Amazon drivers ready for “giant war” over cruel, impossible quotas

Your Prime deliveries could have traces of urine and menstrual blood on them — that’s what a new report from Business Insider implies during a (yet another) damning look into Amazon drivers’ inhumane working conditions. “I resort to peeing in bottles, and women urinate through funnels into bottles, just so I'm able to get done with my deliveries. Those conditions are extremely unsanitary, and we are there with all those packages and our own urine and bodily fluids. That's unsanitary for the customers receiving the packages,” one driver revealed in the investigation published earlier today.

With Amazon’s delivery drivers reportedly expected to reach package quotas averaging between 170 and 375 drops a day, everything else appears to take a literal and figurative back seat, including food, water, and mental health. "Managing proper breaks is impossible because of the extremely high package count and stops, it makes it impossible to pull over to eat, so often times I drive and eat with one hand,” another driver explained, adding they feel “mentally broken” from their employment with a company that has “changed” their personality.

Sounds like Jeff Bezos’ offhand thanks upon his return from space vacation are ringing hollow to some. Including us.

A “giant war” between workers and Amazon — Prime Delivery drivers unsurprisingly don’t feel like there is much they can do about their exploitative situations, likening it to a “giant war” between them and the company itself.

With Amazon’s consistent, largely successful union-busting campaigns as well as its seemingly insurmountable profits and resources, it doesn’t seem like much will change without effective governmental regulations.

Luckily, at least some of that is finally getting underway, as the National Labor Relations Board recently condemned the company’s recent tactics during the Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse unionization attempt as illegal.

For now, give your delivery drivers the benefit of the doubt — Until meaningful reform arrives, it’s probably best to remind yourself of Amazon workers’ deplorable conditions the next time your package is late or missing. Your ire is much better directed at those at the top than employees who, in another era, would amount to little more than indentured servants.

And, for the love of God, please don’t indulge in Prime Day when that obscene “holiday” rolls around again.