Amazon delivery driver talks about terrible working conditions and strange management

Angel Rajal, a 26-year-old Amazon delivery driver based in Las Vegas, has revealed what he has to go through at his job. Insider.

Photo: Shutterstock

After four years working at an Amazon warehouse, he got a job as a delivery driver.

He wanted to be a driver because he thought he would have a lot more freedom and not have to deal with the rough handling of the warehouse.

Angel started driving, a classic Amazon van, in July, at the height of the pandemic. He enjoyed working with customers as compared to the distribution center. Rajal, like most Amazon drivers, is employed by a local delivery service partner and is considered an independent subcontractor.

But during the holiday season, he was the victim of an attempted robbery and people followed him while he was on his way.

Living in a van also has its challenges. “You're in a packed vehicle for more than 10 hours a day, having to deliver up to 400 packages,” he says. “The routes also sometimes lead into rural areas where public toilets are not available.”

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Several times he had to urinate in a plastic bottle because there was no toilet.

Many public toilets are closed due to COVID-19, but most of the time he delivers in the mountains and feels nervous, afraid to be behind schedule.

“My current route is quite rural and it will take me 15 minutes to get to the nearest toilet. The round trip would have taken over 40 minutes and would have put me way behind schedule, which would have reduced my score,” says Angel.

“I used to love being an Amazon delivery driver, but since the company installed cameras in our vans, I feel like we're constantly being watched,” he says.

Amazon says 270-degree AI cameras are motion-activated and don't record all the time.

They can tell what the driver is doing. Angel gets a "distracted driver" notification even if he changes the radio station or drinks water. Sometimes if he turns away from the front of the van, he gets a notification.

“It's very annoying. For each "distracted driver" citation, points are deducted from my safety rating, which are reviewed by management and can be used to reduce my hours or terminate my employment. Amazon said the camera is for security, but it feels like an invasion of privacy,” he says.

Most drivers in his DSP feel just as frustrated. Amazon has also changed its routing algorithm and marks multiple deliveries in the same area as one stop, even though houses and apartments are scattered and often located on the other side of the block. It is these changes that make his job much more difficult.

“I used to think I would have the freedom of being a delivery driver, but most of the time I eat lunch in my van on the side of the road because I don’t have enough time to find a park and enjoy the fresh air,” says Angel.

Return Department

He used to work in the returns department. His job was to process every return sent goods back to the company, make sure the goods were not damaged, and determine if the goods could be resold.

His warehouse was the largest he had ever seen. He estimated that over 1000 people worked there in different departments.

“I worked the night shift, which was from about 19:15 p.m. to 7 a.m. Before working at Amazon, I worked in security, so I was already used to long night hours,” he says.

Amazon warehouse workers are expected to "bid," a performance measure at which they must process a certain number of packages and items in an hour or risk being fired. In Angel's department, he was expected to process 40 to 60 declarations in one hour, which was difficult, he says, and sometimes seemed impossible.

Penalties and weird management

He was fined twice. The first time, because he had a nosebleed and didn't manage to complete his quota in an hour. The second time he had to leave early for family reasons.

The hardest part about working in the warehouse was leadership and management.

“In my experience, managers showed favoritism to some and ignored others when it came to promotions. I applied several times for “ambassador” positions (employees who train new employees) and never received a promotion,” he says.

Members of management also often contradicted each other. “One manager told me to do a task a certain way, and another told me the opposite. Managers often disagreed on how to properly train new employees to perform simple tasks such as merchandise handling,” he says.

Sometimes managers yelled at each other in front of colleagues, Ángel recalls.
The impression was that the company had no structure, and anyone could come up with rules as they went, he says.

“It also seemed like we were not encouraged to take advantage of paid time off and vacation hours. Managers often told employees to “be careful” with how we spend our vacation time because if we ever have an emergency and we don’t have enough hours to make up the rest of our shift, and then we won’t be able to leave.” , says Angel.

There were times when associates talked about forming a union, but nothing came of those negotiations, Ángel recalls.

His job as a warehouse worker at Amazon was easy in terms of tasks, but physically demanding.

“What I loved about working for Amazon as a customer service specialist was the salary and my health benefits. But overall the experience in the warehouse itself was very negative,” he says.

Angel says 60% to 70% of the drivers he spoke to are interested in unionizing.
He follows Amazon news through the employee social media forums on Facebook and Reddit.

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Many Amazon workers are paying attention to what's going on in Alabama with the union vote and believe that unionization is the way to get higher wages and better working conditions, Angel says.

In a statement to Insider, Amazon spokeswoman Deborah Bass wrote: “Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon employee, and we measure actual performance against those expectations. Employee performance is measured and evaluated over a period of time because we know that the ability to meet expectations on any given day or hour can be affected by a variety of factors. Netradyne cameras are used to keep drivers and the communities we deliver to safe. We tested the technology from April to October 2020 on over two million miles of delivery routes, and the results have resulted in significant improvements in driver and community safety—accidents down 48%, stop sign violations down 20%, driving without a seat belt was reduced by 60% and distracting driving was reduced by 45%. Don't believe the self-serving critics who claim that cameras are for anything other than security."

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