Assumed this was volunteering to do like charitable grocery deliveries to people in need or something, but nope, it was just volunteerimg to do regular work to pad the pockets of the c-suite.
Shifting personnel to grocery duty during work time to handle a surge or whatever is fine. Asking them to volunteer their free time is bullshit. I might do it if Bezos volunteered to come clean my house.
Corporate suits should work more regularly the minimum wage jobs. And not for just 1 day where they never touch all the bullshit workers have to deal with. So they will maybe see the disconnect between corporate suits and “low paying jobs” they look at as just the numbers.
This should be an arrestable offense. Fuck these pieces of shit.
Maybe I read this differently than you. I don’t see this as volunteering personal time, but asking people during their work time to help iwith a different job. Not that the article says either way, but volunteering personal time seems unlikely
Also, even the article mentioned this, but Amazon has always done this. For example, engineers can volunteer to help out wrapping presents at Christmastime.
An engineer can barely do these jobs properly and they aren’t used to manual labor, so they work fewer hours than normal. And yes, it replaces their normal work.
And, these white collar workers are many times more expensive than normal warehouse workers. This only makes any financial sense because they are desperate for extremely short time workers during rush times.
This article isn’t really news. Just rage bait.
That makes sense. Thanks for helping clarify
If they’re asked to do so during regular work time, they’re probably still expected to do their normal tasks too (as unpaid overtime)
In the cases where I’ve been asked to do things like this it was instead of my regular work, not on top of it. US labor laws are tricky, but in general they need to assign you an amount of work that can be done in a reasonable amount of time. (contact a lawyer for details)
Unfortunately in the white collar world.
it was instead of my regular work,
‘regular work’ typically isn’t covered by someone else.
It piles up until you get to it.
That has not been my experience. There is always more work to do than I have time. However it doesn’t pile up because lower priority work just doesn’t get done.
I was literally told once “yes we can have meetings all day because you have all night to finish your code.” The same was expected when they had ‘team building’ outings.
That does happen. The law doesn’t back them up, but many companies have that culture and good luck proving you were let go because of that vs something that is legal.
There are plenty of jobs that are more reasonable. They tend to be boring jobs though, so many are willing to pay the price to work a more exciting job.
I think maybe you don’t understand the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees here in the US. The law absolutely backs employers up on this unfortunately. Especially if, like me, you live in an at-will state.
Exempt employees are expected to get their work done, but the work does need to be reasonable. If they give you 40 hours of meetings you can have a good case they are asking too much to expect anything more. While hours are not given by law, there is still an expectation of reasonableness.
Which is to say they cannot fire you for not getting your work done. However at-will means they can let you go - but that is not firing you for cause and there is a big difference in how the law treats that.
Removed by mod
Why wait 12 months when you could do it this weekend?
What happened with just going to to grocery store?
The article indicates this was for their Prime Day event.
Are people really waiting for an annual event to buy their groceries? Or are the Fresh delivery personnel reassigned to other verticals for the event’s duration?
Former is shocking and borderline dystopian. Latter is just poor planning and resourcing.
My guess is that Amazon fresh makes its prices even more absurdly low to get more people buying.
I can rationalise holding off on buying a new phone or furniture until a sale. But for groceries?
One either needs groceries or they do not.
Perhaps, there are some categories of groceries that one may not buy unless there is a good occasion but might buy them if there is a good deal on it?
Or maybe, one may buy the pricier variety like “organic” groceries during such sales?
It’s not about waiting, it’s about enticing people to use Amazon fresh rather than the other grocery options they typically use.
I had not thought of this serving as an entry or a trial for new customers. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you.
This is a really great way to make rage bait ahead of prime day and get into the news. It’s like free advertising.
