HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — The North Pole may run something like Amazon’s shipping facility in Ruskin.
Amazon calls it a “Fulfillment Center” and on Cyber Monday it lived up to its name.
What You Need To Know
- Amazon's Ruskin fulfillment center was busy right through Cyber Monday
- The center moves about 700,000 packages a day
- More than 3,000 people work at the center in Ruskin
“So we do about 700,000 units," said center assistant general manager Kim Price. “Every single day during peak, so a lot of boxes. A lot of shipments out.”
It’s down to a science. Robotic arms moving merchandise, and everything has a barcode on it so they can know where it is, where it’s headed and how soon it’ll get there.
“It’s basically our Super Bowl of the year,” Price said. “We want to make sure that we are delivering to our customers. So we do a lot of prep work for Cyber Monday, about 3 to 4 months in advance.”
But if none of that does the job, there’s 11-year veteran Marineta Barbu there to get it done.
“So I’m gonna scan the sticker," she said. “Which is authentication of our box. What’s going into the box. So I wanna make sure that we have the right items in the white box for our customers. Be happy.”
In her case, the bow doesn’t fall from the gift.
Barbu’s entire immediate family now works for Amazon. With employees like this, who needs elves?