Amazon made video games for its workers to reduce tedium of warehouse jobs

Enlarge / Workers and packages inside an Amazon warehouse. (credit: Getty Images | Macduff Everton)

Amazon has created video games that its warehouse workers can "play" while they fill customer orders in an effort to speed up fulfillment and relieve the tedium of packing products into boxes.

The Washington Post described the warehouse games in a report yesterday:

Developed by Amazon, the games are displayed on small screens at employees' workstations. As robots wheel giant shelves up to each workstation, lights or screens indicate which item the worker needs to pluck to put into a bin. The games simultaneously register the completion of the task, which is tracked by scanning devices, and can pit individuals, teams or entire floors against one another to be fastest, simply by picking or stowing real Lego sets, cellphone cases or dish soap. Game-playing employees are rewarded with points, virtual badges and other goodies throughout a shift.

Think Tetris, but with real boxes.

Amazon has deployed the games in "five warehouses from suburban Seattle to near Manchester in Britain, after starting to offer them at a lone warehouse in late 2017," the Post wrote. The games ratchet up workplace competition, while "slyly pushing workers to raise the stakes among themselves to pack more boxes bound for customer homes," the Post wrote. (The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.)

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