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Comment by skookumchuck | Hacker News Reader

> The author almost injured themselves with an overly heavy box because Amazon didn't provide them with a dolly, warn them they needed one, and if they did injure themselves the medical bills are their own

Why is it someone else's fault if you lift something too heavy for you? What is "too heavy" is a fairly personal thing. It's trivial to tell if something is too heavy for you. Do I need to explain how?

As for not injuring yourself from lifting, that's a skill everyone should learn by themselves, like how to not fall down the stairs. It's not someone else's fault.

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If your employer asks you to lift a 30kg box and you damage your back, it's their fault, I struggle to see how you could argue otherwise. Only situation where I think it's not true is if they provided you with a dolly and you chose not to use it - then it's on you.

I'm not going to cut my arm off if Amazon ordered me to. Would you? Amazon can't possibly know what the state of your back is. Only you do, so take some responsibility for yourself.

The employer accept the job and fail to do it properly.

Well, they ask you to deliver a 30kg box.

If you can reasonably do that without damaging your back, and you choose to make an ill advised lift, maybe that's on you.

Where it's debatable is how well Amazon set you up for solving the 30kg problem in a safe way. It's quite possible they failed in providing reasonable instruction and equipment to this guy.

What if you hurt your back trying to lift a 20kg box? Or a 5 kg one? Or a 200kg one that you should know you can't lift? At some point you have to blame the worker, or blame it on bad luck.

The weight given in the article was "over 30 pounds", which is 14kg. That should not trouble a healthy adult and could easily be expected when you sign up for a job delivering package. For comparison, airlines use the "heavy baggage" tag above 23kg, and depending on the airline accept bags up to 50kg or so.

> As for not injuring yourself from lifting, that's a skill everyone should learn by themselves,

Without looking it up, what's the recommended technique to lift a 30 kg box from the back of a van?

The article mentions a box of 30 lb, not 30 kg. Lifting 30 kg is dangerous (there is a reason the weight limit for checked-in luggage is 23kg).

Isn't the limit for business class checked luggage something like 32kg?

I believe there is a very high fee attached to checking in 23kg-32kg bags (€80?) which are then specifically marked. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s added for free on some business class fares.

Higher limits usually mean several bags.

On United I can check bags up to 75lb (34kg) for free due to status, regardless of fare. I can't remember the last time my bag was weighed or marked.

Indeed, now that I look, some airlines allow higher per-luggage limits. I wonder if it's new, and it's due to more automation of the handling.

Anecdotally, I flew Norwegian recently and I was the only one that handled the luggage. I had to figure out how to attach the label, which was mildly intimidating.

Because they gave them the package and the order to deliver it?

If the box is too heavy, refuse to lift it. It's not hard. Amazon can't force you to.

If a dolly will help, you can pick one up for 40 bucks or so (ironically, from Amazon!). I keep one around, because I find it useful. Many occupations require you to furnish your own tools (and if you're an auto mechanic, that can run into thousands). I've bought and used personal equipment at every job I've ever had.

40 dollars isn't much for you but it can be a lot to ask for many people in this country to just shell out on a moment's notice. If you find that hard to imagine because you make more than that in an hour, then may be you should take a break and realize your experience doesn't extend to people whom the article is talking about.

Remember that this job is for people who provide their own car. If you can't scrape together $40, how can you own a car? You can't even put gas in it.

You're getting there. That $40 dollars will go to gas, food, bills, basic things that you need for life. You don't have much left to pull out for random things you didn't account for.

And you'll have to quit when your headlight goes out and needs replacement, right?

People in the real world eventually have to do this once they're caught out by the cops a couple of times due to a broken headlight.

I'm genuinely not sure if you're completely unaware of the real world financial problems low paid folks have, or are just trolling now.

Maybe. If you couldn't afford to fix it before, you definitely can't after a few tickets. But if you give up the car then you can't get to your job, so how are you going to pay off those tickets?

I've been recently unemployed, I own a car, stretching to an extra $40 on top of other costs is actually tricky. I had no appreciation of this until just recently and now understand the hardships folks on unemployment benefits experience.

I was being paid GBP 76.00 per week which has to cover heat & light, food, telephone, internet, gas for the car, car insurance, car tax, etc....it goes on. There is nothing left. I was also being paid "housing benefit" which doesn't pay anywhere near the actual cost of rent.

You should try this some time before making such poorly informed and sweeping statements.

Just get fired and lose your paycheck, it's that easy. No big deal right?

Didn't you see that they didn't tell them anything about the weight of the boxes? You are just supposed to deliver them, without any info about their size and weights, also without other details.

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