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fungez1299 karma

I'm a woman and I worked at DFW7 a couple of years ago and I (and none of the women I spoke with at work) had a problem w/ bathroom breaks. IIRC, we got a break after our first 2.5 hours, then a lunch 2 hours later, then a break 2 hours after that, then it was punchout time. Yes it's a big facility but the longest I ever walked to a breakroom was probably 3 minutes. Contrast that with my previous job in healthcare (I was a registered nurse for 25 years) where I never got a guaranteed break and lunches were always interrupted (but still unpaid).

I'm not discounting your experience, just giving my own perspective to anyone reading this. Amazon will hire anyone who passes the background and drug test - there's no interviewing. Doesn't matter what you look like or how old you, they'll hire you. They give health insurance starting on Day 1 and it was better insurance than my last hospital employer. PTO, vacation, medical leave and unpaid time off is generous and you don't ask them when you can take PTO, you tell them.

Ultimately I couldn't handle the mental stress of Amazon. They are very strict about absences and safety and Rate. You really have to focus to make Rate and it was difficult for me to keep that up for 10 hours. If I was going to be stressed I figured I might as well go back to nursing, where I got treated like crap but least got a decent paycheck. But I really can't say anything bad about Amazon. Like I said, they still treated me better than most of my hospital employers.

fungez1172 karma

Yep! Did it for 25 years and said "I'm taking a break." Originally it was going to be for year but it's going on 2 1/2 and I really don't want to go back. I tried Amazon, hated it due to the mental tedium, now I'm at FedEx where if you show up, on time, and not too hungover you're a rockstar.

It works for now, since I have plenty of time to take care of my elderly parents (FedEx is part-time), I have no stress and I'm in the best physical shape of my life. Seriously, being a hospital nurse is a miserable job. You're basically a glorified factory worker (except I get treated better as an actual factory worker) and blamed for everything. Healthcare is such a difficult job, American docs have the highest rate of suicide in all professions. In the UK it's the nurses.

Anyway. I'm sure I'll go back eventually because I'm getting tired of being poor but this works for now.

fungez143 karma

Well....it's a very hard job. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Have you visited the nursing subreddit to get other perspectives?

It does have some advantages. It's easy to find a job (for the most part) and you can work part-time or PRN if you want to be home to raise children or whatever. But in retrospect I wish I'd gone into education. Teaching is also a very difficult and disrespected job but I'd be this close to retirement, I'd have a pension and I wouldn't have missed so many holidays and weekends when my daughter was little.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do, just do it with your eyes wide open. I'm not exaggerating when I say hospital nursing, at least in med/surge, is basically a glorified factory worker job. Except I get more respect in my current, actual factory worker job.

fungez129 karma

Yeah, they are very strict, sometimes unreasonably so. And the HR department is filled with borderline morons, like all HR departments I've had the misfortune of dealing with.

Can he go back to Amazon? Or is it "once fired, never rehired" type of place?

fungez128 karma

Was health insurance a concern? That's my biggest expense at the moment.