Ann's Things

So I've been in need of a job and I applied to work for Amazon delivering packages. After a single day of experience, I already want to quit. Here is my experience so far:

The hours are long. I knew that going in, that it would be a ten hour shift starting at 11. What I wasn't prepared for is that this meant that three hours of my shift would be after dark. The job gets much harder at that point; night driving is difficult enough without reversing up unpaved rural drives and walking across unlit roads.

The volume of work expected from you is herculean. A reduced "nursery route" had me moving over two hundred packages in a day. It's hard to describe the level of hustle needed to meet quota. Nobody takes their allocated breaks. This is the sort of job that would suit you if you didn't eat, didn't sleep, had four arms, and drove like a maniac.

I hadn't faced any open transphobia like at my last job. Instead I've had to deal with being constantly deadnamed by the gig work app that Amazon uses to manage deliveries. I could not, unlike any other job I've ever worked, get the right name on my badge. It's honestly a much greater indignity to forcibly misgender yourself on company software while half a dozen apologetic faces tell you that there isn't anything they can do about it. I'll take the co-worker who smugly calls me "he" any day.

The reliance on apps and cell phones for work is a huge hindrance. Sometimes the software slows down and I'll just have to pull over and wait for it to load. You're expected to communicate with dispatch using your personal phone which is complicated by the fact that you can't touch it while driving. God, I miss CB radio and paper manifests.

If it hasn't been clear yet, workers are encouraged to cut corners constantly. There are a variety of safety standards that you need to ignore to meet quota. This is coupled with an extremely draconian safety policy from the DSP in which a single violation can have you suspended, enforced my an in-van camera. What this results in is workers gaming the system to drive their route as quickly as possible while specifically avoiding anything that would alert the cameras.