silent nod to people you don't know when they have good taste. The other day, I sent out and order to one person who chose City of Lost Children, Amelie, Preacher & Bone comics & The Zombie Survival Guide. I was thinking to myself the entire time, "Yeah, I could be best friends with this person."

LOL, yeah that's pretty poor taste. But I guess you have to do what you have to do to save on shipping ;) Yikes.

If I place an order for 1 dvd, can I PM you a list of 30 more and have you put them in my package at no additional charge?

What do you think will be the top music seller of 2007?Year Zero is at number 1 last i saw.

Do you get to oogle at any hot girls doing their own shopping, or at the desk maybe?;)

On a more serious note...do customers usually find what they are looking for? I mean most of them must be checking from the Net and placing their orders. But what if some stuff is out of stock?

Do you refer them to some other place or just put their order on wait, while you supply the rest?

And what about damaged goods?

Do you have a secret"Den"high up in the racking like they do in Employee of the Month?
When I worked in a warehouse on the night shift there was a particular guy that liked to be hoisted up into the racking where he would make a bed for the night:eek: any sleepy heads where you work?

I thought Amazon.com was a large group of individual sellers who shipped from multiple locations. Sounds like there's some huge warehouse that a lot of the stuff comes from. Is it both? A big warehouse AND additional sellers?

And can you hand out gift certificates, like, credit coupons, to your friends, for free merchandise? You get what I'm sayin'?

What's the weirdest thing you've had to get for someone?

@Bwind - Nope. I don't think you'd be getting any orders from our warehouse anyway. We're one of Amazons smaller warehouses, and we pretty much just serve the greater Seattle area..

@Dante - Well, we are selling a ton of Year Zero. The new Rush CD (Snakes and Arrows) is giving it some real competition. The new Amy Winehouse & Joss Stone CDs are selling like crazy as well, so it's hard to tell. I'd almost say I'm sending out more of the Rush CD than any other right now.

@__V__ - We don't have in-house shopping, so every order we get is through INTERNETz. If stuff is out of stock that someone orders, the Reno, Nevada store will just ship it up to us on a truck or just send it out themselves. That's where most of our supplies come from.

As far as damaged goods, we get them all of the time. As far as what becomes of them, it depends on the damage. There are lots of problems, like cracked jewel cases, that can be taken care of inhouse. As far as obvious stuff that's not so easy, I'm not completely sure what they do with it. I know offering them to employees is not an option, which I understand.

@DP McCoy - Theres a sleepy head or two, but other than the restroom there's really not any place you can hide to sleep. One guy just usually lays his head down on the table and sleeps at break. It wouldn't do much good to sleep though, since you have a rate you need to make.

Uhhh.... cough cough.

@Crabapple - It is both. It's several big warehouses & additional sellers. There's an Amazon warehouse in Reno & Atlanta, and I believe one or two more.

As far as gift certificates & such, I can hand out whatever I want to friends as long as I pay for it. If you mean can I hook my mates up, I suppose I could order something for someone using my massive 10% employee discount. Most of the time you'd probably find that even with the 10%, DDD is going to probably be just as cheap (hope corporate doesn't see that;)) so it's really only going to do someone good if they're ordering something like a PS3 or X360.

@Posher - The weirdest orders I get are probably ones with multiple copies of odd items. I mean, I can make sense of most of them. When you see 13 copies of Catcher in the Rye or The New American Collegiate Dictionary, you just figure classroom, library or whatever. When people start ordering 9 copies of the Mannequin DVD, however, I start getting a little creeped out.

LOL. Mannequin.

Yes, yes I agree. Anyone ordering 9 copies of Mannequin = something sinister

Do any people get a refund just in case they get a damaged item packaged to them by mistake? Or is it replaced?

Maybe in most cases, people would simply want a refund. Do they do it?

As far as I know, they get whichever they request. I'm almost positive Amazon encourages replacement items instead, but will give a refund if requested. As far as damaged items go, there are some things some might consider damaged but others wouldn't. For instance, if something is packaged in a "throw away box" then the product might be sent even if the box is a little beat up. I've never really ran into it, but I imagine for stuff like PC games, which the original boxes are considered "throw away" could cause potential problems.

Damn, guess I better stop that. How embarrassing :p

Y'ever...seen a grown man naked?

You mean at the warehouse? No, but I've probably had plenty of opportunities. I'm one of the few people there who don't allow theirselves the luxury of perusing books every now and then.

Ahahaha! Atta' boy.