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Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

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Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#11

Post by gorbot »

kelukelugames wrote: post #7
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

Not all employees are treated poorly. Yeah, the stock vest is back loaded, but they typically give cash upfront, which you could just turn around and buy stocks with..

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#12

Post by gourou »

kelukelugames wrote: post #7
notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

> Amazon is incredibly anti-employee

They prefer calling it 'customer-centric'

> Amazon, Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#13

Post by rando444 »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Costco employees interact with customers.. Having a healthy interaction with customers is important, and treating employees well goes a long way in helping grow a customer base.

Customers will never interact with the person that boxes their amazon shipment. Those individuals are not seen as people, but just a necessity to continue operations.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#14

Post by aylmao »

gorbot wrote: post #11
kelukelugames wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos. Jeff Bezos is the reason why Amazon treats workers they way they do. Compared to other tech giants, Amazon is incredibly anti-employee. Look at how their stocks vest. I worked at Microsoft during Balmer's reign. The founder/CEO's attitude dictates the work culture. And causes harm if it's bad. I live in Seattle and often hear this joke: Being an Amazon customer is the best. An investor is great. An employee no…

Not all employees are treated poorly. Yeah, the stock vest is back loaded, but they typically give cash upfront, which you could just turn around and buy stocks with..

> which you could just turn around and buy stocks with.

Which just benefits the company even further?

Edit: if you downvote please reply. How will I correct my stance if I get no feedback? I'm not sure why I'm getting down voted.

Edit: Thanks for the comments. I did assume this meant Amazon stock. Didn't think my comment sounded so combative until I was told.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#15

Post by LinuxBender »

Doesn't this affect more than the employees? If they are peeing in a bottle, shouldn't they sanitize their hands after touching their package so they can safely handle our packages? Should I be inspecting the inner contents using a black light?

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#16

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #2

Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.

Would be interesting to know whether it's a local problem or happens in other Amazon warehouses too. I'm fortunate enough to have worked in the USA, Canada and the UK and out of the three, I've found culturally, coworkers in the UK seem to be more afraid of the what the boss will say all the time and there's a lot of micro management going on. This is just anecdotal of course on my experiences and I would like to know if this happened in Amazon's warehouses elsewhere.

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#18

Post by Pezmc »

If everything is based on performance metrics alone, surely there's a feedback loop here? Employee A starts peeing in a bottle, so their performance numbers go up, then at the end of the week they have better performance numbers and everyone else's targets are increased to be more inline with employee A. So more people start using bottles and taking shortcuts and the problem just increases over time!

Re: Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

#20

Post by mistermann »

aylmao wrote: post #8
zitterbewegung wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a famous quote by Bezos is "Your margin is my opportunity". Also, he runs the company the same way. A lot of capex for Amazon is reinvesting in the company.

Exactly. If there's money to re-invest, there should be money to treat employees at least decently.

Unless the public can somehow get politicians to govern according to their desires, the way the world actually is, rather than how it should be, will continue to be defined by alpha leaders like Jeff Bezos and Xi Jinping.
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