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Comment by andonisus | Hacker News Reader

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, isn’t it logical they would do anything to save time? How would you even change the compensation or penalty structure to account for this?

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The incentives leads to dangerous driving, careless handling of packages and unsanitary work conditions that highly likely contribute to higher employee turnover.

Amazon does not pay for the externalities of more dangerous driving in your neighbourhood, other than their subcontractors might increase their prices if their insurance starts getting more expensive. They do not pay [edit: you] for the time and effort when they have to redeliver a broken package.

You change the compensation by setting goals that are actually reachable, and then having the workers iterate together with the employer to find and fix inefficiencies. The antagonism of unreachable goals is bound to lead to public relations issues. This of course assume that you see this article or articles like it as a public relations issue, so if that view is negligible then Amazon will see no harm.

Amazon's response to dangerous driving: [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-plans-ai-powe... [2] https://vimeo.com/504570835/e80ee265bc

I am so confused by the set of responses based on the idea "Well, lots of other people have awful working conditions, why are we picking on this particular billion dollar corporation?"

It's very much "whataboutism". Best case, it's tonedeaf and overly-dismissive. Worst case, it's a deliberate distraction.

I try to follow Hanlon's Razor, so I'll go with the best case and just assume these people are unempathtic contrarians, instead of corporate shills.

Because the discussion is only focused on Amazon. If instead all such articles and complains would be "Amazon, among many other companies, give workers incentives to pee in bottles" then I would pay a lot more attention to it.

Because when you say "<insert-bad-company-of-the-day> does <insert-bad-thing-of-the-day>" which is obviously to me not unique to that company then your message sounds like meant to provoke a certain feeling against a certain company, my "manipulation" alarms start ringing and, as a protection mechanism, I stop believing everything you say. By making at least an effort to make such reporting balanced, fair and accurate you have much higher chance to get me to care.

YMMV, maybe it works for other people tho.

That’s literally whataboutism. Why do we need to identify every company that does this rather than calling out the ones we know?

It's not whataboutism at all. I am genuinely curious, why now and why Amazon? People did not just decide to start peeing in bottles when working for Amazon, it has been happening long before.

People did complain about other companies. A decade ago it was Walmart that was the company everyone was talking about how poorly they treated their employees (which they still do in comparison to competitors like Costco). I think the reason why Amazon is getting the focus now is because Bezos went from being merely a very wealthy man to (depending on the stock market) being literally the wealthiest man in the world. So you'd think he could afford a bit of generosity towards his warehouse workers.

I honestly don't believe that choosing to pee in a bottle while driving for delivery constitutes "awful working conditions".

Do you do this on a regular basis?

I've done it before on a long drive under urgent non-work-related time constraints, and while recovering from a broken leg. It's not the worst thing in the world, although finding a tree or a public toilet is preferable, and it's probably not safe while driving.

I do not, but I would not have a problem doing it.

USPS mail carriers do not piss in bottles.

If a manager, or set of metrics, prevented bathroom breaks, that's a major contract violation and would be arbitrated successfully by a competent union steward.

Amazon lied about it very publicly. They lied and said they didn't even know about it, and then an avalanche of evidence showing they knew about it was released.

Did they? The tweet I saw was specifically talking about Amazon employees, and last I checked, none of the people driving delivery trucks are in any way employed by Amazon.

My understanding was that someone had made the accusation that this was happening in fulfillment centers, which are employees, and Amazon was officially denying it.

Amazon DSP drivers are hired and managed completely by third party companies.

https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq

It's not really that interesting a distinction if the vehicles are literally branded "Amazon" and Amazon is the only customer.

>Why is Amazon being singled out here

Because Amazon is a brand upper middle class white collar types interact with. Swift and Schneider are not. Everyone thought they were at least a couple intermediaries removed from the trucker jugs.

Just wait until they discover what construction site porta-johns are like.

> I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the delivery profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just Amazon drivers.

What is your opinion based on? A hunch? Random number generator? Your star sign? Maybe your horoscope?

> Why is Amazon being singled out here?

That's a strawman, nobody is singling out this company. Everyone is talking about Amazon because they publicly denied this ever happens from an official account.

> How would you even change the compensation or penalty structure to account for this?

Oh I don't know, maybe... and I realize this idea is so far out there so please bear with me for a second, maybe institute mandatory 15 minute breaks every 2-3 hours into the delivery schedule? Crazy, I know.

My opinion is based on this generally being a thing that delivery drivers choose to do. It has been true of long-haul truckers for quite some time (many of them would even take Meth just so they could drive longer and log more miles).

My father did local delivery for UPS for 30 years. According to him, this is not something he or anyone he knew did, ever (including the long haulers). UPS is unionized, so maybe that has something to do with it. My uncle worked for USPS for 35 years and he has reported the same. So I don't think you can hold up examples of drivers peeing in bottles and taking meth as the status quo when both UPS and USPS don't drive under these conditions. Fedex I'm not sure about because they are all contractors, so they may be under the same pressures as Amazon. But that's all the more reason for Amazon drivers to unionize. I'm sure your could find some horror stories, but this is a pressure the union works explicitly against and it seems effective.

> My opinion is based on this generally being a thing that delivery drivers choose to do.

This sentence says nothing. How do you know this is something that people choose to do?

I’ve heard about it while living my life? I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s just something I have been aware of happening long before now. And honestly, I’m not really interested in trying to convince anyone else. If you don’t believe me, that’s cool, but I know what I know. And since you’re too contrarian to even bother looking it up yourself, here is the literal first google result:

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/47231

Oh, and here is a literal company that sells a product meant to alleviate the need to urinate in bottles. They speak about such bottle urination near the bottom of the page:

https://www.roadreliefsystem.com/

Indeed. I live close to an interstate in a rural area and the neighbors to a trash pickup every year. We're actually picking up trash on the "frontage road" rather than the interstate, but the two are only 100' apart. I can tell you that truck drivers peeing in bottles then throwing said bottles out the window is very common.

> 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.

Thank you, that is exactly my point. The claim that had been going around was warehouse workers doing it, but now we see that it is delivery drivers. My point is that all manner of long-haul delivery drivers choose to do this, not just those that work for Amazon.

The nature of the job, its geography/logistics and Amazon's PR campaign as this wonderful, progressive employer.

Someone said "it's what the middle class interacts with" but it's also about Amazon's aggressive blocking of reform or real worker rights.

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