DC: Former Amazon employee Shannon Allen claimed in a Thursday interview with Tucker Carlson that the stressful workplace conditions nearly drove her to suicide.
When Carlson asked her whether she knew someone who attempted suicide, Allen said, “Tucker, I’m going to just go ahead and be honest with you. My very first YouTube video I ever made, I mentioned something about driving my car off of Eagle Mountain Dam because I was…worth more dead than I was alive. And let me tell you what—that was so surreal to me because…that’s the kind of mindset that they put you in: is you are not important.”
“What you are giving to [Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos]—his wealth, his Amazon winnings—that’s what’s important to him. Not your mindset or your health.”
Allen first made news during a series of YouTube videos that chronicled her trials as an Amazon employee. Her story was picked up by the World Socialist Web Site in an article about the recent company-wide pay raise to $15 per hour. Although every employee experienced an increase in hourly pay, nearly every benefit and bonus went away, which ultimately resulted in a net loss for workers.
“It makes me so mad,” Allen told the WSWS in October. “I want to know who Bezos asked about doing this. Bezos said that he supposedly heard from his workers. Who did he ask? It wasn’t me. We didn’t get to vote. They didn’t pass out a ballot. Nobody asked me. watch
When upper management tells you “that’s what the workers said” they are basically lying to you and telling you to go pound sand. Before I left my previous company they were going to experiment with a new office layout. Everyone I talked to, granted, not a lot, but several, hated the concept. Yet, when management was talking about it, they kept saying the employees really loved the new design. When I left, in my going away letter, I described the issues with the new setup. I made sure to bypass the typical boot lickers and “nothing to see here” people when I left. Apparently, though it was too late to change anything, management at least acknowledged possible issues.
Amazonians are rather delicate, they need their emotional support dogs just to get through the day
Color me skeptical but it sounds kinda snowflake-ish to me. I could be wrong but signs are there.
That’s what working for a democrat gets you.
I worked for a company for many years that told me and treated me like I was nothing special. It drove me to drink. Now I am self employed and have found an abundance of customers willing to pay me 5 times what I was earning and treat me with respect. I now have no desire to drink. I can sympathize with Shannon Allen.
I’ve only been disrespected once from my employer. There were several of them.😉
Perhaps she should seek other employment…
“Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Geo. Orwell
i’m sorry, but. learn to code. and, i’ll ass-u-me you can math.
you’re-good-to-go
happy-happy-joy-joy
I’ve seen reports the same as hers from the U.K. She probably isn’t off base on what she says but foolish to put up with it for such a long time.
I turned down a contract job working for an Amazon warehouse here in Vegas for just this reason.
From what I’ve heard they are all about numbers.
All you are is a cog in the machine.
They feel barking at you all day will grease the wheel.
Fuck that.
I wouldn’t have considered suicide but it sounds like a place that would really suck and I have outgrown working for assholes, no matter the pay.
“…stressful workplace conditions nearly drove her to suicide.”
Then “her” is an idiot. She was not conscripted, under a bond of servitude, kept as a slave. Walk out you idiot, when you start to think ‘I don’t like working here’. Jobs can be replaced, most especially today.
Back in the mid-late ’90’s, when Amazon was growing like nobody’s business, way before they started building out their new HQ, they hired former Microsoft so-called hot shot recruiters to form the backbone of recruiting for them. Because Microsoft was considered the best-of-the-best in terms of recruiting practices. But that came with a heavy price in terms of corporate culture. At that time tech employees rivaled each other over who could put in the most weekly hours and out-geek each other. Everyone had the stock price scrolling on their homescreen — waiting for the next split. All that extra work, effort, and ridiculous preening was felt to be worth it. Amazon was all that on steroids. I consulted at Amazon back in the early days as a favor to a colleague, but left because I gashed my leg open on the corner of an unfinished hollow core door (because everyone had to have a stupid door as a desk, per Dear Leader’s humble beginnings). We were all stuffed in a Seattle skyscraper in what used to be the sprawling lobby of the Sr. Veep of the Bank of California building. Wires to support all the computers were strung across the framework of a former acoustic ceiling. But until I actually got hurt doing my job, I didn’t care. Everyone has their price.
In the meantime two things have happened: Either there was an excess of qualified tech workers who couldn’t find good jobs and had to take enormous pay cuts (under obama), and young, good tech employees of the kind hired by Amazon are being fought so hard over by the big tech companies, they can name their own price and perks. What hasn’t changed is that tech companies do not plan well enough in advance their time-to-market and never seem to consider how much it is actually costing them in terms of corporate reputation among tech employees. That’s why they’re always going after “fresh” people who are naive to Amazon’s reality.
It’s a quaint idea to think that a company like Amazon would ever care about their employees. She should go to work for Chik-fil-et.
Don’t work there, sheesh.
I have quit more jobs that I can remember for just such reasons.
I don’t live to work, I work to live
Unexpectedly, there was a downside to demanding and receiving a social justice raise. 😢 *snort*
If killing themselves makes it any cheaper for me I’m down with that.
RICH PEOPLE VIRTUE SIGNALING
Gates, Bezos, and Apple’s Tim Cook, former Steve Jobs….ALL the rich people virtue signal for the liberals, to keep the mob off their back.
They can enslave their employees, abuse them and the liberals will yawn. Why shouldn’t they? The people who disassemble their own children for convenience have no really emotions for anyone else but themselves.
Muslims can do everything diametrically opposed to their party platform, and as longs as they are a voting bloc, they also get a pass.
Political animals.
When the C Suites declare that the hourly staffers are their highest expenditures (it’s not, its uninsured patients but what do you expect when politicians declare health care a human right), that no one gets a raise that year, not even for excellence, then grant themselves multi-million dollar bonuses for drawing that conclusion….
Next time you have the misfortune of being hospitalized, talk to your nurse. If they’re an older seasoned nurse they will be honest. Don’t ask the young ‘uns that are a year out from graduation, they’re too scared and in debt to be honest with you. Hospital admins from coast to coast have tried to convince floor nurses that karoshi (working oneself to death) and martyrdom are requisites for being a “good nurse”. I had to help take a fellow nurse to the ER as he was having a heart attack (ironically we were working on cardiac telemetry). Staffing ratios on the floor used to be one nurse to four patients but it’s now 1:7 and patients are literally dying as a result, and experienced nurses are leaving in droves. The C Suites complain of containing costs, yet perversely find that patient deaths acceptable in their ROI analysis. It’s beyond disgusting.
I say there was a pre-existing condition, say like a being a lifelong liberal and atheist. These people do nothing but complain that things are so rotten: “People are wrong, everything that happens is wrong, the whole world is wrong”. I know, because I thought that way 40 years ago.
They are all just a half-step from suicide. Without God in your corner, life does suck.
Try toting bricks for 5 bricklayers.
Yelled at, tobacco-spit on, dust, dirt, brickbats dropped on your head – for $2.75 an hour!
And you have to carry the concrete lintels to the scaffolds so they can be installed – AND you gotta build the scaffolds and tear em down, too!
Give me a fukkin break!
I was glad to have the job and worked like a slave to keep it!
Construction paid more than the other shit-jobs available.
Whining fukkin crybabies …
(course, that’s why I got with the gov’t! thought I’d died and gone to heaven … for about 6 weeks … then started bitching like everybody else)
izlamo delenda est …