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Black Mirror is Real: Woman criticizes Amazon on Twitter, Gets Flooded with Branded Amazon Employee Accounts Exalting the Company
- Thread starter excelsiorlef
- Start date
This practice should be illegal. It can't be right that paid for propaganda to brainwash the masses is legally allowable. Our laws globally need hugely updated to protect human sanity.
Oh no, someone spent 10 minutes going to the toilet, what a terrible abuse of the system 🙄
"I'm not a shill but my fellow employees are all lazy and underhanded, especially anyone who got fired."
Plus, maybe like me they had IBS? Things can take 10 minutes easily if you have IBS or similar.
Maybe I just like spending 10 minutes on the toilet. I work in customer service and occasionally I need some "Me time".
Creepy af.
"Boxes. Packages. Shipping. This is what I dream about!"
My bullshit detector is going haywire
T
I can't be the only one who finds this mocking of employees distasteful. It reeks of privilege. I used to work in a hub for UPS and yeah it is brutally hard work in tough conditions, a lot worse than most Amazon warehouses, so I feel a certain common bond with these people. If they get time off the floor to sit and post on Twitter more power to them, maybe instead of mocking them just give them a thumbs up for managing to get a nice perk after busting their asses for 2+ years. Save your mockery and snide remarks for the upper management who are getting paid 6 and 7 figure salaries to come up with programs like this, and who are the ones making egregious work policies.
This is completely normal for any big companies social media policy.
I can't be the only one who finds this mocking of employees distasteful. It reeks of privilege. I used to work in a hub for UPS and yeah it is brutally hard work in tough conditions, a lot worse than most Amazon warehouses, so I feel a certain common bond with these people. If they get time off the floor to sit and post on Twitter more power to them, maybe instead of mocking them just give them a thumbs up for managing to get a nice perk after busting their asses for 2+ years. Save your mockery and snide remarks for the upper management who are getting paid 6 and 7 figure salaries to come up with programs like this, and who are the ones making egregious work policies.
Not surprising, Amazon really is a shitty company. Riches man in the world spreading propaganda in multiple ways. People in here talk around the issue is laughable too.
Satire died a long time ago but this is just pissing on it's grave.Creepy af.
"Boxes. Packages. Shipping. This is what I dream about!"
This is a weird tactic by Amazon, it doesn't help them at all.
why not just not defend your company if you have to talk like a creepy robot in order to do so? I don't know how stupid the higher ups at Amazon are that they think these types of sterile off-putting defense posts help them in any way.
Don't worry, I have unending distaste for both the megarich and the workers who sell their souls to the devil and try to bring down colleagues with them.
You try working a 4 hour shift unloading several tons of packages in 100 degree weather in an in un-air conditioned corrugated iron green house of a factory from trucks that have been stood in the sun all day. Then do that for two years. Then have someone ask if you want to sit in an air conditioned room posting on Twitter for the same money instead. And you would be all 'fight the power, I want to stay in the factory unloading boxes'? Give me a break.
Dude, you know shit about me, fuck off with that condescending attitude.
Unless I'm misreading stuff I don't think there's a whole lot of actual mocking going on here. Maybe some kinda weird pointing-and-gaping at the depression comments by the one twitterer; if you want to argue that's inappropriate fine but I think it deserves at least some recognition that what's going on there is evidence that the company's current policies for employees are not healthy.
I think TMBG said it best, really
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Yeah sure, I'll get paid for this. Any chance I can do this part time on the side? Would be a really good side gig for extra money.
"There is no war in Ba Sing Se"
"There is no war in Ba Sing Se"
Good lord I can't imagine what social media will look like in 10 years if we are already reaching this dystopian fake corporate cult mentality. Feels like Amazon is offering people money just to deter unionization. "Look how happy we are!" If I were in their situation though I'd probably do it too because that's easy money.
Also:
Also:
Sorry for making it personal. Let me put it another way, I know of no-one where I worked who wouldn't have taken the job, I would have happily tweeted how great UPS was for the chance to get out of unloading those trucks.
Most people who work a tough manual labor job would take a chance at turning a part of it into a comfy office job.
This is why we need to improve wages and working conditions. "B-b-b-b-but muh profits!". So now we have gig drivers and paid shills.
You either treat people well and they try to live well, or you treat people like shit and they find any means to ease their burden.
This is why we need to improve wages and working conditions. "B-b-b-b-but muh profits!". So now we have gig drivers and paid shills.
You either treat people well and they try to live well, or you treat people like shit and they find any means to ease their burden.
I find things like making employees work around a dead body of someone who dies on the job distasteful.
The only reason that I'm being extra careful is because my current position can potentially expose me to sensitive data so I want to be extra clear about my intentions since I actually like my job, lol
It's a pretty standard NDA/social media policy.
Regardless, check my post history; I've discussed this subject before multiple times on this forum.
I also discussed my old job at my last company whenever people would post about it, that's what people do.
That's not what I'm saying, but if you talk to literally anyone who actually works in a fulfillment center, including regular employees, they'll tell you that the number one reason people get fired is NOT because of rate, but is because they run out of unpaid time off, which is a term-able offense.
The number two reason for terms are high-severity safety policy infractions, which are also immediate terms.
Rate honestly probably isn't above the number 5 reason that people get fired, and that's because the policies are actually incredibly lenient.
Regarding time,
There are three banks of time that employees at the FCs can use.
Paid time off, Unpaid time off, and Vacation.
Paid time accrues a certain amount every pay period until you hit a certain amount.
Unpaid time accrues once every quarter.
Vacation also accrues every pay period but it stacks YoY, unlike PTO which is use-it-or-lose it.
The problem is, people blow through their PTO as soon as they get it, then blow through their unpaid time (UPT) because they just don't want to come to work.
Some people use one hour of UPT a day until they're out, others just take a whole day off straight up.
If you run out of PTO, you're just out. That's paid time and it's whatever.
UPT is intended for emergencies and you can accrue up to 80 hours a year. In other words, that's effectively two straight weeks of unpaid time off for emergency purposes only (because you also get PTO and Vacation, which are intended to be used for actual time off and relaxation, not to mention the fact that you actually get paid when you use them).
The only difference between PTO and Vacation is that Vacation requires prior notice and approval from a manager, while you can use PTO whenever.
You can literally just walk out on a shift at any time, no questions asked, and use PTO to cover it and that's perfectly acceptable.
UPT works like PTO except you don't get paid for it and if you run out, you're fired.
Having zero UPT is fine, but going negative is a term.
There is an appeal process if you go negative so it's possible to not get fired for it. People have successfully appealed.
In other words, the only way to get fired for running out of time is to drain all three banks of time (PTO and Vacation *can* replace used UPT and you can get a UPT refund if you run out and use one of those banks instead) and then fail the appeal.
You legitimately have to try to use that much time.
"but wait, people have to take off work, they're not robots and things happen"
I haven't even mentioned the personal leave, medical leave, parental leave (maternal AND paternal), family leave, or schedule accomodation procedures yet, all of which are incredibly lenient and have various paid and unpaid tiers, and all of which can take the place of PTO, Vac, and UPT so you don't run them down.
Now, remember, this is the number one reason people get fired from the company.
If someone is having an emergency or family issues or has a baby or something comes up where they have to take extended time off, there are avenues for them to do so that will in no way affect their standing and allow them to come back and keep working like nothing happened with all of their off time intact.
I'm all for taking time off and not killing yourself for the job; I used to use my PTO like no tomorrow back before I got promoted.
What I'm not for is people just flat out not coming to work and running out of time then claiming that the company is terrible when they get fired for something entirely preventable.
I don't want to come off as though I'm trying to defend the company or be some kind of white knight or something; I just think there's a lot of misinformation about how things actually are on the inside and this being resetera, people love to rail against "the man" without having all the information.
Nobody is going to get fired for going to the bathroom, and if they're peeing in bottles because they're afraid for their jobs, they're probably stupid.
There is AC in the buildings and the temperature is regularly monitored.
I can't speak for all aspects of the company but I can speak to my own personal experiences, if you have actual questions rather than just calling me a bot.
This is a pretty accurate post.
The company isn't perfect and there are definitely things I'd change, but if you're diligent and work hard and are a halfway decent person they offer plenty of opportunities to move up.
I've literally never heard somebody go out of their way to say "the megacorporation in question" before. It just adds to the general creepiness of these fake Twitter accounts.
i don't think they're actually fake, they're just company evangelists and that's their job *shrug*
me, i'm just paranoid
bezos always watching
praise the primelord
me, i'm just paranoid
bezos always watching
praise the primelord
they should have made more non future black mirrors. much more interesting
BFN: Amazon Says Those Weird Brand Ambassador Accounts Defending The Company Are Run By Real Employees
An Amazon spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that its fulfillment center brand ambassador accounts are run by real workers.
"These accounts are run by FC employees who understand what it's actually like to work in our FCs," a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News by email. When shown Desiree's account and asked whether she's a worker who's writing and posting her own tweets, the spokesperson said, "That's correct. Desiree is the one writing and sending the tweets."
Amazon didn't respond to questions about whether an employee gets paid for work as a brand ambassador, but one of the accounts said, "I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow."
Initially, Amazon emailed BuzzFeed News the same statement it sent TechCrunch a year ago after the news outlet reported employees receiving a day off and a $50 gift card for their corporate advocacy work. The statement invited reporters to visit one of the company's fulfillment centers.
"FC ambassadors are employees who work in our FCs and share facts based on personal experience," it said. "It's important that we do a good job educating people about the actual environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC ambassador program is a big part of that along with the FC tours we provide."
This comes on the heels of Amazon tweeting and then deleting a positive story from Quillette, a website previously in the news for promoting the debunked phrenology theory. The company has been reeling from reports that employees had to skip bathroom breaks, were having mental breakdowns, and discouraged from unionizing. Its employees went on strike during Prime Day to protest poor working conditions. But you won't hear about that from the Amazon fulfillment center brand ambassadors.
