Amazon has issued a rare public apology but not to its workers, and with no real admission of guilt. Mark Pocan for Twitter posts blasting the Wisconsin politician when he criticized working conditions that included drivers peeing in bottles as they faced pressure to meet quotas. The tweets were “incorrect” by focusing on warehouse workers rather than drivers facing these problems, according to Amazon. A flawed process also meant the tweets didn’t receive “proper scrutiny.”
The company partly downplayed the drivers’ experience, arguing that peeing in bottles was a “long-standing, industry-wide” problem made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it also recognized this wasn’t acceptable and that it would “look for solutions.”
There was no explanation for why Amazon issued a rare social media attack. Recode sources recently claimed that outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos was frustrated with his company’s lack of resistance to accusations he felt were inaccurate or misleading. On top of its response to Pocan, Amazon recently defended its practices against criticism from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Amazon’s apology to Pocan is the kind of memo that deserves to be annotated, line-by-line, partially because one of its lines is actually fairly good — “Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions” — but because it’s past 1AM here and it turns out The Verge’s blockquote tool doesn’t let me embed tweets, I’ll just give you the primary guts for now:
On Wednesday last week, the @amazonnews Twitter account tweeted the following back to Representative Mark Pocan:
This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.
First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers. A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time. If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.
Second, our process was flawed. The tweet did not receive proper scrutiny. We need to hold ourselves to an extremely high accuracy bar at all times, and that is especially so when we are criticizing the comments of others.
Third, we know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.
This is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon. We’ve included just a few links below that discuss the issue.
Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.
We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will also work hard to always be accurate.
We apologize to Representative Pocan.
You can read the full version here. When you’re finished, perhaps check out Motherboard’s interview with six female Amazon delivery drivers, for whom the pee situation is obviously much worse.
