1st week at Amazon

We have one more day to work and our first week at Amazon will be in the books. The last two nights we have been getting used to our new jobs in "single toys". Basically what we are doing is putting peoples orders into boxes and sealing them up so they can be shipped. When you order something from Amazon the first step at the warehouse is to find your item in one of the thousands of cubbyholes on the shelves. This is the job of the "Pickers" who then put the item in a tub and onto a conveyor belt. The tubs are all coded  with UPC labels so the computer knows where to route that certain tub.  Sometimes these tubs  find their way to our work area which is just a series of work stations adjacent to the conveyor. When I go into work we have a meeting, stretching exercises and get our work station locations. Once at our stations we sign into the computer and are ready to start packing. The first thing we do is pull one of the totes off the conveyor and place it in our work station. We scan the label with our code reader and the computer tells us what should be inside the tote. We then grab the first item and scan it's individual label. The computer then tells us what size box to use to pack that particular item so we pull the flattened box out of the stock that is within reach all around our station. The next step is building the box. They have tape machines that also read the size of the box from the computer and, with the touch of a button, spits out the length of tape you need to tape up the bottom of the box. Next step is to scan and attach a new UPC label to the outside of the box. We then place the item in the box, put in the little air pillow "space fillers", close and tape the top of the box. We have a second conveyor belt that we put the packed boxes on and they are then headed to the shipping area to have the address labels applied and then out the door they go! Then repeat and repeat and repeat! :-)
The work is not hard and the hours seem to fly by! We are both enjoying our jobs and the full time workers have been very friendly and patient with us. :-)
They are changing our schedule a little though. We are on nights working "D" shift and originally we were off Saturday, Sunday and Monday. During the peak season they switch D shift days off to Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and that occurs next week so we are going to have a four day week end! :-)
We decided to head back to Indiana to see everyone before the mandatory overtime starts and we are too tired to move! :-)
Next week we move from 5 hour shifts to 7 1/2 hour shifts before going to our regularly scheduled 10 hour days the following week. I'll keep you posted.