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Amazon's Denial of Workers Peeing in Bottles Sparks Questions and Backlash (theguardian.com) 116

An anonymous reader shares a report: To paraphrase one of the most iconic tweets of the past 10 years, Amazon's recent denial about employees not being forced to urinate in bottles at work has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the denial. In a tweet sent last night, the official Amazon News account for the behemoth corporation, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, saw his personal net worth increase by $70bn during the pandemic, wrote: "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." In under 12 hours the tweet has been quote-tweeted 9,000 times. (For those unversed in the dark Twitter metric arts that's ... not good.)

The thousands of gleeful and mocking rejoinders to Amazon's post came with good reason. The company is currently in the midst of a public relations battle with a group of workers in Alabama attempting to unionize. In an attempt to forestall such a historic move, Amazon has been on a campaign to illustrate just how well, in fact, they treat their workers. It doesn't seem to be working! Numerous high-profile labor organizers, celebrities and politicians like Bernie Sanders have joined the side of the striking workers. The Vermont senator is set to travel to Alabama on Friday to meet with them. The botched PR response in question in this case came as a reply to a tweet from another lawmaker, the Wisconsin congressman Mark Pocan, who himself was responding to jabs thrown by another Amazon executive, Dave Clark. Clark had attempted to draw a snarky analogy between his company and the success record of Sanders in his home state, saying: "I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace."
Further reading: Amazon Denies Workers Pee in Bottles. Here Are the Pee Bottles.
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Amazon's Denial of Workers Peeing in Bottles Sparks Questions and Backlash

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  • Nobody understands it. Nobody realizes it's really a fantastic place to work. [slashdot.org]
    • Re:Poor Amazon. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cusco ( 717999 ) <brian@bixby.gmail@com> on Thursday March 25, 2021 @03:44PM (#61198712)

      To be truthful Amazon is the highest paying job with the most benefits and most time off that I've ever held in 45 years of being in the workplace. I get to do interesting and important work with some of the most intelligent people that I've ever met in my life in a company working on bleeding-edge technology. I work with people who have come up from the Fulfillment Centers, who have started as low wage contractors (like myself), who have escaped from the hell of Silicon Valley, who were formerly career academics, and who have come from the NSA and other government agencies, the previous group that I worked with included people who were born in nine different countries. I'm having a great time.

      Sorry to burst your bubble.

      • Thanks for sharing, Jeff!
      • the previous group that I worked with included people who were born in nine different countries

        Isn't that every IT dept everywhere? Now tell us how many Conservatives you work with... Diversity of skin colour, never of thought...

        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          I work with one conservative, one bleeding heart liberal, and a bunch of people who have more nuanced views about a variety of issues. As an example one of the most liberal of our group hunts and another target shoots, and one of the most conservative has never touched a gun and thinks they should be prohibited for the majority.

          It's nice to be somewhere that there really **IS** a diversity of thought, because here people actually think about their positions.

      • pffft Yes, all those salaried academics and NSA employees that are itching to work 12 hour days for $15 an hour. I totally forgot about the massive influx of white collar tech workers that are flooding the blue collar warehouse industry. /s Those workers trying to unionize are nothing like you. There's shills and then there's shills and then there's a comment like yours.
        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          The workers trying to unionize are already making more than any other non-Teamsters warehouse worker in their state on their first day. You probably didn't know that, and probably are also unaware that less than 20% of Amazon employees work in the fulfillment centers.

          They most certainly ARE like me, or at least like me 20-some years ago when I did warehouse and retail work. I decided that it sucked, and got enough education to get out of what I saw as a dead end job. They also have that opportunity, exce

    • All These Billionaires Are Quite Old With Maybe A Decade To Go Before They Die. It Is Astonishing They Spend The Last Few Years Making Other People Lives Miserable. Gates/ Bezos/billionaires Are Spending The Last Few Years Of Their Lives Making Other People Lives Miserable. What Morons. Bezos 60 Billion To His Ex-wife So He Could Get A New Vagina. Sweat And Toil Of His Workers For A New Vagina. He Could Just Have Had A Dozen High Class Hookers A Day Far Cheaper
  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:57AM (#61197526)

    Amazon drivers don't work for Amazon they sub that out but control them like they work for Amazon and they are on high quotas that force them to piss like that.

    • by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @03:08PM (#61198562) Homepage

      Amazon drivers don't work for Amazon they sub that out but control them like they work for Amazon and they are on high quotas that force them to piss like that.

      This isn't an excuse for Amazon but I did home services for a while and bathrooms for mobile workers are a real problem. I kept my own schedule, but finding a place and a time was problematic. Some residential customers didn't invite me in, and in many other cases it didn't seem appropriate to ask. Other jobsites nobody was home so I couldn't have asked if I tried. Gas stations were hit and miss on availability and if they fit into my route. Grocery stores were possible in some locations but inconvenient due to the large parking lot. I found myself limiting my water intake and becoming chronically dehydrated. There were a couple occasions I had no choice but the bottle.

      I have an office job now, but I sympathize with the workers who must plan their day around bathroom breaks. It sucks.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Public park restrooms were an option, until COVID19.

      • Sharks, my name is raftpeople and and I'm looking for $300,000 for a 5% stake in "Mobile-Can".

        No, this isn't a mobile app promoting positive thinking, it's a ground-breaking new idea that solves a critical problem in today's gig-economy - going to the bathroom in a car.

        This is our product, a stylish receptacle with an adjustable opening that's both functional and beautiful.

        Yes we have both utility patents and design patents, and we also generate ongoing revenue with the sales of replaceable filters.
      • All These Billionaires Are Quite Old With Maybe A Decade To Go Before They Die. It Is Astonishing They Spend The Last Few Years Making Other People Lives Miserable.. Gates/ Bezos/billionaires Are Spending The Last Few Years Of Their Lives Making Other People Lives Miserable. What Morons. Bezos 60 Billion To His Ex-wife So He Could Get A New Vagina. Sweat And Toil Of His Workers For A New Vagina. He Could Just Have Had A Dozen High Class Hookers A Day Far Cheaper...
  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @12:06PM (#61197594)
    It's probably not true. I mean, if it were, Amazon would have been putting their anti-union messaging on the bottles instead of in the bathrooms [slashdot.org].

    Why even call attention to an absurd statement in the first place? It's like making a tweet stating that you aren't a baby rapist.
  • Their delivery drivers have been caught on video shitting on sidewalks, so we have video evidence that they're forcing people to do much worse than peeing in a bottle in a warehouse.

  • Old school (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @12:19PM (#61197656) Homepage Journal
    Nabisco in LA 25 years ago settled a lawsuit, part of which they limited restroom use so employees had to wear diapers. In a plant where I worked for a while, the older supervises admitted they did the same to meet quotas. So many people I know think they will work in a job where they will free and unlimited use of the toilets. My friends have worked in firms where you use a key card to get in the toilets, your time recorded. Many states do not have mandated break time, just a meal time.

    For gig workers, toilet time is lost money.

    • and yet another employee got caught doing exactly what you described.
    • Re:Old school (Score:4, Informative)

      by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @12:44PM (#61197834)

      Nabisco in LA 25 years ago settled a lawsuit, part of which they limited restroom use so employees had to wear diapers. In a plant where I worked for a while, the older supervises admitted they did the same to meet quotas. So many people I know think they will work in a job where they will free and unlimited use of the toilets. My friends have worked in firms where you use a key card to get in the toilets, your time recorded. Many states do not have mandated break time, just a meal time.

      It was like this when I worked dial-up internet tech support in the 90's. We had to sign up for a lunch break, and if you didn't sign up early then you didn't get a lunch break. Bathroom breaks were allowed, but the time away from the phone was tracked and you'd be scolded by management for using too much. When they found out I was going back to college they cut my pay and took away my headset, so I had to hold the phone receiver between my cheek and shoulder. 10 hours a day of that will fuck up your neck.

      Worst job I've ever had. Employees would just silently walk out and never come back. I still can't believe nobody shot up the place.

      • Nabisco in LA 25 years ago settled a lawsuit, part of which they limited restroom use so employees had to wear diapers.

        Name and shame please -- who was it that you worked for ?

        • Name and shame please -- who was it that you worked for ?

          Not the GP, but I worked for Teletech, now called TTec about 20 years ago. Not as bad as these stories but everything was electronically timed, time on call, time waiting for call, breaks, toilet lunch etc and it was no mercy if you went over the specified times. I heard that they had a formula that the expect to get 12 months out of an average worker, if they last longer it's a bonus.
          I ended up getting fired for having the lyrics to the Southpark Theme on my home drive. It was the worst place I've ever wo

          • Re:Old school (Score:4, Informative)

            by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Friday March 26, 2021 @09:10AM (#61201082)

            Maximum time per call was 5 minutes for me. Think about helping an old lady reinstall the TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 in 5 minutes. Not going to happen. I got reprimanded regularly for call time because I actually tried to help people. Others around the call center figured out that it was the average call time that mattered - management never looked at individual times. So if a call took 15 minutes, they'd immediately hang up on the next two calls. Voila! Five minute average. So when you're waiting in a queue for a half hour and suddenly get disconnected, that's why.

            I went through orientation with a group of about 30 new hires. Three months later, I was the only one of the group still working there. Which makes it even more absurd that they changed me to a "temporary" employee when they found out I was going back to college, when I'd already outlasted everyone else.

            It was a good learning experience. I developed the skill to stay completely calm no matter how much I got yelled at. That skill has been invaluable now that I have a wife and kids.

            • Maximum time per call was 5 minutes for me.

              Lol we had a 4 minute average from memory, but same deal if you had a long call you simply gave the next person a weak excuse and hung up on them to keep your average down. Our average queue length was 30-40 minutes all day every day so hanging up on people got them pretty pissed.
              Such a toxic environment...

        • Erols Internet, bought by RCN Corporation while I was there - who actually managed to make working there worse. Unfortunately they're still around. I'm sure they've long since outsourced all their tech support to India.

  • I suspect that Amazon pushes workers so hard that they have no choice but to pee in bottles while continuing to work. I believe the employees over Amazon here.

  • by smap77 ( 1022907 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @12:40PM (#61197804)

    There is a serious lack of public restroom facilities in US cities.

    On the downside, building more public restrooms would be yet another cost externalization by Amazon onto the public, but on the upside one could reasonably expect to be able to enforce public urination statutes given reasonable availability.

    • >> There is a serious lack of public restroom facilities in US cities.

      There is a reason for the lack of public restrooms in US cities. It is that they instantly become places for the homeless to shoot up drugs, camp out, and even have sex. I have seen all 3 with my own two eyes. Believe me, there is no eye-bleach strong enough to un-see the nasty privates of some homeless woman bouncing up and down on some dude in the public toilet of the food court that used to be at the city center. Now that foo

    • There is a serious lack of public restroom facilities in US cities.

      I travel a fair bit around the world and this is a problem everywhere. I live in Australia, we have (relatively) clean public toilets everywhere so you never think about it. When I travel I always take toilet paper in case I have to take an emergency shit in the street. There's never any toilets anywhere, or if there are they are filthy or cost money to use. What sort of 3rd world society can't provide public toilets?

  • 'Nuff said.

    People should be shitting and pissing in the truck proper. And leaving it for management to clean.

    Let's see how quickly bathroom breaks become mandatory.

    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      Where do you work that management does the cleaning? You shit in the truck and refuse to clean it, then you will drive a smelly truck.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @12:54PM (#61197908)

    ... to not order their sparking cider.

  • by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Thursday March 25, 2021 @01:36PM (#61198108) Journal
    There is a reason mega-corps locate distribution, support, etc. centres in remote one horse towns. Because they want to take it over and become the horse. And if the people there don't like how they operate, the companies shoot the horse and build another one far away. The employees that the companies perceive as causing trouble are out of work, and their town dies. And there are a ton of small places in the middle of butt fuck nowhere just dying for some kind of big company to come in and pay them minimum wage in a shit environment. Because it's better than no jobs.
  • I didn't know R. Kelly worked for Amazon.

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