Can I continue to support Amazon?
LOS ANGELES — Today, like many out there, I’m struggling with remaining a customer of Amazon.
The lengthy, 5,700-word New York Times exposé about what it’s like to work at the e-tailer makes it sound, even by tech industry standards, like the equivalent of sweat shop torture from the early 1900s.
Can I continue supporting Amazon with my dollars? I'm not so sure.
Some of the more memorable anecdotes:
• A woman who just lost a child in pregnancy was put on performance review, because she wasn’t giving her all to the company.
• Emails are sent out at all hours — miss the midnight email, and you get a text message a few minutes later asking why you haven’t replied.
• Daily performance reviews are standard, giving employees the opportunity to chime in and tear down others--anonymously.
Amazon is described as a place for overachievers to go to feel bad about themselves. The e-tailer admits it's a tough place to work.
In a YouTube video aimed at attracting employees to Amazon, a senior engineer says, “You either fit here or you don’t. There is no middle ground.”
In response to the New York Times article, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos told employees he didn’t recognize the company described.
He refers to “shockingly callous management practices, including people being treated without empathy while enduring family tragedies and serious health problems,” and urges employees to contact human relations and/or himself directly if any situation like this occurred.
“Even if it’s rare or isolated, our tolerance for any such lack of empathy needs to be zero.”
Amazon has created havoc in the retail industry, forcing hundreds of stores to close, due to the lower-priced competition it provides.
The reason the company is so hard-charging is its on a mission: it wants to turn online orders into almost instant delivery.
I've been a loyal Amazon customer for years, paying $99 for Prime membership, which gets me faster delivery and access to made-for-Internet TV fare like Mozart in the Jungle. That Emmy-nominated show, ironically, is about backstage drama at a New York symphony, where musicians seem to live in constant fear for their jobs.
Sounds like the Amazon described in The New York Times.
And you know what? After reading this piece, I can wait.
I don’t care if a new lens for my camera takes two or three days, or even a week to get to me. I don't need a drone to whisk out a package from a warehouse and get it to me pronto.
I want the company I’m dealing with to treat the human beings who work there with respect, not force them into a climate of fear. That’s at least, how The New York Times described it, and even if Bezos claims to not recognize the environment, over 100 current and former Amazonians who spoke to The New York Times did.
Are you comfortable shopping on Amazon? Let’s discuss it on Twitter, where I’m @jeffersongraham. And don’t forget to look for my daily Talking Tech audio reports on Stitcher and TuneIn.