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Comment by colejohnson66 | Hacker News Reader

From their blog post[0]:

> First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers.

Nowhere in the tweet did it mention fulfillment centers:

> 1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.

And WOW. At the end of the blog post, there are tweets of people saying it's not just Amazon. So, "we're sorry, but it's not just me, so it's not that bad."

[0]: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen...

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Okay, but they need to save face somehow.

How about Amazon slightly reduces the expectations that they place on drivers and allow them unpunished time to take piss breaks on the clock?

How about they pay staff to go through security screenings?

How about they pay staff for time transiting to and from the break rooms?

That's the floor. The bare ** minimum Amazon should be doing. Their staff are not slaves, or servants. They are human beings and deserve far more than the spiteful pittance Amazon provides them.

You assume the drivers would shift usage to use a facility vs a bottle.

Say using the bottle shaves off 15-30mins compared to the bathroom. I’m sure many would still prefer to get home 15-30min early.

No, I don't think so at all! They would much rather use a toilet!

It would be nice to have the option to choose though, wouldn't it?

Another way to say it is that they'd rather get an extra 15-30 minutes of work done.

Because if enough people start going home 15-30min early, management gets excited and raises the bar by adding work, so now you do the extra 15-30min of work (by peeing in the bottle) or risk not keeping up. I'm sure many would prefer peeing in the bottle to risking not keeping up, but that isn't the kind of choice where we say 'great, let them do it, it makes them happy.'

How about we ask the drivers how they like taking a shit in an unairconditioned truck in Texas summer heat and if they'd rather have the time allowance too stop at a rest stop along their route?

I, for one, having been in similar situations, would rather get home fifteen minutes later, or an hour, than shit in a bag. Or piss in a bottle.

No, they're probably going to keep doing exactly what they've been doing because they know that these PR embarrassments are far more ephemeral than their market position. The consumer base cares more about cost and convenience than Amazon's ethics, and will have forgiven and forgotten within a week.

Of course, I agree. I was merely talking about their statement.

That’s their problem, not ours.

When I saw the tweet I was thinking about fulfillment too.

I didn't even know Amazon emoloyed delivery drivers.

In some locales they use services like Lasership, but in less densely populated areas they have their own last mile infrastructure

(This is of course separate from people who drive actual Prime delivery vans, who seem to be everywhere)

It’s not just less dense areas. I’ve recently started getting deliveries from Amazon drivers at my office in lower Manhattan.

Are you sure it's not Lasership?

I live in Downtown Brooklyn and between here my last place in Midtown and my work's offices in Kips Bay I've never seen an individual deliver with a private vehicle in

Doesn't really make sense unless the building itself just isn't getting that many orders

Seems like every third vehicle in my area is an Amazon branded van these days.

But they are largely (supposedly, but not really) "independent" contractors.

The drivers themselves are not independent contractors. They are employees of "Delivery Service Provider" companies that contract with Amazon.

Except for the Amazon Flex program where random people can run small routes in their own cars, those people are indeed not-really-independent contractors. But they account for a very small fraction of packages delivered.

In Germany, they use DHL and Hermes.

Perhaps where you are, but in Berlin they have their own vans and drivers.

Well, obviously if you didn’t know that Amazon employed (or subcontracted delivery drivers) you would not think the tweet was referencing delivery drivers.

That does not mean that people who are correctly informed about this thinking that it would also include delivery drivers are wrong.

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