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THE PLACE IS immense. Cold, cavernous. Silent, despite thousands of people quietly picking items, or standing along the conveyors quietly packing or box-taping, nothing noisy but the

occasional whir of a passing forklift. I have just been hired as a picker, which means my job is to find, scan, place in a plastic tote, and send away via conveyor whatever item within the

multiple stories of this several-hundred-thousand-square-foot warehouse my scanner tells me to.

My scanner tells me in what exact section — there are nine merchandise sections, so sprawling that there's a map attached to my ID badge — of vast shelving systems the item resides. It also

tells me how many seconds I should take to get there. Dallas sector, section yellow, row H34, bin 22, level D: wearable blanket. Twenty seconds. At 5-foot-9, I've got a decently long stride,

and I cover the 20 steps and locate the exact shelving unit in the allotted time only if I don't hesitate for a second and walk as fast as I can or even jog. Often as not, I miss my time

target.

I'm working for Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc., which has ordered the exact number of humans from the temp agency to fill this week's orders if we work at top capacity.

Lots of retailers use temporary help in peak season, and online ones are no exception. But lots of warehousing and distribution centers like this also use temps year-round. The Bureau of

Labor Statistics found that more than 15 percent of pickers, packers, movers, and unloaders are temps. They make $3 less an hour on average than permanent workers. And they can be

"temporary" for years. Always, they can be let go in an instant.

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