Name: Amazon offers rare apology, says it will look for solutions to drivers peeing in bottles
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Amazon offers rare apology, says it will look for solutions to drivers peeing in bottles

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Trending:In-depth Amazon coverage from the tech giant’s hometown, including e-commerce, AWS, Amazon Prime, Alexa, logistics, devices, and more.Amazon Friday night, stepping back from comments made on Twitter last week in a response to of Wisconsin over whether its delivery drivers felt the need to urinate in bottles since bathroom breaks were challenging to achieve.The apology is an unusual admission by the Seattle-based company, which on Twitter lately. It also comes as Amazon workers at a fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., consider a unionization effort, with a vote tally expected some time next week.Here’s the tweet from Pocan on March 24 that set things off.Paying workers $15/hr doesn't make you a "progressive workplace" when you union-bust &amp; make workers urinate in water bottles.— Rep. Mark Pocan (@repmarkpocan)The official Amazon Twitter account shot back at Pocan: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.— Amazon News (@amazonnews)Pocan replied that he believed Amazon’s workers. And, as GeekWire reported, .Amazon said Friday that the tweet was “incorrect,” and “did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers.”The company also said the tweet did not receive proper scrutiny and called its process “flawed.”However, Amazon did defend itself a bit, saying that drivers having trouble finding restrooms “is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon.” It included several links to related stories and tweets.“Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it,” the company wrote Friday. “We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.”Last week’s saga was an unusual PR pissing match for Amazon, which usually avoids such controversies. The matter took on elevated importance after that the responses were coming from the top, directed by none other than founder Jeff Bezos.Historically, Amazon has let criticism bounce off its teflon shell. And the apology points to an increased sensitivity as labor tensions rise, Bezos hands over the CEO reins to AWS chief Andy Jassy, and ongoing antitrust scrutiny.Here’s the full apology as posted to the Amazon blog:On Wednesday last week, the @amazonnews Twitter account tweeted the following back to Representative Mark Pocan: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.— Amazon News (@amazonnews)This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers. A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time. If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.Second, our process was flawed. The tweet did not receive proper scrutiny. We need to hold ourselves to an extremely high accuracy bar at all times, and that is especially so when we are criticizing the comments of others.Third, 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.This is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon. We’ve included just a few links below that discuss the issue.Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will also work hard to always be accurate.We apologize to Representative Pocan.Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headlineHave a scoop that you'd like GeekWire to cover? Let us know.Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headlineUnited Way of King CountyMedBridgeSan Jose State UniversityMedBridgeWestern Washington University - Computer Science DepartmentResolution Bioscience, a part of AgilentFind more jobs on . Employers, .

Trending:In-depth Amazon coverage from the tech giant’s hometown, including e-commerce, AWS, Amazon Prime, Alexa, logistics, devices, and more.Amazon Friday night, stepping back from comments made on Twitter last week in a response to of Wisconsin over whether its delivery drivers felt the need to urinate in bottles since bathroom breaks were challenging to achieve.The apology is an unusual admission by the Seattle-based company, which on Twitter lately. It also comes as Amazon workers at a fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., consider a unionization effort, with a vote tally expected some...

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Amazon offers rare apology, says it will look for solutions to drivers peeing in bottles

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