Image credit: Reddit post
Nearly 18 months after Amazon finally acknowledged the urinal problem, Amazon’s delivery driver subreddit reported that delivery drivers still pee in bottles on route due to the pace of work. I have a lot of posts to do. I have to pee in a bottle.
Employees at Amazon’s delivery driver subreddit r/AmazonDSPDrivers have posted recent photos of pee bottles found in vans, around delivery hubs, and even in break room refrigerators. The driver says he finds bottles everywhere. Left in a van from someone else’s shift or dumped in a pile outside the facility. or just for fun.
“I absolutely had to put pee in the bottle,” one Amazon delivery driver told Motherboard. “I do it almost every day. Amazon doesn’t care what your route is. Peeing is common, I rolled the dice and even urinated on someone’s property because of the long driveway. There is nothing you can do.
Motherboard spoke to five Amazon drivers, and they all said that peeing in a bottle is still commonplace. Some of those drivers have done it and said they should do it regularly. At some point, everyone had seen or encountered a pee bottle in their truck. Motherboard agreed to keep workers anonymous because peeing in a bottle could be a dismissable offense.
The Amazon pee bottle problem is nothing new. As early as 2019, he said the company’s employees don’t have time to take proper restroom breaks. Driver began posting on his social media about their situation in March 2021, catching the attention of some politicians. murmured“Paying workers $15 an hour doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ if you bust unions and force workers to urinate in water bottles.”
Amazon responded to Pocan’s tweet with the following: If that were true, no one would work for us. Shortly after, Motherboard published an article with a photo of the driver showing that he actually had to pee in a bottle because he didn’t have time to stop at a public restroom.
After facing compelling evidence from Motherboard and The Intercept that obtained internal documents indicating that Amazon was aware of the problem, Amazon apologized to Pocan but not to the employee. In a statement, the company said, “We know drivers may have trouble finding toilets due to traffic jams and sometimes local routes. This is due to Covid-19, when many public toilets were closed. “It’s been a long-standing industry-wide problem, and it’s not unique to Amazon. It’s industry-wide, but we want to solve it. We don’t know how yet, but I’m looking for a solution.”
But a year and a half later, Driver says Amazon hasn’t fixed the problem.
“Amazon has done nothing in terms of drivers peeing in bottles,” another driver wrote in an email to Motherboard. It continues to do so, but in reality it is not, and some routes are used more than 10 hours a day in rural areas.”
Are you an Amazon delivery driver? We look forward to hearing from you. You can contact Jules Roscoe at jules.roscoe@vice.com or Signal at 415-763-7705 from a non-work phone or email.
Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said in a statement that a typical shift lasts 10.5 hours, nine of which should be spent on the road and delivery drivers are entitled to a break.
In an email to Motherboard, Boschetti said: “Delivery drivers have two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break each day, and receive an in-app notification every two hours if they are not taking a break. You can also easily check the location of available restrooms.”
She did not say whether Amazon was taking steps to specifically address the pee bottle issue.
According to Amazon drivers’ social media posts, despite making so many deliveries in a day, they still pee in bottles and have encountered other drivers’ pee bottles at work. doing.
One photo, posted to r/AmazonDSPDrivers in mid-October, shows a row of three pee bottles ranging in color from clear to dark yellow with the caption, “Keep hydrated.” increase. In the comments section, people debated back and forth between peeing in a bottle or trying to find the nearest gas station. The original poster read, “I really don’t have time to stop at the gas station every time I have to pee. Especially during the summer he takes more than 190 breaks and he has to drink eight bottles to stay hydrated.” I have to.”
Another poster asked if there was a “pee-bottle graveyard” at a fulfillment center other than their own, adding two photos of various bottles and beverage containers littering the tracks.
The Intercept reported last year that if a driver leaves a piss bottle in the van after a shift, it’s grounds for “immediate offboarding.”
In one post on Driver’s subreddit, one user describes finding a pee bottle “between panels” in the back of a delivery truck on a hot day. The bottle “exploded all over my hair, clothes, glasses and truck windshield because of the heat,” the poster read.
Some of the drivers who posted on the subreddit said they refused to pee in bottles because it was unhealthy and just wanted to find a place to park for a few minutes. One poster read, “Seriously, stop at a gas station. If you’re in a secluded area, open the door and pee behind it. Don’t belittle yourself.” The answer was simply that we don’t have time.
“I would never have completed the route if I had stopped at the gas station every time I pee,” wrote one person in the comments section. If stopping your route on the way is only because the company doesn’t want you to piss in the truck, it’s disrespectful.”
Another wrote: Will BLOCKS pick up where I left off?”
A post on the subreddit says the driver has a heavy luggage load, so they run about 200 stops and about 350 luggage in one shift, so they don’t have time to go looking for a real restroom. It doesn’t include loading and resting time, which, according to the poster, would likely take about two hours.
“In the four years since giving birth, I’ve only stopped using the toilet three times,” one driver told Motherboard. “Our dispatcher told us that Amazon would adjust the route to include our lunch, two 15 minute breaks and a bathroom break. packages) are so heavy that they don’t have time to stop, so they end up peeing in Gatorade bottles, and the packages are so heavy that most drivers don’t even take a 15 minute break. Hmm, they don’t want to deliver at night.”
“Personally, I used to skip lunch with a 15-minute break, but the app update forced me to have lunch,” they continued.
Another driver commented, “As far as peeing in bottles, this is a daily occurrence! Absolutely nothing has changed in that area. As a female driver, it’s very frustrating.
They explained that Amazon’s standard is 20 stops per hour and the Department of Transportation mandates 10 hour stops per day, so there should be a maximum of 200 stops per day. But the driver goes on to say that his 10 hours, which includes inspecting the van, loading it, traveling to and from warehouses and gas stations, can take up to two hours.
“Basically, if you want the luxury of using a real toilet, we recommend stopping 35 to 45 times an hour,” they wrote in an email to Motherboard.
Amazon spokeswoman Boschetti said Amazon is working with its delivery service partners to keep drivers from overworked, and is continually updating its planning technology to provide “ample time for breaks.” In the past four years, Amazon has spent $7 billion worldwide to improve safety and driver training and increase the fees it pays its delivery service partners. Invested more than
Jason Koebler contributed to the report.
