Not the brown santa

[elizilla]

Lately Amazon is using a shipper who has non-uniformed delivery people that bring things to the house in unmarked cars, tap as quietly as possible on the door, drop the packages on the doorstep and run. If you get to the door fast enough to holler thanks, they pretend they didn't hear you as they flee. They act guilty, like they just left a box of flaming poo on the porch, or toilet paper in the trees.

But hey, my new toaster over is nice. Tomorrow I can eat toaster strudel for breakfast again. Yay!

Comments

[foms.livejournal.com]

Almost certainly so, in a lot of cases.

Other than in London, my understanding is that taxi driver is and has been treated as a right-off-the-boat sort of job. If there is a test, it's often minimal and unsecure (I've certainly known people who claimed that someone else took the test on their behalf). They've had maps for a long time. A GPS is probably a bit better than a map but I don't think that it makes a huge difference. People may complain but they also expect to have to give directions to cabbies.

Taxi dispatch is now largely done by computer at a lot of companies. They are even dispensing with order desk/data entry clerks by means of computerized telephone prompt systems. In the 1980s, taxi dispatch was a skill that could yield two to three times minimum wage. I doubt that many such jobs exist, anymore.

I don't know about whether rush courier service is affected (yet). Both dispatch and courier jobs are complex, real-time pattern-matching tasks. I have thought about some aids that could be helpful but I don't know of any being put into use.

I suspect that multiple-day delivery (overnight or longer - the distance doesn't matter) probably had more revolution from what I understand to be Federal Express' innovation of sending everything to a hub and then reshipping than from computers (either GPS or route-planning). Nevertheless, there are some savings to be eked out in finding locations that are not of the usual, quicker training up the learning curve, and that sort of thing.

One place where electronics have really altered therbligs is in the paper-work. Ordering over the internet speeds things up and down-loads effort onto the client. Bar-coded stickers/way-bills and scanners have done away with a lot of time-consuming writing for people who are doing pick-up, sorting, and delivery. This probably decreases the number of jobs both by increasing the amount that a worker can do (this says nothing about unreasonable expectations by employers) and by eliminating some companies' need for some jobs, altogether. I am reminded of the article linked, herewith: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

[foms.livejournal.com]

Which led me to thinking about some related stuff so I found this: http://www.roodbergen.com/warehouse/background.php