Here’s to Another 20 Years of Underpaid and Soul-Crushing Work at Amazon
In honor of America’s new Christmas, “Amazon Prime Day,” please take a moment to reflect on how the now-20-year-old Amazon got here: by treating many of its employees like shit.
Over the years, we have published quite a few emails from employees inside Amazon—including warehouse workers, who pick and pack and ship all of the crap we buy, sales reps, and white collar workers in Amazon offices. Today is a fitting day to review what they have told us.
Warehouse Workers
Amazon warehouse workers are treated like “a dumb child”
“No one on my hire team lasted more than four months”
Amazon steals employees’ time without compensation
“So now you’re about 3 to 4 hours in and of course you don’t get paid for any of that time it took to get hired.”
Working the “zombie apocalyptic” Christmas season at Amazon
Office Workers
“It was the single worst working experience in my 20 year career.”
“Amazon is an amazing company. As long as you don’t work here.”
Amazon’s Kafkaesque “Performance Improvement Plans”
Customer Service Agents
“Most employees are so stressed that they are getting sick.”
[Image by Jim Cooke. If you’re an Amazon employee who wants to share your story, email me.]