Wed. - up at 4:30 again and ready for work. It is much warmer outside than a week ago and we know the end is near. All the Camperforce people were smiling this morning, everyone is counting down. Depending on the shift, some of them will be done Friday, some Saturday and those on 1st shift have to stay and work through Monday. But not us - hooray!
The full-time Amazon employees on our 3rd shift have mandatory 50 hours this week, so they were in on Tuesday for work. At morning standup, they announced that 20+ of our inbound people would be going to help in outbound, doing picking, packing or gift wrapping. Of course the whole focus at Amazon now is filling the customers' orders in time for Christmas. In my job, we do Putback Carts, which means restowing products that were picked incorrectly, order cancellations, etc - but by getting them back in the bins as quickly as possible, the product is then again available to be purchased by someone else. They assigned Gary to stowing, he has not been moved to any of the outbound projects. After work, we talked to the RV park owner to make our arrangements for leaving the motorhome here while we are gone and hooking up again the one night when we return. We told him we will plan to stay here next year if we return.
The last month or so, they have been handing out TUL Treasure cards for good work and good attendance. These are scratch off tickets that have 1, 2, 5 or more points that count for the equivalent dollar amount in the "Amazon Store" for t-shirts, hats, etc. with the Amazon logo that we can purchase with our dollars. Gary and I went in last week because we had points accumulated and picked up a couple shirts and things. This week they were more liberal in handing out cards and I happened to get one where I won a gift card. With the additional points we earned this week, we picked up a couple shirts again.
Thursday - work went well, Gary stowed all day and I did my Cubiscan job on a pallet full of clothes and did half a dozen Putback Carts. We are also handing out our business cards to our Camperforce friends and getting their contact information so we can contact them in the future. Pretty steady work today, but a lot of our group were working outbound again. Today, Amazon gave everyone cookies and fruit at afternoon break and we picked up our 2013 Amazon Peak t-shirts after work. Home again, we did more packing and preparing for our departure on Sunday. It is getting cooler outside, supposed to have rain and possibly ice on Saturday.
Friday - up and ready for work. Gary disconnected the cable TV equipment, we will take that back to the cable company tonight after work. Our group of Camperforce workers have our exit interview this morning before lunch. At work right away in the morning, they are letting people sign up for VTO, voluntary time off. Some of our camper friends signed up, they want to get their campers ready for leaving before the rain starts. A lot of workers to outbound again, but Gary is sent to stowing and I am on my regular job. At break, they told some of the campers they could leave for the day, but they really couldn't because of the exit interview meeting at 10:30.
At the meeting, they had us fill out a form detailing the jobs we did and asking for any comments and suggestions. Then Michael Cross, our HR rep, handed out gifts, an Amazon BBQ apron, a CamperForce window cling and a little notepad/pen set. He shared with us some of the season's numbers, this Coffeyville Amazon Fulfillment Center did the largest volume of product ever this season and we were a large part of getting that done. He told us there were 234 Camperforce workers there this season, 90% stayed the whole time. He then answered questions from the group about Amazon, about the Big Chief RV park problems and then the center manager came in and thanked us for working there this year.
After dismissing the outbound workers and any others from other shifts, Michael told us that because the work volume was down, we were free to leave our Amazon employment early - today, effective immediately instead of working through Saturday! Yeehaw! Everyone said yes! So we went and collected our things, our lunches, coats, etc, and left Amazon for the last time this season. The only downside about it, was that we did not get a chance to say goodbye to some of the fulltime workers we had become friends with. But they have seen it happen before and understand us leaving. About 40 Camperforce workers are going to stay on and work until the end of January.
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