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Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

theintercept.com

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Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#211

Post by mdni007 »

bredren wrote: post #20

We had a driver pour out a bottle of pee directly onto the street in front of our place from his open driver’s side van window on Saturday afternoon. My wife got a photo and then immediately after they delivered packages and left I went and took a photo because I couldn’t believe it. I had not heard about the controversy until then, but my wife had been following it. I read these tweets and I also didn’t believe they…

> If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened with a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving pee on the seat, which was pretty gross.

Not sure where you live but where I'm from, letting a stranger into your home is the same as giving them permission to rob you

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#212

Post by ziddoap »

throwawaysea wrote: post #206
Tostino wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have reports from the workers stating so. We also have a denial from Amazon saying they don't have workers peeing in bottles. Seems that denial hasn't held up too well.

We have anecdotal reports from a few workers saying so. We also have leaked documents saying that Amazon does not allow peeing in bottles as policy. If a random employee does not follow the policy and pees in a bottle, that seems like the employee's fault. If the employee is doing so to make up lost time so they can appear more productive, it seems like that's an issue of under performance that they're hiding by peei…

> it seems like that's an issue of under performance that they're hiding by peeing in a bottle.

It seems equally as likely that it is an issue of over-expecting what a worker can reasonably perform. Why is under performance the more likely scenario in your mind?

>it isn't clear to me that this is either widespread

If this were the only occurrence of "Amazon Contractor" and some combination of "pee", "bottle", "no time for bathroom breaks", etc. I would be more inclined to take the route of "a few bad workers". However, these stories have consistently made news since at least 2018.

Additional factors, which not conclusive themselves, that lead me to doubt the Amazon narrative include such things like 74% of respondents to a survey conducted by Organise reporting that they avoid using the washroom for fear of missing targets[1] - indicating that perhaps at least some fault lies with Amazon for setting unrealistic and unnecessarily burdensome targets.

[1]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a3af3e22aeba594ad56d...

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#213

Post by sbierwagen »

tmpz22 wrote: post #60
aero-glide2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually was glad to see a corporation tweeting what its actual intentions were.

But doesn’t their post qualify as gaslighting? The tweets said peeing in bottles due to extreme performance quotas does not happen and it very very clearly happens all the time.

Not every untruth is "gaslighting".

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#214

Post by danpalmer »

slickrick216 wrote: post #3

Somewhat off topic but this is actually pretty positive proactive approach to security in the finest spirt of due diligence. It should be ok for people to open tickets to look into curious things no matter how trivial. Tickets don’t have to become incidents. This is what triage is for. The real security incident here is how did the intercept learn of that ticket as that should really be classified.

This is a great point. Normalising good security behaviours is hard to do, but important. An old workplace had a great culture around checking ID of anyone you didn't recognise (necessary as they handled a lot of sensitive material), and at my current workplace we regularly run phishing simulations and encourage people to share them in Slack to keep it front of mind (as it's one of the biggest risks we've identified).

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#216

Post by adolph »

neartheplain wrote: post #101
Judgmentality wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is human pee any more gross than dog pee? This isn't a rhetorical question - I'm genuinely asking.

Human pee transmits human diseases.

Human urine very rarely transmits human diseases, unlike feces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#217

Post by mullingitover »

andonisus wrote: post #75

I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the delivery profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just Amazon drivers. Why is Amazon being singled out here? I suppose the argument is that it is caused by their aggressive delivery metrics and policies, but would t this be true of any shipping company? If drivers are incentivized to by the number of packages they deliver to meet bonuses or certain payouts,…

> Why is Amazon being singled out here?

"Amazon forces warehouse workers to pee in bottles" was a thing two years ago. I haven't heard of this being a common thing outside anecdotal accounts, and looking at the amazon employees subreddits it sounded like it was overblown. Amazon responded forcefully to that claim in their tweet, and was subsequently hit with a 'gotcha!' when the drivers were reported to be doing it.

From what I've read, Amazon's warehouses aren't a fun place to work, but not overall different from any other warehouse job. Along the same lines, their delivery jobs aren't remarkably different from other delivery jobs and the drivers peeing in bottles is a thing that happens across the board in the industry.

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#218

Post by [deleted] »

nullc wrote: post #99
AlexandrB wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not surprising. The biggest danger of having tremendous wealth and/or power seems to be that you can no longer accept and integrate valid criticism from others.

There is so much criticism-- especially towards anything/anyone high profile-- including outright invalid criticism that there is potentially a selection effect: Everyone who listens to criticism gives up and we're left with people who are substantially immune to it.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#219

Post by jcampbell1 »

SR2Z wrote: post #88
ahelwer wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps he had to urinate again, and did not have an additional bottle? What then should he have done? If you'll notice, we're now heading down the path of playing out ever-more-elaborate strategies for individual delivery drivers to maintain homeostasis without offending the delicate sensibilities of the people they serve, instead of questioning why this is a problem in the first place.

The solution to this problem is not "dump a bottle of piss out on someone's lawn," it's "expand labor laws to cover this very obvious human rights issue and then hammer Amazon with it until they shape up." Workers need bathrooms, and employers have to pay for them.

I used to do apartment maintenance and I considered asking someone to use their bathroom completely unprofessional. I peed in bottles and never thought it a big deal.

A simple question, do you always offer water and a restroom to blue collar workers who enter your home? If so, you are in the 1%.

Re: Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as “suspicious,” fearing hack

#220

Post by Rule35 »

rideontime wrote: post #194
Rule35 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's drivers are contractors if anyone is pushing them to pee in bottles, it's themselves. So there's no actual answer to this issue. Are they not being paid enough, such that they can't pee, or are they making an reasonable decision to pee in a bottle in order to save 15 minutes and make more money. Considering they keep taking the contracts one has to assume that they're profitable, at least usually. > I can't…

If you're wondering why this is getting buried, educate yourself on how Amazon "contracting" works. It's just a scheme to cut costs and shift all responsibility elsewhere.

It's getting buried because people downvote what they can't argue. Amazon isn't doing anything different than any other company, or anything that has been a problem before now.

Unionists are lying, conflating contractors and employees, and everyone here is buying it - probably because it fits an existing narrative. I'm being told, by privileged SF types, that I need to educate myself, when they've apparently never worked a day as a contractor, or perhaps never even worked a real job (ie, uncomfortable) in their life.

The pee bottle is being used as an excuse to unionize, even though it's something contractors choose to do in all driving jobs.

Also, when I say "drive for another company tomorrow", that's the ground reality. If you show up sober and well-dressed at any courier company you'll have a magnetic sign on your car and a load of packages right away. (And couriering is generally to offices with a ton of washrooms so you can weigh that in the calculation.)

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