Why isn't this automated? Seems like a machine would be able to do this much more effectively and for less.

@robothouse: Robots wouldn't be able to make sure the right DVD goes into the right envelope.

I have to ask: since this is a mailing center, are the shirts really necessary?

@B:
Yes they would. Barcodes on the DVD's can be read by a robot.

I kind of appreciate that Netflix employs humans. While I appreciate capitalism and innovation, America is kind of low on jobs right now. It makes me happy to see photos of people gainfully employed.

I used to work there. I would get confused frequently as to where I worked. I am grateful for the shirts.

Some really cool pictures. I saw something the other day from Nightline that indicated that their postage yearly runs around $300 million. The number of DVDs they mail daily is a little outdated in the captions, though. I believe they are up to around 2 million per day now.

@Jesse in Japan: I think it's more of a solidarity kind of thing. You know, promoting a team oriented work environment.

@Jack Doyle:
"their postage yearly runs around $300 million"
Yeah, which made it hilarious when the post office started bitching about dealing with the DVDs. My mail carrier told me that they don't even have to do anything; they just put the DVDs in a bin and Netflix picks them up.

It's cool that they employ humans to do this. Maintaining machinery is no small task and this might be more cost effective.

How do you think they get the DVDs to the individual stations?

@Dooley: I think the envelope may snag on machinery, with the holes used to show the barcode. And it might be more expensive in the long run to cover that little hole with plastic so it wouldn't snag.

Also, sometimes when I receive the DVDs, the barcode isn't always visible in its entirety in the hole, so it's possible machines would get confused if it couldn't read the entire barcode.

@Jesse in Japan: It's pretty obvious they were given the T-shirts to wear for the photo shoot. The women in front has a pink shirt on underneath and I can make out other people in the photos who tossed their freebie on to be in the Globe.

@Dooley: I can see if they didnt have people actually looking things over you would have people returning blank cd's with the barcodes attached and nobody would be the wiser.

@undefined: Even at $10 an hour, humans are probably a fine mix of cheap and effective when compared to the machinery that would do the process.

@minneapolisite: Do you think it's really that bad out there? I realize that privilege is transparent, but I don't know anybody who has been laid off that I would consider a "producer" or "best in their field."

@pecan 3.14159265: It looks like they move them around in white boxes on those rolling wireframe racks from picture 11, but perhaps they have smaller racks for moving them about the actual offices.

This was actually pretty interesting. I had sort of envisioned a system in which one person unwraps and inspects incoming DVDs and they go to shelves and are then plucked for outgoing shipments, but of course, given that most of their inventory probably goes back out the same day it comes in, that wouldn't make sense.

@Bailen: That happened to me once with Redbox. Someone taped the barcode from a movie onto some crappy edutainment CD-Rom.

@robothouse: Robots are probably not as scalable as they need. It's easier for costs and scalability to use people. When things ebb and flow during the year they can scale back or ramp up without the huge up-front investment in say a robot. People probably allow them to really keep their costs/disk stable.

@Jesse in Japan:

I think it should be more like a New Jack City crack house sort of environment, everyone is butt nekkid!

@Jesse in Japan:
Do they make the workers pay for them?

unforums are bad for employee morale even more so with boss who just about numbers.

@Jack Doyle:

The Post Office has problems with Netflix because they get a special premium rate but their DVDs tend to get stuck on the automated mail sorting machines, messing up ALL machine-sorted mail. Supposedly, Netflix designed a new envelope and the problem is cleared up. Your postman sounds like a dolt. I work at the distribution centers as well as individual offices and I see these DVDs all over the place.

@robothouse: Robots would also have a lot more trouble figuring out if the DVD in the case matches the DVD on the barcode.

I know I've accidentally returned DVD's in the wrong envelope a couple times, but I have not yet gotten one like that.

Also, it is good to see that Netflix can employ all those people with the very reasonable monthly fees they charge (though I don't get the blu-ray, so I didn't see the recent fee increase).

from photo 2: "any notes customers have left on the plastic sleeves."
huh? i've had netflix for years and i never wrote any notes on the envelopes. wonder why anyone would... there's an online reporting system for problems.

looks uncomfortable to me, like those workers need ergonomic assessments for their stations.

Be kind please rewind!

@robothouse: If you had actually read the captions on the pretty pictures you would have learned that they do sometimes use machinery to help stuff envelopes but they key function that humans are good at is their eyesight which they use to assess scratches and other issues that would be beyond a simple robot.

@catastrophegirl: I have actually written the correct time for a movie. There have been a few where the envelope read "120 minutes" and it came in at 100. I figured the next person would appreciate knowing the movie wasn't 2 hours long. Usually the times are spot-on, but some for one reason or another (and I am not talking about an unrated version vs the rated version) there was a significant difference in time.

two things occurred to me as I looked at those:

1.) what a deadly boring job
2.) I can't believe they just throw out all that paper (or packaging, or whatever).

I love the Globe's photo essays.

In a few years these pics will seem quaint, I'm sure, as everyone will have moved on to networked delivery of multimedia. Nice to have this interim phase between videotapes and universal downloads documented.

"Dad, you mean you had to have those little silver things to watch movies?" :)

@Blinky987: In my area, several big employers have laid off entire departments or 90% in some cases.

A friend survived such a cut and was surprised at the quality of people let go.

@watchwhathappens:

I am hoping those big plastic bags with the torn red envelopes are for recycling purposes. They are similar to the ones our university uses for various types of paper that is recycled.

@Dooley: Netflix doesn't use barcodes on the actual discs. They are prone to tampering and many DVDs are double sided, making it difficult to implement anyway. So netflix uses the sleeve to track the disc, and humans make sure they are not mismatched when they are returned.

It's nice Netflix is finally letting the public get in on how they do things. There was a long period where they wanted their internal workings kept secret.

I need to reactivate my membership. I miss it.

@Jacquilynne: Yeah, I saw the photo, but I'm wondering whose tedious job it is to sort them alphabetically...cause if you have a rack of 200 DVDs, you better know what order they're in!

@ElizabethD: It will take more than 'a few years' especially if the major ISPs all implement bandwidth caps. The mass market feels DVD is a new format that they 'just' upgraded to. People are hesitant to move to another new method of movie distribution. This is why Blockbuster, Redbox, Netflix will still be around for years servicing the half of the population that is comfortable with physical media.

@nybiker: I'd rather just send an e-mail since you don't really know how exactly they'll interpret the writing (rude or helpful?), even if it's useful information. Just cause you can, doesn't mean you should do it that way. I'm sure they would appreciate an e-mail instead.

@ElizabethD: I bet they recycle. In some states it's law for businesses to recycle.

And there's nothing they can really do about the paper envelopes. There's not quite a better way of shipping them at the moment. They have to protect the DVD somehow. I'm glad they reuse the paper/plastic sleeve that holds the DVD though.

@pecan 3.14159265: Why would you use a whole for the barcode? I don't use netflix so I don't know what the envelope looks like now but you could easily barcode each envelope and when it puts the dvd in the envelope it then reads the barcode and it would then know that the dvd is in that envelope. Sure some would be snagged in the machine but USPS' system uses machines in the major sorting centers anyway so it wouldn't be any different than that.

@dvdchris: and in the meantime i'll be watching my netflix instant viewing on my laptop and my roku. and totally forgetting to return the physical dvds for weeks at a time

@catastrophegirl: I once received a broken DVD, so I reported it online and shipped it back. The DVD that came back to me was the exact DVD I had shipped out a week earlier, crack and all.

So whenever I ship back a broken disc, I now write on the label that it contains a broken disc.

@minneapolisite: Me too. The people in those pictures are my neighbors.

I wonder what the Boston turnaround time is? I used to get awesome turnaround time when my discs were going to the Atlanta facility, but when they opened one here in Birmingham, the time became terrible. (May have something to do with hiring people from this godforsaken city.)

Ooompa Loompas!

I love Netflix. There isn't a video rental place within a 25 minute drive.

Anyone else notice the abundance of women to men?

@Blinky987: Glad to see your world is nice and rosy - I work in the real world. We had several GREAT people laid off since November, mainly because they make more money (guys with Ph.D's in physics aren't cheap). To add insult to injury, our company decided to close my manufacturing facility, despite the fact that our yields/automation/cost structure/innovation are well beyond any other site in the U.S. or abroad. That said, many of my vendors have laid people off under similar circumstance - looking more at cost than the value of the employee.
While I'd love to think that only "less-desirable" employees get laid off, the sad fact is that a balance sheet has much more leverage than anyone's list of skills, qualifications, and results. And to add insult to injury, consistent underachievers (i.e. exec. management at many U.S. finanacial institutions) are given bonuses and golden parachutes. Guess your model is flawed.

@dvdchris:

???

I 'just' upgraded to DVD 10 years ago. Blu Ray (and formally HD-DVD) was not a new format. It was merely an improvement on the current format that many haven't taken to, including me.

Blockbuster was talking bankruptcy earlier this year. Hollywood Video has been dead for over a year.

People are accustomed to getting movies 'online' already with On Demand.

Your point about ISPs is valid, and it is something I talked about in great length in a previous post.

But it's not going to be long before DVD is dead.

@Blinky987: You must be living a charmed life. People who are in union environments are laid off based on seniority rather than skill, office politics decide layoffs over talent in other places, and some companies dump their best employees even with it is detrimental to them (remember Circuit City).
I am guessing you must not read the news, or that you have an MBA degree.

@Blinky987: "...I don't know anybody who has been laid off that I would consider a "producer" or "best in their field." "

Oh, I do! Just in the past month, we had another round of layoffs at my workplace. Among the casualties were two managers with 20+ years with us, leaders whose sales teams brought in big bucks and who'd won several internal and external accolades for their performance. Gone because their jobs were considered "redundant" after the sales teams were "re-organized" (basically, after the teams were consolidated, these managers found their jobs eliminated). Granted, I'm sure the headhunter were all over these two before they even got to pack up their desks, but nonetheless it came as a shock to everyone.

Another person in my company, in Sales, won our Master Salesperson Award two years in a row (including this year). That means she was the top salesperson in her sales territory, outperforming all of her teammates and literally bringing in millions in profit every quarter. Her job disappeared in the consolidation as well.

But...I work in a company that's very dependent on a healthy housing industry, so we're getting hit harder than most.

@docrice: "While I'd love to think that only "less-desirable" employees get laid off, the sad fact is that a balance sheet has much more leverage than anyone's list of skills, qualifications, and results."

Quoted for ever-lovin' truth.

Our HR people told us that the layoffs weren't performance-based, and all evidence indicates that they ain't lyin'. My workplace has seen a bunch of top-performers in Sales, Manufacturing, and Shipping shown the door in the past six months.

@docrice: I think it's more of a bang for buck sort of thing. If you're worth this much you better produce this much...or another way of looking at it is, how much revenue will we lose by dumping your salary. Or if we dump this department how much will we lose.

Here's your shirt, here's your gloves, GET TO WORK.

@pecan 3.14159265: Why would you need to sort stuff that has a barcode and is scanned in? More than likely each box has a barcode as well as each shelf on the racks. Simple query of their database would give them the location down to the box, then it's a quick look through the box.