I worked for Amazon as a warehouse worker (a picker, if you will) recently, and I want to share my experience. This is not a story of gross mistreatment, horrible working conditions, meager pay, or bad bosses. It is however a story of bait and switch, dishonesty, disregard for workers, and tossing people aside when you are done with them.
I have another job, testing video games. I get paid to do that. I really like it, but it doesn't pay much. So when a local staffing firm (called Aerotek) advertised for "over one hundred" positions in the local warehouse supporting Amazon Fresh -- Amazon's grocery business - and paying $13.50 an hour, it represented a significant potential upgrade for me. There were full-time and part-time positions, so they said, with potential mandatory overtime. Forty hours per week plus overtime could have easily doubled what I had been earning, so I called.
I knew that some Amazon warehouse workers have shared horror stories on the Internet, but I am 21 and in decent shape, so I figured I would probably be OK, and if it was really awful, I could quit. I did not quit my other job, which at least has the benefit of being very flexible.
Before I could start, I went through an orientation that Aerotek told me would take one hour, but in fact it took three. At the orientation, I signed up for three weeks of shifts. But here was the first sign that something was off: I was told that I would be working for Amazon Prime Now for three weeks, then shifting to Amazon Fresh, because Amazon Prime needed people for the Christmas rush. This was three weeks before Christmas.
[When my dad heard this, his first word was "bullshit." That turned out to be a fair and accurate assessment.]
Amazon Prime Now is a service I had not even heard of, where people can order from 25,000 or so of the most common products people need, and Amazon will deliver them within two hours. It was a little farther from my house than Amazon Fresh, and traffic getting there was bad, but for three weeks, no problem.
I worked for Amazon Prime Now right up until Christmas, including up to 11:00 on Christmas Eve. My shift was 3:00 - 11:00, and I was there early every day and worked a full shift except when they sent me home early, never missed any time. I understood what to do quickly and, as far as I could tell, came close to matching the speed of the permanent employees. The work really was not bad, and I did it to the best of my ability. However, I only ended up working 9.5 days in three weeks. We were not scheduled close to full time, and there was no overtime.
Perhaps I could mention here that I am a recent college graduate. This is what I am doing to generate some income for now.
I contacted Aerotek before Christmas about switching to Amazon Fresh. Their response was that Amazon managers were on vacation, so wait until after the new year started.
I emailed my contact at Aerotek again at the beginning of January. This time I got no response at all. I tried again. No reply. I asked about the 2.5 days I worked but was not paid because no one explained the time card requirements. Again no response.
Aerotek is not going to commit wage theft. We got that straightened out when I called and spoke to the right person. But let's face it: They never intended to give me the job I signed up for and was promised. They lied, because they needed people to collect orders for wealthy customers who wanted last minute stuff for Christmas right up until Christmas Eve, and they knew it would be a hard sell to get people to commit for two or three weeks of part-time work. After I did a good job, did everything I was asked, they just wanted me to go away as quickly as possible, and they couldn't even be bothered to send a quick email and say they did not have anything for me.
I was not dealing with Amazon directly, but Aerotek is doing their bidding. So I guess the thing I would note from all this is that, yes, Amazon continues to push the limits of customer service, but there is a human price to be paid for that convenience, and Amazon is happy to extract it. To put it a little more bluntly, they treat their customers extremely well, but they treated me like garbage. I do not think that I am the only one.
No comments:
Post a Comment