Santa’s Workshop

It has been very busy at Amazon the last few days. It kind of feels like what I imagine Santa’s workshop must be like with a lot of elves running around.

There are so many people working, that you have to be careful where you are walking. Fork lifts, bicycles, pallets movers, carts and people are moving around everywhere. They shipped out around a quarter of a millions packages on each of the last two days. Wow!! Supposedly, the last two days were the busiest, but we’ll see.

With all of that volume have come some problems. The conveyors are constantly stopping or breaking down. It’s all they can do to keep things running. Last night was especially difficult. At one point all the conveyors sending boxes to the shipping department were stopped. They actually had a group of workers manually scanning packages, printing shipping labels and carting the boxes off to the shipping docks.

Amazon continues to reward employees during this busy time. On Tuesday night everyone was given a box of three cookies and a bottle of juice during the first break. They are drawing six names every night to win Amazon gift cards. Our department had a power hour last night where the worker with the highest packing rate wins a $300 Walmart gift card.

They are also randomly giving little gifts. We’ve received candy, an ice scraper, a mini-flashlight and a combination tape measure, screwdriver and flashlight gizmo. There will also be a drawing for prizes on Dec. 23rd for those who had perfect attendance between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The good news is we have only seven work days left. I am so looking forward to going home for Christmas and seeing our boys! We’ll spend five days back in Wisconsin for the holidays. We’re leaving our RV at the campground here in Kansas. We’ll pick it up on Dec. 30th and head to Tucson for two months. Can’t wait!

Don’t wish upon a star – Reach for one!