30 seconds to grab an item off a shelf in a huge warehouse, wrap it, put put in a box, tape the box shut, print and attach a label, load it on a truck, and complete all the required tracking steps? And we still haven't accounted for managing all these people, cleaning the warehouse, or even stocking the shelves.
I'm guessing most of those steps will be automated, or done in bulk, therefore only taking 1 or 2 seconds of actual human time.
For example, sticking labels on a box could be entirely automated, with the only time use being 30 minutes to replace the printer once every million labels when it wears out.
Sure, lots of it is automated. There has to be a fantastic level of automation to achieve that 1 minute per order.
Amazon is one of the most brutally efficient operations in world history. We read every week about workers afraid to take bathroom breaks, and according to the article here workers seem too busy to notice their coworkers dropping dead of heart attacks. The sentiment of us here at our keyboards saying "wow, I can't believe it takes more than 30 seconds to put my order in a box" seems really wrong.
Edit: CNN says it takes a minute of human labor as of 2016 (https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/06/technology/amazon-warehouse...). And that's shelf to delivery truck, so there is plenty more in that process that it leaves out.