> "You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us."<p>The more you unpack this statement, the worse it is.<p>1) It's a lie.<p>2) It's tells you 'you're dumb if you believe [the truth].'<p>3) The problem they're lying about is a really awful one.<p>4) They seem to not even <i>know</i> what it's like to do this role (but that doesn't prevent them from confidently making things up).<p>5) It shows a worldview that's super, well, privileged. Whoever wrote that probably couldn't imagine not having the option to just walk away from a job.<p>6) Whoever wrote that apparently doesn't believe that <i>anyone</i> doesn't have the option to just walk away from a job.<p>They seem so incredibly disconnected from this part of their workforce, that <i>I</i> couldn't imagine them making good calls about what these workers should be doing.
I live in London and the lack of public toilets is just beyond belief. Most of them were shut years ago by councils trying to save money.
And the results is rather abysmal: the public now have to rely on the businesses to provide such facilities,which isn't the end of the world in central parts of the city,where there are cafés after cafes,but what about further out to suburbs? If it's bad to the general public, it's 10 times worse for the drivers of delivery vans, lorries,or even bus drivers. Literally nobody in the country is thinking about such infrastructure, nobody wants to initiate it, because,well,you know, it's not as popular and vote winning as 'more pressing issues'. This is also one of the reasons why there are so few women in the logistics sector, because you can't just pull it out behind a bush.
Needing to pee while on the road isn’t totally unique to Amazon drivers; and decades of anti-homeless policies mean there are very few places in many cities where you can just run in to use the bathroom. Many of these drivers operate in the suburbs, where door codes aren’t as common on bathrooms, but it still made me think.<p>(Obviously these drivers are being put under time crunches, hence the bottles, and that <i>is</i> a separate issue)
From their blog post[0]:<p>> First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers.<p>Nowhere in the tweet did it mention fulfillment centers:<p>> 1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.<p>And WOW. At the end of the blog post, there are tweets of people saying it's not just Amazon. So, "we're sorry, but it's not just me, so it's not that bad."<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recent-response-to-representative-pocan" rel="nofollow">https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/our-recen...</a>
My dad has been a letter carrier for over 40 years. I'm very aware that drivers very openly talk to one another about peeing in the back of their trucks into bottles. Like with Amazon, the only policy is that you'll get a good talking to (not formal reprimand) if you accidentally leave a bottle of piss in the truck for the next person who drives the truck. Nobody wants to drive a car after a bottle of piss has been baking in hot Florida temperatures for 24 hours with the windows closed.<p>But, all that ignores a few things:<p>1) Look at that original tweet. So dismissive of the POSSIBILITY that anybody would EVER do such a thing. "Amazon is such a great place to work! Who could ever believe such an absurd claim!" The people who work in corporate clearly are so disconnected from the lives of their drivers that they have no idea how this is a weekly occurrence for a large percentage of drivers. Imagine what being so disconnected means in terms of setting policy for those drivers! Now apply that to a million other policies. People who do office work have no idea what it's like to do the job.<p>2) There were level of managers out in the field that were very aware of this. The official policy, if you read the emails, was (a) stop pooping in the Amazon bags, they'll trace you if you do, and (b) don't leave your piss bottles behind for other drivers to find. This is related to the first point, but what does it say about communication that something so commonplace didn't spread up the chain of command as a problem?<p>3) Amazon is saying they don't know the solution, but they'll try to come up with one. This scares me. The most likely scenario is a crackdown on drivers, as opposed to giving paid time for this purpose. Keep in mind, it could be that a driver is half an hour from a public restroom. This is expensive to solve. But what's not expensive is a crackdown on drivers. Look out for "zero tolerance" policies for those who get caught. It won't have an effect on occurrences of it happening, but could at least stop people from leaving their piss bottles behind as frequently.
What exactly is wrong with peeing in a bottle? It's a practical solution to a very easily solved biological need. Hygienically, peeing is very different from pooing, and can be dealt with much more easily. If anything, having to beg some business to let you pee in their flushing ceramic bowl seems pretty ridiculous.<p>This seems more like social hangups making our lives more difficult.<p>If you spend a bit of time travelling/living in a van, or maybe camping in sub zero temperatures, you'll quickly come to appreciate the humble pee-bottle.<p>Having a job / working environment that pressures you into not taking breaks is obviously wrong though.
> "We know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed."<p>"We are sorry that everything <i>except</i> our impossible scheduling algo enforced by AI-backed driver surveillance causes employees to pee in bottles."
It's not a great thing.<p>But having met drivers (taxi, truck, etc) from around in world and in different countries. This is quite common.<p>Again, not great.<p>But a fairly "standard" thing in the transportation industry.<p>I remember seeing bottles in New York City yellow cabs and wondered why they always had empty bottles beside their seats -- until one day a friend told me.<p>I was grossed out. But then I noticed it more and more and more.<p>One day I was driving from Portland, Maine to New York City and I had to go, but the next rest stop was miles away, and this was a place in Connecticut that literally had no place to even pull over. It was that, or...<p>I looked around and there was a bottle, and I did it. Hehe.
Not sure if it's a turning point for unionisation, but it's definitely a turning point for talking about biological needs.<p>In Sweden, the equivalent of the US presidential debate takes 3 hours, including pre-greating and post-interview. As a man, supposedly gifted with a larger bladder, I would need a lot of planning to be 100% sure not to need a toilet break for 3 hours.<p>I can't help wonder: Is Sweden selecting the prime minister based on leadership skills or bladder size?
Every week, I see a report on how company 'X' cannot meet need 'Y' and how we need more of infrastructure 'Z'. The investigation always stops at this exact point.<p>Peek a little deeper and the reasons are clear. The American philosophy of urban design is broken at its core.<p>Public infrastructure enables low cost amenities by distributing costs over the number of intended users, ie. residents of said geographic plot. '<i>Density</i>' is a non negotiable prerequisite for quality infrastructure that won't spiral a nation into debt.<p>A public restroom can only be maintained if the users/restroom is high. The exact same logic applies to literally everything. There is an inflection point (Mumbai, my home town, being an excellent example of excess density), but no American city comes anywhere close to it.<p>________<p>I am usually cautious about boiling down complex problems to single causes. But, this one I feel confident about.<p>Over the long run, nothing has (and will continue to) hurt the US more than the galaxy brained American dream of an R1 zoned car centric town.
I think this article is trying to change the narrative focus of public access to restrooms, instead of the real issues around time to attend to personal needs that I gather Amazon's driver work conditions help to create. I would be good to keep the focus on that.
> Amazon said in its blog post, adding that its previous response only referred to staff at its warehouses or fulfillment centers.<p>So... I would be willing to bet it would not be too hard to find workers at warehouses/fulfillment centers who have peed in bottles too. They seem to be setting themselves up again to me...<p>I mean, this is just me googling, finding this story from 2018..<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-have-to-pee-into-bottles-2018-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-hav...</a><p>Aha, and this story has a reddit post of a picture from a driver claiming he found a pee bottle accidentally left in a tote put on his truck "I've found piss bottles from other drivers, but now from the warehouse too" <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7amyn/amazon-denies-workers-pee-in-bottles-here-are-the-pee-bottles" rel="nofollow">https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7amyn/amazon-denies-workers...</a>
There is an obvious fix for this, which is to allow drivers the time to find and use a bathroom, even if it is far from their route.<p>There is an obvious reason driver-employing companies don’t do this, which is that it would raise costs and increase delivery times, two things that all customers (both shippers and receivers) absolutely hate. The shipper that implements this unilaterally will instantly become uncompetitive vs shippers that maintain the status quo.<p>Honestly this is a classic case for top-down regulation. Because it forces all companies to solve the problem simultaneously, it should have little effect on the competitive balance. And companies with unhappy customers could blame the government. That also makes it hard to get regulation done. Voters essentially would have to support raising their own prices in order to help truck drivers.
Corey Quinn took a broad swipe at AWS over the dishonesty of their recent tweet on the subject.<p><a href="https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/you-cant-trust-amazon-when-it-feels-threatened/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/you-cant-trust-amazon-whe...</a>
I’m curious, has anyone actually tried urinating in a bottle here while on the road?<p>I tried it once, and found it so convenient I’ve done it multiple times now. These Amazon workers may be onto something. All those times I had to urinate so badly while stuck in traffic, I never realized a bottle could be so easy to use. I imagine if you’re in a delivery truck where you could stand up walk into the back it would be even easier, almost trivial. So what’s the big deal?<p>To discard the urine, I will typically pull over to the side of the road and open the door slightly to empty the bottle discretely. I’m trying to think what the best bottle to keep in the car for this purpose could be. Something made of glass and with a long neck is ideal, to avoid spills. A wide mouth is also helpful. Maybe something like a yellow hydroflask.<p>From now on, when I do a long road trip, urination will no longer be a reason for me to have to stop and pull over. If this saves me time, I imagine it would save an Amazon driver time AND money.
I already commented on the underlying issue but I’ll also add, separately, that this is a great example of the dangers of a “hit ‘em back” PR strategy.<p>Often it is senior execs who are advocating for this approach (saw rumors it was Bezos himself pushing for it at Amazon), and at some point it becomes impossible for the PR team to say “no” to their boss. Someone has to do the dumb thing anyway and see what happens, or resign.<p>I bet this case study gets pulled out by the PR team within Amazon for years and years whenever someone asks them to “be more aggressive” or whatever.
Is it illegal to have a paid toilet/bathroom?<p>EDIT: Oh, I guess is it illegal in the USA to install a paid bathroom facility. I think that's dumb.<p>Ignoring the startup cost, if you have a paid bathroom in a relatively public area, and it costs say, 1 dollar for a usage, conservatively with 2 minute usage time that's about 30 bucks an hour.<p>Surely 30 bucks an hour revenue minus expenses to have someone refill water/pump out waste/occasional clean would make this a decent business similar to like a vending machine biz?
When I was still in school we (the students) received a job posting for an internship from one of the biggest rail transportation company in Europe.<p>Some freight trains do not have toilets for the drivers, and they ended up peeing at the back of the cabin.<p>The goal of the internship was: "find a way to deal with the corrosion on the floor induced by repeated urination from the drivers".
Reading all this I see a new product opportunity:<p>Invent "a better piss bottle" for drivers. Extra points for accommodating female drivers.
US cities have a lot of trash cans in public places, but a panic inducing-ly low number of public restrooms. This appears* to be the opposite of a city like Tokyo, Japan; fewer trash cans, but more reassuring number of public toilets.<p>* personal opinion based on living in these 2 cities
Wonder if they have a heads up of the Bessemer results and are trying to save face? This PR strategy (or lack thereof) will be studied for decades to come. Mayhaps an inflection point in Amazon’s trajectory?
the funny thing to me about this whole episode is how Bezos wanted "his" people to start fighting back. these accounts were not known for these kinds of messages, so it is no loss to me that they strike out at their first at bat. however, they swung at a pitch that was obviously so far over their heads. i'm guessing it would have taken all of about 30 seconds to "research" to find out this is not the hill they should be dying. i love it when people self own in such a spectacular manner.
I took a lot of heat for reporting a driver last week who poured a bottle of piss out in front of our house.<p>I had thought at the time Amazon was a company that would work to correct the metrics or training that caused this to happen.<p>Much of the feedback here was that Amazon is a company that cares nothing for its contracted agents and would fire this individual due to my action.<p>I spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I had done, the pee, the fate of the driver and Jeff Bezos.<p>I took two actions:<p>1. I drafted an email to Jeff:<p>--<p>> Jeff,<p>An Amazon delivery person poured a container of pee out in front of our house in Portland on Saturday.<p>I read an article that said you authored this tweet:<p>"You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?
If that were true, nobody would work for us."<p>In the first photo attached, you can see it is broad daylight, and they poured the pee directly out of the window.<p>In the second, you can see the white patches of pee foam that lingered well after they had been on their way.<p>I shared my story on Hacker News yesterday and people got really angry that I reported the driver.<p>To clarify, I do not want this person to get fired. I do want you to know that this did happen and I'm a longtime Amazon customer.<p>I would appreciate it if you would work with your team to make any necessary changes to your delivery logistics metrics or improve training to prevent this from happening again.<p>I am upset that Amazon has put me in a position where I look like a jerk for not wanting one of your people to pour pee out in front of our place.<p>Someone in that thread above called this Amazon gaslighting and given the tweet above and my personal experience it kind of feels like that.<p>I'd appreciate a note that this has been read and that my truth has been heard.<p>—-<p>I received the following reply:<p>> This is (). with Amazon Executive Customer Relations. Jeff Bezos received your email, and I'm responding on his behalf.<p>I’m sorry to hear about your poor delivery experience, and I appreciate you making us aware of it. At Amazon, we pride ourselves in being the world’s most customer-centric company.<p>I’m personally collaborating with the team to investigate this matter further and take the appropriate actions.<p>—-<p>The second thing I did was read up about Amazon drivers, pee bottles and the Amazon executive leadership.<p>What I found was a solid amount of articles describing the situations that are unfair to drivers and prevent them from being able to comfortably relieve themselves while working. In particular, women who must use SheWee style funnels in addition to bottles to keep up with men.<p>I looked for the performance metrics and found that drivers are expected to do 180+ stops per day to meet metrics.<p>I did not find investigative reporting that gave any detailed account of what that meant in real terms, such as estimates on the percentage of drivers that have metrics that are not realistically achievable.<p>In looking at the executive leadership, in particular Jeff Bezos, I found that a significant portion of leadership is turning over right now.<p>I am guessing that tweet came directly from Jeff and he did it out of anger. I presume he was angry because he is competing for his own personal goal around the amount of wealth he can “create” during his time at Amazon.<p>I decided his tweet represented an attitude that is not sustainable and that there had to be many in the company that know this. I presume many are waiting for Jeff to depart from day-to-day operations because he is running things way too hot and it’s burning everyone down to the guy who poured pee out in front of my house.<p>I think this apology is a good sign, though the company has much to prove that it will make changes to make the need to pee in a bottle a thing of the past. Given how common it is in drivery logistics, it appears Amazon will need to show a lot of leadership and create new defining standards of care for its employees and agents.<p>I would say my view toward Amazon has gone from largely positive to negative as a result of this experience. I’m interested now in how GoPuff or other companies with stronger worker protections can come in and take business away from Amazon.<p>There is a much bigger story to tell about economic inequality. I see this apology as an important artifact of this rising problem.<p>I’m hopeful for the driver. That they kept their job or chose to leave it and found something better.
Let's put them all in jail, then they'll see what they're really willing to do for just a little cash! What I'll have Jeff doing in the shower room will make urinating in a bottle look like heaven!