5 minute read
Underappreciated and Overworked at Amazon
A career with the company means ample hours and rapid promotions, but at what cost?
by Anonymous
After the pandemic hit this time last year, I was furloughed from both of my jobs in Long Beach and forced to move back to the small city that drove me away from my family three years ago.
I was 23, unemployed and still in college when I moved back into the room I lived in when I was a child, except the house had become my dad’s man-cave filled with weird paintings of fish bolted to the tan walls.
One day I was resting, laid flat on my back as I dozed off while staring at the white ceiling when out of nowhere my phone vibrated by my side.
It was almost like Amazon was listening to my every anxious thought because when I looked at my screen, an email appeared. I double-tapped on the link, applied, and within 20 minutes I was instructed to take a drug test and submit legal documentation the next day.
After two weeks, I was ready for my first day of working for Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.
I went to bed at 6:30 p.m. and woke up at 2:30 a.m. I brushed my teeth, kept on the black sweats and hoodie that I slept in and drove to the warehouse, five minutes away from my house.
I walked up to the giant sign that lit up the black sky that read “Amazon Logistics.” I was welcomed by an overly happy team at the entrance, where I got my temperature checked and received a badge and an orange vest.
We spent hours watching training videos in the breakroom, filled with balloons and sugary treats, took a tour around the warehouse surrounded by conveyor belts, and were introduced to our managers who were running on only a couple hours of sleep and gallons of coffee.
Within the first week I was five pounds lighter from the 8 a.m. lunches, heavy lifting and the 20,000 steps I walked each shift.
Every day was the same: start at 3 a.m., unload and sort packages for five hours straight, one and a half-hour of prepping routes for the delivery drivers, and one more hour of cleaning up for the next day.
After a month, the station managers noticed my hard work and wanted to promote me to Ambassador.
The job of an Ambassador meant that I would wear a bright yellow vest with blue trim, no longer be a “box pusher,” as my manager liked to call us, run the assembly line and whenever they needed it; I would train a class of new hires.
I was excited that I was moving up fast, and was given more responsibilities, but with a lot more pressure and being scolded for making mistakes that I shouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to make in the first place. Since I was being compensated as an associate, I started to regret my decision to put the blue vest on.
I moved up again within a couple weeks and became a Learning Coordinator. I trained a class every day, tracked the performancesof the station and took an emotional beating from my peers for just 65 cents more an hour.
The floor managers that loved me as a “box pusher,” now resented me as a full-time trainer.
For four months, I was paired up with two others who shared the same title as me. We all endured the constant scoffs as we passed by the managers.
We were pressured to work six days in a row every week during peak season and had our schedules changed from early morning to late night shifts with only a day notice.
We were told we would be given assistance, but never received it during the holiday season, when we single-handedly trained more than 200 seasonal workers in two months.
We begged them to stop hiring people that they would just end up letting go anyways, but they didn’t listen.
I noticed fast that if you were not useful, they didn’t care about you. They often corrected me in front of my class, blamed me for the low rates of associates and mocked me by asking “What do you even do here?”
As much as I hate the way they treat me, I know their anger stems from the same issue of working tirelessly without being recognized or the appropriate amount of compensation.
Unless you are a tier five employee, or run a whole department, you are making chump change just like the rest of us.
After five months of being with Amazon, I moved up again to Process Assistant, one step below Manager, for a different department.
This time I got a fluorescent yellow vest with orange trim and was making a dollar more than the average Associate. This position is better than the others, but this is where my climb up the ladder ends.
I understand that, “This is how it works in the real world,” as my dad always tells me, but I loathe my job.
I hate the feeling of being a part of a cult where I have to please the minions that work under Bezos, who treat him as a savior for supplying jobs during a time of desperation and global fear fueled by the pandemic, when in reality he is benefiting the most from Coronavirus.
There has to be more to life than this cycle where the wealthiest men on the planet sit pretty on their cash thrones, while the ones who depend on them week to week, are breaking their backs building the empire they don’t get any part of.
While Bezos added $1 trillion to his wealth in 2020, in contrast, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, U.S. workers have lost more than $1.3 trillion in income.
As much as I hate Amazon, I can’t leave and my managers know it too.
