‘It’s like every single bad job you’ve ever had’: Amazon worker’s warning for Australia

EX-Amazon employee has offered a glimpse inside the work culture at the world’s biggest online retailer. And it’s not pretty.

An Amazon worker in California. Picture: Justin Sullivan/AFP/Getty

EVER wondered what it’s like to work at Amazon?

“Amazon is like every single bad job you’ve ever had — at once,” according to one former employee, who has offered a glimpse inside the work culture at the world’s biggest online retailer.

It comes as Amazon embarks on a hiring spree, advertising more than 100 roles in IT, marketing, sales and HR as it prepares to launch in Australia later this year.

The company opened a Sydney office in 2015, and last year leased extra space at No. 2 Park St as it prepares for an aggressive rollout which will include its grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh.

But the former logistics worker, speaking to news.com.au, hit out at the company’s work culture and technology, describing it as “broken”. She also warned that employees routinely had their phones spied on by the retailer.

“I quit because I worked the logistics side [and] I was literally tired of the fact that there are a huge amount of packages that are misdelivered every single day,” she said.

“Amazon knows exactly where that package is due to their geodata software. We were not allowed to tell the customer anything other than ‘your package is lost’ when in reality it was most likely delivered to a house one street over.

“I have no idea why we weren’t allowed to tell customers about misdelivered packages. I had so many cases where the package was delivered to the wrong address, wrong apartment number, wrong city.

“We were not allowed to report the drivers or offer feedback on them. Granted Amazon would replace or refund, but that’s not really the point. Their system is broken.”

The former employee from Seattle in the US backed a report out of the UK which found drivers working for Amazon urinated and even defecated in their vehicles to meet crushing deadlines.

“The reason I say their system is broken is because most of their delivery personnel are contract workers,” the former employee said. “They are treated very poorly. We [support staff] are not allowed to assist them in doing their jobs nor were we allowed to offer advice or feedback. We could offer directions if they were lost. That’s it.”

Amazon “could be a good thing”, she said. “For me, it was — in the beginning. If you’re someone who wants to work from home, they have positions that allow you to work fulltime from home, [which] I did. The pay was low — $US10 an hour. No pay increases until after a year.

“Their delivery idea could be awesome, but it’s not. There are so many misdeliveries, drivers who are worn out, overworked. Staff who are treated poorly.

“That story [about the drivers] really hit home. I had talked to so many over the phone, that it was dead on. No time for breaks, very stressful, so many afraid of doing something wrong.

“What kind of job is that? One that makes you fearful? We have all had that one job that was a chore, but Amazon is like every single bad job you’ve ever had — at once.”

A flow chart for Amazon call centre workers.

In 2015, the New York Times published a report in which former employees described Amazon as a “bruising workplace” akin to The Hunger Games.

Last year, an employee jumped off a building at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. Bloomberg reported that the man had recently sent an internal email visible to many in the company criticising how the company had dealt with an internal transfer request.

“You are expected to work and work and work and work,” the former employee said. “They could care less if you’re ill. It is company policy that they don’t care why you may need a shift swap or to take off work. We weren’t given any PTO, it’s all unpaid time off.”

She also hit out at the company’s opaque and overbearing management culture. “They have different rules for different employees, different levels. You’ll get written up for the most asinine reasons,” she said. “There really aren’t any [rules], until you do something ‘wrong’.”

She added that employees were kept in line by holding out the prospect of better conditions.

“US labour laws are weird,” she said. “If you weren’t a ‘blue badge’ — a regular fulltime Amazon employee — you don’t have any benefits. You are constantly reminded that the only way to become a blue badge is to not do anything wrong. However, that is subject to interpretation by your team leader and they really have no set metrics.”

The last straw, she said, was when she realised her phone was being spied on. “I used to have my email sent to my phone until I realised that Amazon had permission to brick my phone,” she said.

“I was having issues with it lagging — when I didn’t have any issues previously — had an IT guy look at it. He told me that they were basically logging phone calls, my emails and myriad other stuff they had no right to.

“I deleted it pretty quickly, then a week later received an email from my boss asking if I had set up my email on my phone. I gave my notice two weeks’ later.”

Amazon, which now employs more than 300,000 people globally and pulls in $US136 billion ($178 billion) in revenue, is one of America’s most valuable companies with a stock market capitalisation of $US385 billion ($505 billion).

The retailer has long faced widespread allegations of poor working conditions and cutthroat culture. Last year, it announced significant changes to its controversial performance assessment system used to manage out “underperforming” employees.

The new system will be “radically simplified and focuses on our employees’ strengths, not the absence of weaknesses”, Amazon said in a statement in November.

Last year, a former software engineer described Amazon as “a horrible place that will ruin your health, your self esteem, your drive, and your relationships” in a Reddit post titled ‘11 Reasons Working For Amazon Is the Worst Ever’.

“Many people at Amazon have health issues, are taking meds, get divorced, or have other family issues,” they wrote. “People drink a lot, and generally everyone is miserable. But, most of them moved for Amazon, and now they are stuck.”

In a statement, an Amazon spokesman said: “It’s impossible to accurately portray the work environment at Amazon using anecdotes from a single unnamed source.

“We’re proud of the work environment we have at Amazon, including offering a variety of positions whether someone wants to work in a fulltime role with competitive wages and comprehensive benefits to part-time jobs with flexible work schedules, and even virtual work-from-home opportunities.

“Employees at all levels within Amazon are encouraged to bring their questions, comments or concerns directly to their management teams. In fact, we offer a program called Kaizen where hundreds of times a year, hourly employees work together to tell us how to improve processes.”

He also referred to the company’s response to claims in the New York Times piece, in which Amazon’s global corporate affairs chief Jay Carney hit out at the credibility of a number of the sources quoted.

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