A bit surprised you sent the photos to Amazon. That person is likely to be fired. A bit of pee on the street is not going to harm anything or anyone (otherwise the streets around bars would be an enormous biohazard), although it's obviously gross.
I don't have a lab, so I can't determine if it was pee. And I can't imagine you'd get to hold on to a job at Target if you poured pee out in the parking lot in front of customers.
Our friend with the USPS said "[at USPS] we’re allowed to travel as far as we need to find a restroom so no need to do it."
If this is the case at Amazon, then there shouldn't be a need to pee in bottles.
However, if this is not the case at Amazon, then what was apparently Bezos' tweet [1] was not reflective of the situation on the ground. I've written him directly before, and depending on the response, I may do it in this instance because he's not seeing what I'm seeing.
[1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
> I can't imagine you'd get to hold on to a job at Target if you poured pee out in the parking lot in front of customers.
No, nor should anyone want you to. Even beyond any hygiene and smell issues, it's bad PR and that's not what you're paid for.
There's a rash of blaming companies for being reasonable. Including one of a CVS manager being threatened with doxxing for calling the police on a thief. This concern for the driver seems more like a larger narrative of pro-unionism.
Most people in this thread are intentionally misrepresenting the issue, using the words 'job', and 'living wage'. These are contractors and if they don't make money today they can courier for another company tomorrow. If they don't it's because they voted with their wallets.
Given those two options, it's no surprise they pick option 2. Amazon knows this yet they continue to set unrealistic targets.
As for the denial - I am unclear on if they're talking about employees as a separate group from their drivers (who may be contractors according to other comments here?). Either way, I think it's reasonable for a company to make such a statement if peeing in a bottle is not a standard practice that is allowed by their policy and if it is only done rarely or by very few people (not reflective of general practice). If the delivery targets are such that most drivers have to do this, I might think differently, but so far I haven't seen evidence of this.
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...
If other employees can meet the quota but you can't, why would you assume that the quota is wrong? Maybe it's the wrong job for you.
> 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
Perhaps it has something to do with the attempts to unionize?
> like 74% of respondents to a survey conducted by Organise reporting that they avoid using the washroom for fear
Is there a cost for saying that? If this didn't rise to the level of fear, but only apprehension, would they be censured for overreaching rhetoric? If not, how trustworthy is it? And it still leaves 25% comfortably hitting quota showing that the quota itself is fine.
Spoken like someone who has lived a full and blessed life.
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.)
No, that's what some rich guy would say. Oh, I wouldn't do "some mildly distasteful thing" for money, I guess I have high standards, haha. No, you wouldn't last that long. I doubt you'd make it through the first early morning. If you did you'd learn that pissing in a bottle isn't a problem at all compared to hours out of your life.
The adults you're talking about, denigrating because they aren't as discerning as you, are making this decision for themselves. They'd rather make wee-wee uncomfortably and see their family again sooner. For them that $4, or $15, matters more than it does for you.
> People also downvote what they find stupid
Also, stupid people vote. So ... proposition undecided.
> boss.
Somehow I don't think you've ever non-ironically called anyone that.
Your faith in Amazon to do right is impressive - perhaps even naive. Amazon official policy is not for drivers to pee in bottles, however, it strongly incentivizes this behavior. Had the driver asked to use your bathroom, he likely would have lost precious time and have been indirectly penalized for it.
Considering all this, you took a photo that embarrasses Amazon and sent it to Amazon and asked them to "do something"? Amazon's will already assume you sent it to the press and will circle the wagons - the answer will be it was a rogue employee and he has been let go (or disciplined, if he's lucky).
Rogue contractor.
Hooray dystopias.
Basically, sit down, shut up and take it - we've got the power and if you try and object we'll can you and replace you faster than you can blink. And we might even find a way to make sure you can't qualify for unemployment.
What's the alternative? No matter how reasonable the expectations are, there will always be drivers who would rather pee in a bottle and end their shift 10 minutes early than spend 10 minutes finding a bathroom.
There are a lot of solutions to this problem. The same type of solutions any company that employees drivers have had for years.
Nonsense. I know people who would rather pee in a bottle than wait for the next gas station on the I5. I personally have pissed on the sides of roads in lots of places on long car trips.
Dumping urine in an urban environment is pretty rude. But if I could save myself 10 mins a day by pissing in a bottle rather than some creepy gas station bathroom, why not? It's just piss.
> Plus it's absolutely disgusting.
This is what it really comes down to - your victorian sensibilities about bodily fluids can't possibly imagine that anyone would gasp OMG pee in a bottle! unless the alternative is starvation or whippings.
There are plenty of people who don't feel this way. Hell, I'm sitting outside with a flush toilet less than 100 ft from me and I just pissed on a tree instead. It's just piss.
I'm not saying Amazon's practices don't incentivize this or that they shouldn't be examined, but as is common these days many people take a paternalistic and dogmatic view that will not accept under any circumstance that some people may be doing this freely.
It strikes me as cruel to report and make trouble for a man who is already so overworked as to need to pee in a bottle.
Well, that basically describes the gig economy across the board, I guess.
Human feces, on the other hand, is quite dangerous. Generally you have to touch it or ingest it to get sick from it, but there are lots of ways for the bacteria to spread.
So the urine isn't dangerous, but if people are urinating in public, there's a risk that they're also defecating in public. And that's more serious.