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The beauty of online shopping in general is the associated anonymity, especially if you’re purchasing something you wouldn’t buy in person. But if you think your purchases are a secret—they’re not.
In response to a Reddit “ask me anything” (AMA), a commenter asked about the stranger items employees see coming through. In response, the ex-worker @bigougit said that adult toys were the most surprising items they saw.
On a separate Reddit AMA, another employee @BlessBless echoed this. “[I saw] lots of obscure sex DVDs and toys ,” they wrote.
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Redditor @BlessBless, who used to work as a “picker”—an employee who fills up the bins for orders—said that a scanner tells them what to grab and when.
“My scanner would then tell me when that particular bin was completed (sometimes it would only have one tiny item in it), at which point I’d move to the next one,” the worker wrote on Reddit, noting that they would fill two bins at a time. “When both were filled, I’d take them to a nearby conveyor belt and stick them on, where they would travel to the packagers.”
Once there, packagers are, again, just following instructions. “Everything is organized in the warehouse (DVDs with DVDs, books with books, etc.), but workers go and put seemingly random items on a cart,” @bigougit wrote on the separate thread. “Then that cart goes into a packaging station where a worker is told which box to put an item in, the computer decides all of this on [its] own.”
“The computer tells us to put the product in said box or no box at all. If you suggest a different box, you get flagged,” a Redditor wrote in a separate post .”That barcode printed on the box tells the computer upstairs if it’s the right box according to the computer you’re working with. When they don’t match up, it gets kicked out and sent back down creating issues.”
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One former employee explained that workers have to go back through security checkpoints after clocking out for lunch. This may keep more valuable items from getting pilfered, but food is an easier target.
“Food is a big one,” commenter @what_comes_after_q wrote in response to a query about theft. “Security makes it hard to steal anything valuable (also very valuable goods are in a secured area). Food on the other hand, you can literally [eat] the evidence.”
“As a picker it was my job to find each customers order in the warehouse, put it in a bin, fill that bin up, and put it on the conveyor belt when full, so I was the one that had to literally find your order, and in doing so, you come across a lot of things like candy and gum that have been torn open because I assume someone wanted a piece,” they wrote.
@Kaynetal said that they only ever saw candy and gum stolen, but another former worker, @Smokey_Strafe, said that they’ve also seen gift cards stolen. No matter what was stolen, however, the employees faced consequences.
“Someone got arrested for stealing $15,000 worth of $100 Xbox Live gift cards. Someone also got fired for stealing a candy bar worth $0.70,” they wrote.
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“The computer flags anyone with a high return to purchase rate,” the Redditor wrote. “For example, if you have made a total of 500 purchases since your account was made and have returned 251 items, your account gets flagged. This often means nothing more than a simple note. If you have a high return volume over a short period though, the computer bumps it up to a fraud specialist who checks if anything looks sketchy.”
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“We would get first dibs on ‘damaged’ items and they allowed us to pick through the about to expire stuff before we sent it out to the food banks,” Redditor @Goobermeister wrote on @Kaynetal’s AMA. “Lots of organic ribeyes, because it was hard to unpack and stock them because nobody wanted to work in the fridge/freezer to get it done. And everyone went home on valentines with multiple two dozen bouquets of roses because they weren’t up to par (they looked fine to me).”
