The Amazon philosophy includes the saying" "every day is Day 1". It's meant to encourage curiosity and improvement. I can empathize with this slogan for now; my training period is full of firsts.
The next two days of training are primarily on the floor. We start in a different classroom, where the new hire group is once again broken up into small teams lead by a yellow and blue stripe vested Learning Ambassador. My new instructor is a petite lady who has been at this fulfillment center for five years. She whisks us through the front of the building to a rack of scanners. We each take one, and she directs us to a break room near the first floor Pick area. We take a seat at one of the tables. She has a tablet, and she's reading a presentation regarding our first tasks. She's soft-spoken and it a little hard to hear her over the sounds of associates on their break and the wall-mounted TV. I think I get the gist; safe bending practices, navigating the aisles with a cart, using the ladder and step stool.
She hands us a number of laminated cards with holes punched in the top, to loop through our lanyard hooks. Little cheat codes for us to reference; the break schedule, how to log into the scanner, and what to do with damaged or missing items. They help fill in the blanks.
Now we take to the floor. We're picking! Two of my classmates take off; it's their second time at Amazon, they've done this before. Myself and two other students remain glued to the teacher. She finds us a cart, a couple of yellow totes, and we get to picking. We share one scanner and take turns. I go first; the scanner shows us the item to be picked at a location. It takes us a minute to orient ourselves among the rows, but we find it. The bin is packed with small items and I have to empty some of the items into the spare tote to see what's left. We find it, one down!
We slowly make our way to the next bin. More small items, I can't find what we're looking for. we go through the missing item procedure, scanning everything. I'm not off to a great start.
I pick three more items; thankfully they are easily identifiable and (relatively) quick. I had the scanner over to my teammate. everyone seems to experience a similar picking cadence; we take a beat to locate our bin; and check the scanner for an image, description and barcode details. Everyone seems to the same mix of simple picks and the more labor-intensive small or missing items. We get turned around easy, confusing the aisle location with the bin number. we all get more comfortable using the scanner gun.
We break for lunch and when we come back, we're on our own. I grab a scanner, and make my way to the pick area. I grab a cart, and scan a new tote. The instructor comes to check on me every once in a while, but I'm left to work independently for the most part. The afternoon moves fast as I pick my way through the minutes. Some Amazon fulfillments centers are fitted with robotics that makes the picking process a standing activity, where automated pods come to you at an assigned station. Here, picking still means walking up and down aisles, and sometimes different floors. I'm sure to get my steps in.
Tomorrow is my first "real" day on Pick, another Day 1.
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