[HN Gopher] Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as "su...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon security staff reported its own tweets as "suspicious,"
fearing hack
Author : danso
Score : 225 points
Date : 2021-03-29 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| josefresco wrote:
| Snark is not limited to just @amazonnews - also @amazon_policy _.
|
| _https://twitter.com/amazon_policy/status/1374739879570116610
| turdnagel wrote:
| It's a news story that someone inside Amazon thinks the tweets
| are bad?
| hikerclimb wrote:
| Good. Hopefully Amazon got hacked.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I wonder if the account purposely changed it's source label to
| avoid any pee bottle posts coming from "Sprinklr."
| 1-6 wrote:
| The parodical logo with the Amazon smile going through the
| Twitter bird was brilliant.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| So Amazon/Bezos are learning how to behave on Twitter by example
| of Donald Trump?
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I like it!
|
| Its a million times better than the usual corporate nothing
| platitudes.
| andonisus wrote:
| I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the delivery
| profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just Amazon drivers.
| Why is Amazon being singled out here? I suppose the argument is
| that it is caused by their aggressive delivery metrics and
| policies, but would t this be true of any shipping company? If
| drivers are incentivized to by the number of packages they
| deliver to meet bonuses or certain payouts, isn't it logical they
| would do anything to save time? How would you even change the
| compensation or penalty structure to account for this?
| maxwell wrote:
| USPS mail carriers do not piss in bottles.
|
| If a manager, or set of metrics, prevented bathroom breaks,
| that's a major contract violation and would be arbitrated
| successfully by a competent union steward.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Why is Amazon being singled out here
|
| Because Amazon is a brand upper middle class white collar types
| interact with. Swift and Schneider are not. Everyone thought
| they were at least a couple intermediaries removed from the
| trucker jugs.
|
| Just wait until they discover what construction site porta-
| johns are like.
| tclancy wrote:
| I am so confused by the set of responses based on the idea
| "Well, lots of other people have awful working conditions, why
| are we picking on this particular billion dollar corporation?"
| z3c0 wrote:
| It's very much "whataboutism". Best case, it's tonedeaf and
| overly-dismissive. Worst case, it's a deliberate distraction.
|
| I try to follow Hanlon's Razor, so I'll go with the best case
| and just assume these people are unempathtic contrarians,
| instead of corporate shills.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The nature of the job, its geography/logistics and Amazon's PR
| campaign as this wonderful, progressive employer.
|
| Someone said "it's what the middle class interacts with" but
| it's also about Amazon's aggressive blocking of reform or real
| worker rights.
| calcifer wrote:
| > I am of the opinion that all truckers (or people in the
| delivery profession) pee in bottles to save time, not just
| Amazon drivers.
|
| What is your opinion based on? A hunch? Random number
| generator? Your star sign? Maybe your horoscope?
|
| > Why is Amazon being singled out here?
|
| That's a strawman, nobody is singling out this company.
| Everyone is talking about Amazon because they publicly _denied_
| this ever happens from an official account.
|
| > How would you even change the compensation or penalty
| structure to account for this?
|
| Oh I don't know, maybe... and I realize this idea is so far out
| there so please bear with me for a second, maybe institute
| mandatory 15 minute breaks every 2-3 hours into the delivery
| schedule? Crazy, I know.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > Why is Amazon being singled out here?
|
| "Amazon forces warehouse workers to pee in bottles" was a thing
| two years ago. I haven't heard of this being a common thing
| outside anecdotal accounts, and looking at the amazon employees
| subreddits it sounded like it was overblown. Amazon responded
| forcefully to _that_ claim in their tweet, and was subsequently
| hit with a 'gotcha!' when the _drivers_ were reported to be
| doing it.
|
| From what I've read, Amazon's warehouses aren't a fun place to
| work, but not overall different from any other warehouse job.
| Along the same lines, their delivery jobs aren't remarkably
| different from other delivery jobs and the drivers peeing in
| bottles is a thing that happens across the board in the
| industry.
| dboreham wrote:
| Indeed. I live close to an interstate in a rural area and the
| neighbors to a trash pickup every year. We're actually picking
| up trash on the "frontage road" rather than the interstate, but
| the two are only 100' apart. I can tell you that truck drivers
| peeing in bottles then throwing said bottles out the window is
| very common.
| ullevaal wrote:
| The incentives leads to dangerous driving, careless handling of
| packages and unsanitary work conditions that highly likely
| contribute to higher employee turnover.
|
| Amazon does not pay for the externalities of more dangerous
| driving in your neighbourhood, other than their subcontractors
| might increase their prices if their insurance starts getting
| more expensive. They do not pay [edit: you] for the time and
| effort when they have to redeliver a broken package.
|
| You change the compensation by setting goals that are actually
| reachable, and then having the workers iterate together with
| the employer to find and fix inefficiencies. The antagonism of
| unreachable goals is bound to lead to public relations issues.
| This of course assume that you see this article or articles
| like it as a public relations issue, so if that view is
| negligible then Amazon will see no harm.
|
| Amazon's response to dangerous driving: [1]
| https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-plans-ai-powe...
| [2] https://vimeo.com/504570835/e80ee265bc
| maxerickson wrote:
| Amazon lied about it very publicly. They lied and said they
| didn't even know about it, and then an avalanche of evidence
| showing they knew about it was released.
| px43 wrote:
| Did they? The tweet I saw was specifically talking about
| Amazon employees, and last I checked, none of the people
| driving delivery trucks are in any way employed by Amazon.
|
| My understanding was that someone had made the accusation
| that this was happening in fulfillment centers, which are
| employees, and Amazon was officially denying it.
|
| Amazon DSP drivers are hired and managed completely by third
| party companies.
|
| https://logistics.amazon.com/marketing/faq
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's not really that interesting a distinction if the
| vehicles are literally branded "Amazon" and Amazon is the
| only customer.
| ipsocannibal wrote:
| I think Amazon needs to ask itself how this barrage of
| reputational damage is going to affect tech recruiting. Its been
| very slow to get on the remote work as the future train, its
| anti-worker crush the little guy cred is through the roof, and
| the hypocrisy of the LPs in light of recent company actions is
| blaring. Each of these is particularly off putting to a sizable
| portion of the typically left leaning US dev set Amazon tries to
| recruit. I guess Amazon has recourse as they can double down on
| hiring H1B's to sidestep negative perceptions in the US.
| kerng wrote:
| Maybe Bezos personally tweeted this time.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| I'll never understand why companies think directly involving
| themselves in the political discourse is a good idea.
|
| It would honestly even be different if Jeff Bezos himself tweeted
| these things, but to see the Amazon corporate news account try to
| one-up Elizabeth Warren is so bizarre..
| advisedwang wrote:
| I don't believe these tweets are aimed at the general public.
| At the time of these tweets they were in the final days of a
| union election. Amazon is trying to win over undecided workers
| from unionizing.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That could only work if the workers didn't read any of the
| replies. Seems like a bad strategy.
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| I find it refreshing to see a company openly tweeting what they
| think and not issuing boring PR statement. It is probably going
| to cost them a lot in backslash though
| funman7 wrote:
| I was thinking the same, might be a good example for
| exercising the average persons ability to not just blindly
| read slanted article headlines. They can easily see for
| themselves.
| zionic wrote:
| Honestly despite my issues with amazon those tweets are
| refreshing. Sterile corporate communication is an outmoded
| boomer concept that appears to be dying with them.
| vkou wrote:
| > I'll never understand why companies think directly involving
| themselves in the political discourse is a good idea.
|
| Because the capacity to ignore politics is inversely
| proportionate to the danger politics poses to you.
|
| Large incumbent corporations are deeply dependent on preserving
| the status quo, in order to preserve their business model.
| Preserving the status quo requires active politicking.
| blihp wrote:
| It's called sucking up to the boss. Whoever was responsible for
| the tweets evidently believed the Bezos would approve of the
| content. It gives him plausible deniability (after all, _he_
| didn 't write it) and in many cases may improve the career
| prospects within the company of the person who did write it.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Even more bizarre is some of them make no sense...
|
| Example:
|
| https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=...
|
| Quote: >There's a big difference between talk and action.
| @SenSanders has been a powerful politician in Vermont for 30
| years and their min wage is still $11.75. Amazon's is $15, plus
| great health care from day one. Sanders would rather talk in
| Alabama than act in Vermont.
|
| Hes the US senator for Vermont. He is charged with being a
| respresentative for the state of Vermont for the Union of the
| United States and is responsible for 1/2 of the votes for that
| state on Federal Laws.
|
| He is no more powerful than any other Vermont citizen in
| regards to their own state laws such as minimum wage...Its like
| they gave the keys to the account to some disgruntled
| intern....
| kaesar14 wrote:
| There's reports (source:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-
| bezo...) that Bezos got mad that the media department wasn't
| doing enough to combat the "outright lies" spread by the media
| about Amazon working conditions, which apparently spurred the
| latest tweets from the AmazonNews account. Seems to be a self
| inflicted wound from ego.
|
| Edit: Source requested
| inetknght wrote:
| > _There 's reports that_
|
| [citation needed]
| kaesar14 wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/29/jeff-
| bezo... Added
| derg wrote:
| It's also literally in the Intercept article with a link
| to the story lol:
|
| > According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came
| at the behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently
| conveyed disappointment to Amazon officials that the
| company was not pushing back against criticisms that he
| considered misleading.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Whoops..
| derg wrote:
| ha i meant to reply to the person asking for a citation
| but also another one you can add into your post.
| [deleted]
| josefresco wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/28/22354604/amazon-
| twitter...
| jaywalk wrote:
| The article mentions this. And I can understand Bezos getting
| upset (although the "lies" may be more truthful than he
| thinks) but the way they chose to respond was worse than
| doing nothing at all.
| anonymousab wrote:
| You could view it as Bezos or Amazon simply coming to terms
| with the fact that they are not subject to any rules of
| decorum, or at any risk from ever failing due to their
| public actions. That they, as the mega corp, have reached
| the point of being above society and have no need to be
| polite or conform to inconvenient social norms anymore.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > they are not subject to any rules of decorum
|
| Really, no one is if they don't want to. The Age of
| Social Media, meant trump didn't have to be polite
| derg wrote:
| hell hath no fury like a displeased business tyrant
|
| imagine getting that mad as like the richest person in the
| goddamned world.
| anchpop wrote:
| If you feel that lies are being spread about you and you try
| to correct the record, how is that a self-inflicted wound
| from ego? Isn't that what anyone would do?
| kaesar14 wrote:
| If you're a person, sure. If you're a business and you have
| a good amount of Congress in your pocket, have near
| infinite wealth, and get away with a myriad of abuses
| against your employees, why draw the ire of the public with
| rude comments against sitting Congressmen and
| Congresswomen? Do you think these comments serve to further
| Amazon's goals, or have they hurt?
|
| It's clear to me as well that Amazon's replies were
| outright lies - they are making their employees defecate
| and urinate into bottles, and they do get away with not
| paying / underpaying taxes. They're not even correcting the
| record, they're just lying more.
| anonymousab wrote:
| >why draw the ire of the public Because that ire is
| powerless and asserting dominance over society is a
| series of shifts like this.
|
| They're going to tell people what their version of
| reality is, and people will have to accept it; There will
| be no comeuppance, and alternate realities and truths are
| to be forcefully disregarded whenever that's more
| convenient than ignoring them.
| bredren wrote:
| We had a driver pour out a bottle of pee directly onto the street
| in front of our place from his open driver's side van window on
| Saturday afternoon.
|
| My wife got a photo and then immediately after they delivered
| packages and left I went and took a photo because I couldn't
| believe it.
|
| I had not heard about the controversy until then, but my wife had
| been following it. I read these tweets and I also didn't believe
| they were real, they were far too aggressive.
|
| It was strange because I felt like I needed to know if it was in
| fact pee or not, but I also was not willing to bend over and
| smell it. It had all of the appearances of pee, yet the disposal
| was so obviously careless and conspicuous it was as though the
| person wanted to be caught.
|
| The up close photo I took shows two foamy sections.
|
| We discussed ethical issues of the potential for the worker being
| fired over this. And whether it ever okay to pour a bottle of pee
| out in front of some homes on a bike way. We also consulted a
| USPS mail carrier friend about what he has dealt with and USPS'
| procedure for bio breaks.
|
| Gathering all that, I still chose to email the photos and ask
| Amazon how they intended to handle this.
|
| Waiting on a reply.
|
| Edit: This was a tough call, I added some additional details
| below.
|
| If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our
| bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened with
| a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving pee on
| the seat, which was pretty gross.
| tanderson11 wrote:
| You are a sick and fucked up person
| notJim wrote:
| A bit surprised you sent the photos to Amazon. That person is
| likely to be fired. A bit of pee on the street is not going to
| harm anything or anyone (otherwise the streets around bars
| would be an enormous biohazard), although it's obviously gross.
| Rule35 wrote:
| > That person is likely to be fired.
|
| Umm, yeah. They dumped a bottle of piss outside a customers
| house.
|
| That's bad advertising. Or, possibly, it's intended to be
| good union advertising.
|
| But either way, that person has got to go.
|
| So many dishonest people downvoting. Probably unionists. We
| know that this case hangs on the difference between
| contractors and employees, and that even if employees
| unionize the contractors will _choose to_ keep peeing in
| bottles.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Finding your viewpoint disagreeable does not make one
| dishonest or a "unionist".
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Or maybe that person and all his colleagues should have
| enough flexibility that they don't have to do this.
| Rule35 wrote:
| This _is_ driver flexibility. They choose the amount of
| deliveries they take. The drivers do this because they
| want more money.
|
| People generally courier as an in-between job, like
| construction laborer, and they appreciate the ability to
| earn more, quickly. As a laborer I used to put in 14h
| days with cleanup. But that kept me from losing income
| during a career switch so it was a choice I was happy to
| make.
| bredren wrote:
| Another option was sending it to media, which I presumed
| would have gotten attention. I thought the person had a
| better chance of holding on to the job if it was handled
| without publicity.
|
| I don't have a lab, so I can't determine if it was pee. And I
| can't imagine you'd get to hold on to a job at Target if you
| poured pee out in the parking lot in front of customers.
|
| Our friend with the USPS said "[at USPS] we're allowed to
| travel as far as we need to find a restroom so no need to do
| it."
|
| If this is the case at Amazon, then there shouldn't be a need
| to pee in bottles.
|
| However, if this is not the case at Amazon, then what was
| apparently Bezos' tweet [1] was not reflective of the
| situation on the ground. I've written him directly before,
| and depending on the response, I may do it in this instance
| because he's not seeing what I'm seeing.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Another option would've been not to do anything. If a dog
| peed on the street would you be upset about it and report
| it? How about if a bird defecated on the street? Why is
| human urine so much worse?
|
| It strikes me as cruel to report and make trouble for a man
| who is already so overworked as to need to pee in a bottle.
| chaps wrote:
| Can you share the email you sent them? Almost certain you
| got them fired in a pandemic.
| Rule35 wrote:
| Amazon's drivers are contractors if anyone is pushing them
| to pee in bottles, it's themselves. So there's no actual
| answer to this issue. Are they not being paid enough, such
| that they can't pee, or are they making an reasonable
| decision to pee in a bottle in order to save 15 minutes and
| make more money. Considering they keep taking the contracts
| one has to assume that they're profitable, at least
| usually.
|
| > I can't imagine you'd get to hold on to a job at Target
| if you poured pee out in the parking lot in front of
| customers.
|
| No, nor should anyone want you to. Even beyond any hygiene
| and smell issues, it's bad PR and that's not what you're
| paid for.
|
| There's a rash of blaming companies for being reasonable.
| Including one of a CVS manager being threatened with
| doxxing for calling the police on a thief. This concern for
| the driver seems more like a larger narrative of pro-
| unionism.
|
| Most people in this thread are intentionally
| misrepresenting the issue, using the words 'job', and
| 'living wage'. These are contractors and if they don't make
| money today they can courier for another company tomorrow.
| If they don't it's because they voted with their wallets.
| ziddoap wrote:
| >These are contractors and if they don't make money today
| they can courier for another company tomorrow.
|
| Spoken like someone who has lived a full and blessed
| life.
| rideontime wrote:
| If you're wondering why this is getting buried, educate
| yourself on how Amazon "contracting" works. It's just a
| scheme to cut costs and shift all responsibility
| elsewhere.
| Rule35 wrote:
| It's getting buried because people downvote what they
| can't argue. Amazon isn't doing anything different than
| any other company, or anything that has been a problem
| before now.
|
| Unionists are lying, conflating contractors and
| employees, and everyone here is buying it - probably
| because it fits an existing narrative. I'm being told, by
| privileged SF types, that _I_ need to educate myself,
| when they 've apparently never worked a day as a
| contractor, or perhaps never even worked a real job (ie,
| uncomfortable) in their life.
|
| The pee bottle is being used as an excuse to unionize,
| even though it's something contractors _choose_ to do in
| all driving jobs.
|
| Also, when I say "drive for another company tomorrow",
| that's the ground reality. If you show up sober and well-
| dressed at any courier company you'll have a magnetic
| sign on your car and a load of packages right away. (And
| couriering is generally to offices with a ton of
| washrooms so you can weigh that in the calculation.)
| wdb wrote:
| I have heard similar complains from bus drivers that
| don't have time to have a toilet break, see: https://tran
| slate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https:/...
| xmprt wrote:
| The issue with blaming contractors in this case is that
| they can't afford to lose the job. It probably pays well
| enough but their options are 1. get fired because they
| couldn't meet target deadlines, 2. pee in a bottle and
| risk getting caught.
|
| Given those two options, it's no surprise they pick
| option 2. Amazon knows this yet they continue to set
| unrealistic targets.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| How do you know they are setting "unrealistic targets"?
| What if only some employees pee in bottles because
| they're bad at their job/unproductive? Why would it be
| Amazon's fault if a driver who's falling behind uses this
| as a hack to appear productive when they really should
| just get a different job?
| Tostino wrote:
| We have reports from the workers stating so. We also have
| a denial from Amazon saying they don't have workers
| peeing in bottles. Seems that denial hasn't held up too
| well.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| We have anecdotal reports from a few workers saying so.
| We also have leaked documents saying that Amazon does not
| allow peeing in bottles as policy. If a random employee
| does not follow the policy and pees in a bottle, that
| seems like the employee's fault. If the employee is doing
| so to make up lost time so they can appear more
| productive, it seems like that's an issue of under
| performance that they're hiding by peeing in a bottle.
| Either way, it isn't clear to me that this is either
| widespread among Amazon's employees or the fault of the
| company instead of the individual.
|
| As for the denial - I am unclear on if they're talking
| about employees as a separate group from their drivers
| (who may be contractors according to other comments
| here?). Either way, I think it's reasonable for a company
| to make such a statement if peeing in a bottle is not a
| standard practice that is allowed by their policy and if
| it is only done rarely or by very few people (not
| reflective of general practice). If the delivery targets
| are such that most drivers have to do this, I might think
| differently, but so far I haven't seen evidence of this.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > it seems like that's an issue of under performance that
| they're hiding by peeing in a bottle.
|
| It seems equally as likely that it is an issue of over-
| expecting what a worker can reasonably perform. Why is
| under performance the more likely scenario in your mind?
|
| >it isn't clear to me that this is either widespread
|
| If this were the only occurrence of "Amazon Contractor"
| and some combination of "pee", "bottle", "no time for
| bathroom breaks", etc. I would be more inclined to take
| the route of "a few bad workers". However, these stories
| have consistently made news since at least 2018.
|
| Additional factors, which not conclusive themselves, that
| lead me to doubt the Amazon narrative include such things
| like 74% of respondents to a survey conducted by Organise
| reporting that they avoid using the washroom for fear of
| missing targets[1] - indicating that perhaps at least
| some fault lies with Amazon for setting unrealistic and
| unnecessarily burdensome targets.
|
| [1]https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a3af3e22aeba59
| 4ad56d...
| Rule35 wrote:
| > It seems equally as likely that it is an issue of over-
| expecting what a worker can reasonably perform. Why is
| under performance the more likely scenario in your mind?
|
| If other employees can meet the quota but you can't, why
| would you assume that the quota is wrong? Maybe it's the
| wrong job for you.
|
| > I would be more inclined to take the route of "a few
| bad workers". However, these stories have consistently
| made news since at least 2018
|
| Perhaps it has something to do with the attempts to
| unionize?
|
| > like 74% of respondents to a survey conducted by
| Organise reporting that they avoid using the washroom for
| fear
|
| Is there a cost for saying that? If this didn't rise to
| the level of fear, but only apprehension, would they be
| censured for overreaching rhetoric? If not, how
| trustworthy is it? And it still leaves 25% comfortably
| hitting quota showing that the quota itself is fine.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Another option was sending it to media, which I presumed
| would have gotten attention. I thought the person had a
| better chance of holding on to the job if it was handled
| without publicity.
|
| Your faith in Amazon to do right is impressive - perhaps
| even naive. Amazon official policy is not for drivers to
| pee in bottles, however, it strongly incentivizes this
| behavior. Had the driver asked to use your bathroom, he
| likely would have lost precious time and have been
| indirectly penalized for it.
|
| Considering all this, you took a photo that embarrasses
| Amazon and _sent it to Amazon_ and asked them to "do
| something"? Amazon's will already assume you sent it to the
| press and will circle the wagons - the answer will be it
| was a rogue employee and he has been let go (or
| disciplined, if he's lucky).
| Aunche wrote:
| > Had the driver asked to use your bathroom, he likely
| would have lost precious time and have been indirectly
| penalized for it.
|
| What's the alternative? No matter how reasonable the
| expectations are, there will always be drivers who would
| rather pee in a bottle and end their shift 10 minutes
| early than spend 10 minutes finding a bathroom.
| tclancy wrote:
| A non-hellish non-dystopia where it would be presumed
| people need to urinate somewhere within their fixed 8
| hour shift and maybe even more than once if they chose to
| work overtime?
| munk-a wrote:
| That's assuming that their scheduling makes it so that
| they could actually ever end their shift early. Given how
| wide-spread this issue is I think it's more fair to
| assume that taking a 10 minute break would be penalized
| by Amazon.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Uhm. Why do you limit your reasoning to people doing this
| to stop their shift early?
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Um... I do not agree that there will always be drivers
| who prefer to pee in a bottle. I do not believe that
| there are office/home workers who always prefer to pee in
| bottles. The alternative is access to bathrooms.
|
| There are a lot of solutions to this problem. The same
| type of solutions any company that employees drivers have
| had for years.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > I do not agree that there will always be drivers who
| prefer to pee in a bottle
|
| Nonsense. I know people who would rather pee in a bottle
| than wait for the next gas station on the I5. I
| personally have pissed on the sides of roads in lots of
| places on long car trips.
|
| Dumping urine in an urban environment is pretty rude. But
| if I could save myself 10 mins a day by pissing in a
| bottle rather than some creepy gas station bathroom, why
| not? It's just piss.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| If I was a driver constantly on the move I'd probably pee
| in a bottle on occasion too. I can be lazy and I don't
| believe that peeing in places outside of a toilet is
| necessarily gross, so I could see it happening if I was
| working in a residential suburban area with no proper
| restrooms at hand. If work conditions were otherwise good
| I wouldn't feel dehumanized or exploited for it.
|
| I'm not saying Amazon's practices don't incentivize this
| or that they shouldn't be examined, but as is common
| these days many people take a paternalistic and dogmatic
| view that will not accept under any circumstance that
| some people may be doing this freely.
| lstamour wrote:
| Do you work in a job where you can't stop the clock for
| 10 minutes to take care of bodily functions? The only
| choices here are between getting penalized for lateness,
| pissing in a bottle, or finding a new job, and they
| amount to the same thing - bottle or new job. Plus it's
| absolutely disgusting. I think if it were personal choice
| alone, people would be more discreet. This story implies
| they're so pressed for time they can't even toss the
| bottle in the trash because they have to refill it... I
| can't even begin to imagine how that becomes a normal
| everyday activity at a company without somebody
| questioning how things got this way.
| toast0 wrote:
| > the answer will be it was a rogue employee and he has
| been let go (or disciplined, if he's lucky
|
| Rogue contractor.
| munk-a wrote:
| Rogue contractor who has had sexual misconduct charges
| leveled at them for urinating in public - and let that be
| a lesson to all you other contractors to _stay in line_.
|
| Hooray dystopias.
| lstamour wrote:
| _stay in line_ - as in: bring more than one bottle to
| piss in so you don 't have to hastily dump and re-use it?
| Ick...
| behringer wrote:
| Jeff Bezos is always saying things that are obviously not
| the facts on the ground. He didn't know this, Amazon
| couldn't have known that, meanwhile they're always caught
| covering something up or responding to the same complaints
| internally.
| foobiekr wrote:
| So Amazon is blackmailing us with the delivery people as
| hostage?
|
| Well, that basically describes the gig economy across the
| board, I guess.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Is human pee any more gross than dog pee? This isn't a
| rhetorical question - I'm genuinely asking.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Human pee transmits human diseases.
| adolph wrote:
| Human urine very rarely transmits human diseases, unlike
| feces.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| As does dog pee. Which covers every sidewalk and corner
| you've ever stepped on.
| jfengel wrote:
| It generally does not. Most human urine is fairly
| sterile. And even if you've got a bladder or kidney
| infection, it's the same bacteria that you have on your
| own skin already -- it infects the urinary tract when
| forced inside (most often by sex).
|
| Human feces, on the other hand, is quite dangerous.
| Generally you have to touch it or ingest it to get sick
| from it, but there are lots of ways for the bacteria to
| spread.
|
| So the urine isn't dangerous, but if people are urinating
| in public, there's a risk that they're also defecating in
| public. And that's more serious.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm unsure, but cat pee is in a class of its own. That
| stuff is evil.
| codezero wrote:
| I 100% believe that drivers pee in containers - heck, my
| grandfather and I used to do the same when fishing - they make
| containers with handles specifically made for this.
|
| That said, given that the firestorm has become very public, I
| would expect disgruntled (or any driver, they are wage slaves)
| drivers to be acting more conspicuous to draw more attention to
| the problem, which may temporarily inflate its visibility, but
| hopefully it also leads to change.
|
| I'd talk about it (spread the word like here), but avoid being
| specific enough to affect the worker unless it looks like they
| were endangering someone - but that's just me.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Drivers break the rules all the time for various reasons. At
| one point I loved messing with drivers and would say 'so how
| many log books do you have'. My record is 6 (not sure how he
| kept that all straight). But usually they do whatever they
| can to have extra time to do other things. Lets say your trip
| takes 12 hours. If you push it all the way and do not stop
| maybe you can make it in 9. That gives you 3 hours to do
| 'other' things and get paid for 12 (harder to do these days
| with automated logs).
| bluedino wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just pee into the water into which you are
| fishing?
| stickfigure wrote:
| "Water? Never touch the stuff. Fish fuck in it."
|
| -- W.C. Fields
| foobiekr wrote:
| Because you are contaminating the water. Don't do this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Every acre-foot of lake is over 325K gallons or well over
| a million liters. A typical destination lake will have
| over half-trillion (0.5 x 1012) gallons of water in it.
|
| Your and your 1000 friends' pint/500mL of urine isn't
| going to do anything meaningful to the lake.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I remember an open reservoir being emptied because
| surveillance video showing a person peeing in it got
| publicized; millions of gallons gone to waste because
| people are more disgusted by human urine than they are by
| decomposing possums.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I enjoy public lands quite a bit; people really should
| adhere to Leave No Trace[0] principles quite strictly -
| which says to urinate at least 200 feet from water
| sources. People always want to be a lawyer about why each
| rule does or doesn't apply to their specific situation.
| And we all suffer for it.
|
| [0] https://www.outdoors.org/articles/amc-outdoors/leave-
| no-trac...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't think a reasonable reading of the principles you
| linked generates the rules you are saying they do.
| ghaff wrote:
| BTW, it depends on the climate. Somewhere like the Grand
| Canyon that is quite dry other than the big river flowing
| through it along with some streams and other tributaries,
| the preference is to pee in the river.
|
| I agree that in the Northeast, the preference is to do it
| away from water sources.
| anticristi wrote:
| > Urine will not harm vegetation or soil, according to
| Leave No Trace, however it may attract wildlife. When
| locating a discrete spot, follow Leave No Trace
| guidelines to travel on durable surfaces as well as stay
| 200 feet away from water sources. Dilute the urine
| afterwards by pouring water over it.
|
| I gather urinating in lakes is okay even by the strictest
| standards.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Animals pee in that water.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Fish and animals die and decompose in that water.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The same reason that there's the "no alcoholic beverages"
| rule right above the "no pissing" rule. Once upon a time
| someone either did it in poor taste or complained in poor
| taste and now it's against the rules and there's yet
| another entry on the big sign by the boat launch saying so.
| So everyone keeps doing it but they have to hide it for
| plausible deniability.
| dahdum wrote:
| That works well when you're far enough from others, male,
| and you can keep your balance in a small boat while
| standing.
|
| A tin can / bottle works in more situations. You just pour
| it out over the side after then rinse it in the lake.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Are you serious?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Where do you think the fish pee?
| whatshisface wrote:
| You're in a boat in the middle of a flat lake. Picture
| it.
| idlewords wrote:
| In tiny bottles.
| specialp wrote:
| Amazon will tell you that it is a completely separate
| subsidiary and act like they have no control over it. I called
| them about a driver who blew through a stop sign and
| furthermore did a hasty 3 point turn in a driveway almost
| hitting my car. I had to blow the horn the truck was inches
| away. They too are at the mercy of whatever algorithm tells
| them they should deliver and are punished otherwise. Customer
| service could not do anything they directed me to the delivery
| subsidiary who stonewalled me as well.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| And what do you expect them to do with their piss? Drink it?
| How jaded to human suffering must one be to report something as
| minor as this to a company known for having awful labor
| practices...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Keep it in the bottle until the shift ends? Dump it in the
| woods? Lots of choices that don't include dumping directly in
| front of a customer's home.
| munk-a wrote:
| If they take a detour maybe they'll end up with a demerit
| for deviating from the optimal driving route and be docked
| pay - if they come back to distribution with a bottle of
| pee the company may also dock them for something like... I
| dunno "storing human waste in a vehicle used for
| transporting food stuffs" then dock their pay or fire them.
| Amazon is strongly motivated to discourage drivers from
| coming back to their shipping centers with bottles full of
| pee since either labour organizers or reporters might jump
| on that to use against the corporation.
|
| All this could just be communicated through pretty
| innocuous sounding employee guidelines (maybe, "there can
| be no open bottles of liquid of any kind when a vehicle is
| in motion") or just word of mouth. A manager mentions to a
| senior driver that there will be some bonuses if nobody
| gets caught with a bottle of pee and that causes the
| initiative to disseminate through all the drivers.
|
| There may be far fewer choices here than it appears and the
| best choice is probably to get OSHA involved and maybe get
| some new worker safety and rights legislation through
| congress.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Rule35 wrote:
| That driver was a contractor, deciding to pee in his own
| bottle. He chose to take more packages than he could deliver
| and is rushing to cut corners.
|
| As well as conspicuously dumping piss outside customer houses
| he probably speeds through school zones.
|
| Contractors don't get a wage, that's key to this whole
| discussion. And if contractors don't make a _profit_ they
| shouldn 't take the contract. This kerfuffle is in the middle
| of big cities, not some tiny company town in the outback.
| They have all the same options anyone else does, it's not
| like they're forced to drive for Amazon.
| munk-a wrote:
| What if that level of "too many packages" is the only way
| the driver could avoid getting a demerit for under
| performance?
|
| What if a livable wage is only possible if you quote more
| packages than is reasonable due to the intense pressure
| amazon has on the contract delivery market?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| What if 80% of drivers don't do this? Maybe the other 20%
| need to just get a different job if they aren't able to
| avoid under performance without resorting to time saving
| tricks.
| munk-a wrote:
| > If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our
| bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened
| with a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving
| pee on the seat, which was pretty gross.
|
| What with all the sorts of people in the world, how many folks
| would've invited them in vs. thinking the driver was weird and
| potentially reporting the action?
|
| Asking to use your restroom (during pandemic times) seems
| pretty likely to trigger a customer complaint possibly even one
| as pleasant as "They were courteous and didn't leave a mess,
| but why are they being forced to use residential bathrooms,
| don't they have time off to pee?" - that's a complaint that
| doesn't reflect poorly on the driver at all but may still end
| up getting the driver fired if it causes a PR stink.
|
| Without stronger labour laws and without a union drivers are
| stuck between a rock and a hard place.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Why would you send the photo to Amazon? You send that to a
| labor reporter or social media. Are you trying to get this guy
| fired??
| weaksauce wrote:
| I watched my ikea delivery driver pee on the hill across from
| my place right before delivering the package to me. it's
| probably not a solely amazon thing even though they are well
| known for it.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| There are certain places near my house where some rideshare
| drivers like to idle, where the gutter always has soda
| bottles full of urine in it.
|
| I don't want to disparage the people doing those jobs, but
| the rideshare companies have pretty clearly added quite a lot
| of oversupply relative to what the infrastructure can handle;
| cab companies have facilities and cab stands etc where
| drivers can relieve themselves, where rideshare drivers are
| left on their own to leave their fluids in litter in the
| street.
| munk-a wrote:
| Not paying for proper facilities for maintenance and breaks
| is just what we in the biz call "disrupting". You might be
| able to undercut an entrenched business a bit by using
| fancy tech stuff - but using fancy tech stuff and ignoring
| the laws everyone else has to follow? That's where the
| money is.
|
| Also, that isn't to say that cab companies are a great
| example here - that industry was ripe for a good shaking up
| and had a lot of really weird entrenched components, but,
| at the end of the day, neither side is good - we only get
| labour rights with laws and enforcement that actually has
| teeth.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| To bring it back to Amazon, it's even better if you can
| plausibly deny breaking the rules by orchestrating your
| system such that the people you're heavily incentivizing
| to break the rules and generally behave antisocially are
| non-employee business associates who you very clearly
| told (in very fine print) not to break the rules.
| ahelwer wrote:
| You... ratted out the guy who delivers your packages to his
| corporate masters for doing the very human homeostatic
| requirement of urination? Seriously?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Peeing in a bottle wasn't the thing that was reported.
| Emptying a bottle of urine in front of the customer's home
| was the problem.
|
| The driver should have emptied the bottle into a toilet on
| his next break (or after his shift). Or, failing that, dump
| it in the woods out of the way.
| tclancy wrote:
| >The driver should have emptied the bottle into a toilet on
| his next break
|
| I mean, if that were even a remote possibility he wouldn't
| have filled a bottle, would he now?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Drunk tech workers pee on the street in front of my house
| near Dolores park all day long, should I be calling the
| cops on them?
|
| I could probably snap a few photos and call the employer
| based on their backpacks too.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Perhaps he had to urinate again, and did not have an
| additional bottle? What then should he have done?
|
| If you'll notice, we're now heading down the path of
| playing out ever-more-elaborate strategies for individual
| delivery drivers to maintain homeostasis without offending
| the delicate sensibilities of the people they serve,
| instead of questioning why this is a problem in the first
| place.
| SR2Z wrote:
| The solution to this problem is not "dump a bottle of
| piss out on someone's lawn," it's "expand labor laws to
| cover this very obvious human rights issue and then
| hammer Amazon with it until they shape up."
|
| Workers need bathrooms, and employers have to pay for
| them.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Let's not escalate this into imaginary situations. He
| didn't dump piss on anyone's lawn.
| ahelwer wrote:
| We agree on the best outcome. What should workers do in
| the meantime?
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| "And in the mean time, report all violators to Amazon" is
| the implicitly unsaid thing that people here are
| disagreeing with, not the obvious statement that labor
| laws should be expanded and enforced.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't know if it's employers that have to pay for them.
| Society needs available bathrooms; they don't need to be
| gated behind employment or being a customer
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I used to do apartment maintenance and I considered
| asking someone to use their bathroom completely
| unprofessional. I peed in bottles and never thought it a
| big deal.
|
| A simple question, do you always offer water and a
| restroom to blue collar workers who enter your home? If
| so, you are in the 1%.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Oh, I agree. Everybody deserves regular breaks during the
| workday. People have to eat, drink, pee, etc. Lack of
| such breaks doesn't, IMO, excuse peeing in my yard.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Well, this is where we are. Delivery drivers are being
| crunched to make deliveries. Having someone pee in your
| yard just comes with the territory. Don't try to get them
| fired if they do that. I assure you many dogs pee in your
| yard any given day.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| So it's the yard now? Even if it was the yard, while that
| is definitely a dick move, getting a delivery worker
| fired over it is more of a dick move.
| ectopod wrote:
| It wasn't in anybody's yard, it was in the road. And they
| didn't pee there, they emptied a bottle.
| antattack wrote:
| At least now Amazon cannot say they know nothing about it.
| munk-a wrote:
| You're underestimating the determination of willful
| ignorance - also, they can always claim this incident was
| just some weirdo that they then fired for acting
| inappropriately and then point to some BS statistics about
| driver job satisfaction.
|
| That all assumes this person's report isn't just blackholed
| by front-line communication folks at Amazon, which they
| could always ascribe to another "out of SOP action" or just
| wait a news cycle or two for people to forget if a stink
| was raised.
| icpmacdo wrote:
| It is enervating hearing anecdotes like these from wealthy
| people who seemingly believe the same necessary excretions they
| have aren't a privilege lower classes deserve
| 1-more wrote:
| it's especially shit because the whole goddamned economy runs
| on whiz-in-bottles. It's not an amazon problem (to be clear:
| I hate amazon for perpetuating it); it's the whole goddamned
| ball of wax. If no one whizzed in bottles, parked in the bike
| lane, double parked in a one lane road, then the economy
| would grind to a goddamned halt. So we have to admit that we
| want the rules and norms of good taste flouted when it's to
| our benefit, or we have to admit that we've built an unjust
| world.
| colineartheta wrote:
| The fact that you reported it is far more disgusting and petty
| than a driver dumping it out.
| misterkrabs wrote:
| > This was a tough call
|
| Dude...
| eecks wrote:
| You couldn't have asked him in during covid and they couldn't
| have asked. Unless this was really close to your front door you
| should have let it go.
| 8note wrote:
| Lack of available bathrooms across cities is a big problem in
| and of itself.
|
| Especially with covid, where are you supposed to pee if you're
| spending all day driving around doing deliveries or as a taxi
| driver?
| libria wrote:
| Off topic, but I'm curious. Say a human empties a pee bottle on
| a public sewer drain and a dog pees on that same drain. I don't
| see much difference except one of them urinated in public.
| Chemically they're the same, but I'm more repulsed by the human
| waste, why is that?
| munk-a wrote:
| Probably because we hold humans to a higher standard than
| animals - we've all been raised to hold it until it's
| appropriate which is when we're inside and on a toilet. Some
| animals can be potty trained, it's a bit weird but good for
| them - most animals are just trained to not wee on the couch
| and outdoors is left wide open for them as they need. It's
| pretty socially acceptable for dogs to pee in public and, if
| you found it offensive, I am afraid I have some bad news for
| you about the miniature public outhouses they build for
| squirrels.
| qotgalaxy wrote:
| Oh, you weren't supposed to know about the squirrel
| gloryholes.
| anticristi wrote:
| Interesting though experiment.
|
| Similarly, why do humans sometimes need to _pay_ for
| urinating (I 'm looking at you German SaniUnfair), but
| animals don't?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You might not realize that this was an asshole move, but it was
| absolutely an asshole move.
|
| Really, really not cool and really out of touch.
| mdni007 wrote:
| > If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our
| bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened
| with a Fedex driver once before. That person ended up leaving
| pee on the seat, which was pretty gross.
|
| Not sure where you live but where I'm from, letting a stranger
| into your home is the same as giving them permission to rob you
| tmpz22 wrote:
| What were the biggest factors in reporting them? The average
| delivery driver works way harder and probably commits way fewer
| immoral actions then the average HN user for a fraction of the
| salary.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > probably commits way fewer immoral actions
|
| Wow. This seems loaded, unmeasurable, and very unrelated to
| anyones job.
| dyeje wrote:
| > If the driver had knocked on our door and asked to use our
| bathroom, I'd have absolutely invited him in. This happened
| with a Fedex driver once before.
|
| They don't have time to use a proper restroom. That's why
| they're peeing in bottles.
| DarkByte8 wrote:
| Can you please not snitch on people like that and instead talk
| to them? There are dogs that piss on the street and nothing bad
| happens. If this becomes regular then yes, talk to them and if
| they don't stop report them. But seeing 1 indiscretion and
| pulling the trigger on the guy is not ok.
| kingTug wrote:
| Blows me away that he/she would even consider trying to get
| the driver fired over this. That individual works for a
| poverty wage and clearly isn't given time to use the restroom
| by their employer. And your first instinct is to get them
| fired. Disgusting.
| fotta wrote:
| > According to Recode, the suspicious tweets in fact came at the
| behest of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had recently conveyed
| disappointment to Amazon officials that the company was not
| pushing back against criticisms that he considered misleading.
|
| > But company personnel think Amazon's aggressive actions on
| Twitter are "embarrassing."
|
| It's amazing how tone-deaf Bezos sounds.
| swyx wrote:
| there's a big difference between "hey guys Amazon isn't pushing
| back against criticism enough" and "lets start tweeting snarky
| shit at US Senators from Amazon official accounts". have a
| little cynicism; Recode doesn't have proof it came from Bezos
| or it would show it.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I am sympathetic to labor issues at amazon and other places,
| but a lot of tech criticism seems out of place and undue.
| Amazon warehouses don't seem fun (i've never done that job)
| but they do pay fairly well above min wage, which they
| deserve some credit for. If anything it validates the
| Senators' pushes for better wages proving it won't bankrupt
| businesses.
|
| It seems obvious that amazon would want this to be the focus,
| instead of bottles of pee. They could be a great ally to
| democrat politicians pursuing changes - amazon shows they can
| be a trillion dollar biz with change X, amazon isn't
| chastised in WashingtonDC. Win-Win.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| They denied it, though, instead of posting more truthfully
| that this is not an exceptional working condition for
| delivery drivers. My friend works at UPS, is a teamsters
| member, and said: "Every single male delivery driver ever
| has peed in a bottle at some point". Which makes this
| particular criticism of Amazon lose its sting. Instead of
| simply telling the truth, they decided to lie?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's not surprising. The biggest danger of having tremendous
| wealth and/or power seems to be that you can no longer accept
| and integrate valid criticism from others.
| nullc wrote:
| There is so much criticism-- especially towards
| anything/anyone high profile-- including outright invalid
| criticism that there is potentially a selection effect:
| Everyone who listens to criticism gives up and we're left
| with people who are substantially immune to it.
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| Bezos is notorious for subscribing to a kind of empathy-free
| "social Darwinism" going back to his days on Wall St.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Someone needs to do lexical style analysis against this Dave
| Clark's tweets. It seems evident (same exact wordings and Bernie
| Sanders whataboutisms) and hilarious that he is responding to
| criticism of his personal account's tweets from amazonnews
|
| https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1375045409542823939?s=...
|
| https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375509172549132289?s=...
| rideontime wrote:
| Not sure why this is buried. Dave Clark comes directly from the
| warehouse business and has himself used the "people wouldn't
| work here if this were true" angle. Really tries to portray the
| warehouses as something they should be proud of, reality
| notwithstanding.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Somewhat off topic but this is actually pretty positive proactive
| approach to security in the finest spirt of due diligence. It
| should be ok for people to open tickets to look into curious
| things no matter how trivial. Tickets don't have to become
| incidents. This is what triage is for. The real security incident
| here is how did the intercept learn of that ticket as that should
| really be classified.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| At Amazon you're encouraged (and expected) to escalate early
| and escalate often. Amazon security did its job very well.
|
| >"The real security incident here is how did the intercept
| learn of that ticket as that should really be classified."
|
| Looks like someone from the security or PR departments took a
| picture of the ticket with their cellphone and sent them to the
| reporter.
|
| Security tickets are immediately encrypted and locked down.
| Only a few members have access typically: The person who opened
| the ticket, anyone with a need-to-know, and people on the IR
| team. Even director-level employees need to be manually added
| to security-related tickets to have view permissions.
| [deleted]
| deeblering4 wrote:
| > At Amazon you're encouraged (and expected) to escalate
| early and escalate often
|
| One of the many reasons I'd never want to work there
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but why is escalating early
| and often a bad idea? Isn't that just part of being a
| responsible adult?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Someone else in this discussion says this ticket was not
| locked down (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26626369).
| How do you know that someone from the security or PR
| department took a picture? It seems much more likely this is
| typical left leaning employee activism that is prevalent at
| tech companies.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| 1.) I never bothered to look up the ticket on the Amazon
| internal ticketing system. Given what the reporter alleged
| (i.e. that it was handled by someone from Amazon Security),
| I presumed it would take the standard security-related
| ticket handling procedures.
|
| I obviously wouldn't look in internal ticketing systems and
| THEN post to my findings to a public forum like HN. For
| obvious reasons.
|
| 2.) > "It seems much more likely this is typical left
| leaning employee activism that is prevalent at tech
| companies."
|
| If standard security ticket procedures were followed, it
| would have been locked down to the security team and the
| impacted team (i.e. PR/social media).
|
| The comment that it 'seems much more likely that this is
| typical left leaning employee activism' implies that there
| aren't left-leaning or activists within the security or PR
| departments. Which if you believe that... lul...
| napoleond wrote:
| > Looks like someone from the security or PR departments took
| a picture of the ticket with their cellphone and sent them to
| the reporter.
|
| Out of those two groups, Occam's razor implicates the one
| with a vested interest in currying favor with reporters.
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| This is a bad take.
| colineartheta wrote:
| Based on the argument given, looks like a fair take to
| me.
| danpalmer wrote:
| This is a great point. Normalising good security behaviours is
| hard to do, but important. An old workplace had a great culture
| around checking ID of anyone you didn't recognise (necessary as
| they handled a lot of sensitive material), and at my current
| workplace we regularly run phishing simulations and encourage
| people to share them in Slack to keep it front of mind (as it's
| one of the biggest risks we've identified).
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| I find it surprising that the Intercept would be so cavalier
| about the source material, given that it is likely to have a
| highly restricted distribution list inside Amazon.
|
| Reminds me of this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/business/media/the-interc...
|
| > The Intercept scrambled to publish a story on the report,
| ignoring the most basic security precautions. The lead reporter
| on the story sent a copy of the document, which contained a
| crease showing it had been printed out, to the N.S.A. media
| affairs office, all but identifying Ms. Winner as the leaker.
| ehaughee wrote:
| This ticket wasn't an encrypted ticket (and thus was not
| locked down). I'm looking at it right now and I have nothing
| to do with security nor PR. I don't find this surprising as
| it contains no proprietary, classified, or customer
| information.
| ummonk wrote:
| There is potentially traceable information there including
| laptop browser extensions as well as phone camera specs.
| I'm not sure how doxxable it is but if the Intercept were
| exercising appropriate caution they wouldn't have published
| the photo.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Is it, though?
|
| It strikes me as a sarcastic joke by burnt out security staff.
| Which would explain why we are hearing about it.
| Twirrim wrote:
| No, it's very much in line with the way Amazon Security staff
| operated when I worked there.
|
| They very much favour proactive reports, and heavily
| emphasised that they'd rather have a ticket and resolve it as
| nothing, than not be ticketed at all because you're not sure.
| Unusual behaviour on a twitter account are most definitely
| things they'd expect to have reported to them for evaluation,
| or expect to report themselves if they saw it.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Everyone, everywhere, favours proactive security reports,
| or should do so.
|
| This however, makes it possible to make security reports
| for political effect - after all, if your guidelines are to
| report anything suspicious, nobody can fault you for doing
| just that.
|
| Is it also standard policy at Amazon to leak security
| reports to the media, or discuss them with journalists
| after the fact? We both know that's not the case.
| [deleted]
| slickrick216 wrote:
| This is why I said somewhat off topic as it could be like you
| said or it could a valid concern. I can't really tell the
| intent. Irregardless I think it's a good call to open a
| ticket. The amount of times I've seen something come from an
| innocuous user report is frightening.
|
| Actually rereading it again I would say the source is the
| person that opened the ticket and not a member of the
| security team.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Yes, I would argue that this supports my thesis - that the
| ticket was, at least partially created for humorous effect.
|
| If they were taking the matter completely seriously, I
| would not expect them to consider publicizing it, or
| discussing the ticket publicly after the fact.
| Raed667 wrote:
| For me, the recent (petty) twitter activity of @amazonnews was
| the final push I needed to cut all ties with Amazon.
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| I sure hope that you cut all ties with Facebook and Google
| before that.
| [deleted]
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Do those places make you pee in a bottle? Or do they have
| restrooms like civilized businesses?
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| Do you have any proof of pee in a bottle? Or are you
| blindly believing the narrative that the New York times put
| out to drive clicks? Not saying it's not true but please be
| more critical.
|
| Google and Facebook on the other hand are directly
| destroying democracy and spying on you.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Really? I thought it was really refreshing to see a corporation
| not trying to kowtow to politicians. If Warren is saying stuff
| they find objectionable, call it out. If a business can't
| safely criticize a legislator on Twitter, that's pretty much
| giving up on free speech.
| benreesman wrote:
| I use Amazon almost every day, and I feel bad about it every
| time, but apparently not bad enough to stop.
|
| Imagine a Walmart that was several degrees hotter or colder
| than you'd like your house to be, with less bathrooms and a
| concrete floor. Now imagine running around it all day bending
| over to grab things off the bottom shelf and being timed by a
| buzzing iPad if you're too slow. And say you're you're 65 and
| Social Security pays half your rent.
|
| Now imagine that you're the part of Amazon's supply chain
| that the local jurisdiction that demands you're treated
| better than the other 97% of Amazon's chosen supply chain.
|
| Refreshing is one word for a company being honest about the
| fact that they are lobbying hard to make your hypothetical
| life 0.001% more efficient.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Regardless of whether Amazon is in the right or wrong on this
| particular issue, I find it far more disturbing that Warren
| apparently thinks she should be immune to criticism (whether
| that criticism is _justified or not_ ).
|
| For the record: Amazon, you, me, or _anyone else_ is
| absolutely entitled to send Elizabeth Warren snotty tweets.
| Or send her snotty emails. Or make snotty phone calls to her
| office.
|
| She is a public servant, not a noble or a pope or whatever.
|
| If she can't handle people being rude to her, she needs to
| find another line of work. The "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!!!"
| attitude is not a good look, either.
| scotu wrote:
| what did she say in response? I only saw her tweet and
| amazon's petty (and misleading) response. Who said she
| cannot be criticized? I think mostly people are saying that
| they are cringey liars...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| She said it herself. See
| https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1375529101931520007
| - in there, Warren says "And fight to break up Big Tech
| so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with
| snotty tweets." That's a direct threat to break up a
| private entity because it criticized her (a sitting
| Senator and representative of the federal government).
| scotu wrote:
| I see. Agreed that's, not great. I'm still more worried
| about amazon behavior and power currently tbh. Plus she
| is replaceable by somebody else that is willing to break
| up big tech, I don't care if it's her or someone else :)
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| You're getting modded down for this, of course, but she
| clearly thinks that only the powerful are entitled to
| "heckle Senators", and that anyone who "heckles Senators"
| should be punished.
|
| Bite me, Senator Warren. I'll "heckle" your entitled ass
| any time I damned well see fit to do so.
| tpush wrote:
| That'd be fine if they weren't also aggressively lying about
| their labor conditions.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I don't mind them pushing back on politicians, but I do mind
| them lying while they do it.
|
| I'm also stopping purchases from amazon.com based on this,
| but I'm not yet ready or able to cut out AWS
| ericmay wrote:
| > but I do mind them lying while they do it
|
| Sure, I sympathize with this. But one person's lies are
| another person's truth in this day and age, unfortunately.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Right, but _I_ think they're lying, and so they've lost
| _my_ purchases because of it.
|
| That's the problem when you make corporate statements
| that are both controversial and on shaky factual ground.
| The shakier the factual ground the more people might
| decide you are not telling the truth (as they see it) and
| stop doing business with you.
|
| Again, I have _zero_ problem with a company being snarky
| with politicians. Criticizing our electeds is the core of
| the first amendment and I fully support citizens right to
| disagree with political figures--even political figures I
| mostly agree with. For example, this particular tweet
| from @amazonnews I quite agree with: https://twitter.com/
| amazonnews/status/1375529101931520007.
|
| > This is extraordinary and revealing. One of the most
| powerful politicians in the United States just said she's
| going to break up an American company so that they can't
| criticize her anymore.
|
| I have no problem with companies being "powerful enough
| to heckle senators with snotty tweets". I actually have a
| problem with the inverse: there should be _no_ company
| that is not powerful enough to heckle senators with
| snotty tweets.
| suprfsat wrote:
| You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do
| you?
| chewmieser wrote:
| This isn't new - Amazon workers have had to pee in
| bottles for years. From 2018:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-
| hav...
|
| This is just the same old Amazon - they optimize
| everything to the point that humans can't keep pace with
| their metrics without cutting corners.
| Rule35 wrote:
| > have had to pee in bottles for years
|
| Contractors can choose to pee where they want. But
| employees can sue _so_ easily over this sort of thing. It
| 's a specific OSHA violation.
|
| This story depends on confusing the issue about who is
| and isn't a contractor, doing this to themselves.
|
| The contractor should be let go. As the response notes,
| they represent the company and represent it badly.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| If they're driving an Amazon branded truck, they're
| Amazon for all I care. When an ISP contractor shows up at
| your house and is rude, you don't go "well, they're a
| contractor, so I can't blame Spectrum for this." No, they
| have Spectrum's branding on, so they represent Spectrum.
| It doesn't matter if they're a contractor or not.
| Rule35 wrote:
| Right, that's why they need to be terminated regardless
| of their specific style of employment.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| We know from internal amazon communications it's
| happening. It's comical for them to deny it, except for
| the human misery they are making by having work
| expectations that make it almost impossible to take
| bathroom breaks and meet their expectations.
|
| The memos that say "please don't leave pee in the trucks,
| please don't leave poop, we can figure out who you are".
| tpmoney wrote:
| Just because something happens and there are memos about
| it doesn't mean it happens because of corporate policy.
| I've worked jobs that had memos that said "please don't
| pee all over the floor and seat of the bathroom" and
| "please don't throw poop covered toilet paper in the
| trash". In neither case was the job or corporate policy
| so unbearable as to not allow enough time for proper
| bathroom use. It just seems there are some people that
| don't understand normal / acceptable human bathroom
| behavior.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I suspect that many people just don't _want_ to believe
| it, and shape their beliefs to fit their ideology.
| chewmieser wrote:
| And it's within their free speech to find that level of
| pettiness (and straight-up lies for that matter) distasteful
| and move his business elsewhere...
|
| I agree with them - this is not a good look for Amazon. I
| have already essentially stopped purchasing on Amazon prior
| to this for various reasons (endless counterfeits and worker
| abuses) but will likely look to disband my relationship with
| AWS as well if they continue.
| bstar77 wrote:
| Wow, I just checked that out and I don't know what to say. Bold
| move to troll politicians so brazenly.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| So politicians can just along garbage and lies with no
| recourse?
|
| I wouldn't roll over for a politician using tweets to garner
| favor.
|
| AOC cost NY tons of money and jobs because no one pushed back
| on her rhetoric.
| brown9-2 wrote:
| Amazon is continuing to hire and grow in NYC, even without
| HQ2 and the special tax breaks:
| https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-continues-expansion-in-
| new-...
| marcusverus wrote:
| Amazon is adding ~2,000 jobs. That's <10% of the number
| that NYC would have gotten out of HQ2.
|
| I understand the aversion to granting tax breaks to big
| companies, but IMO the whole debacle just looks like NYC
| politicians are more interested in maintaining their
| political bona fides, more interested in vague notions
| about Amazon's 'fair share' than they are in the long
| term well being of the local economy.
| gaspard234 wrote:
| > no one pushed back on her rhetoric.
|
| This is absolutely false. Fox news is practically obsessed
| with her[0]. I heard various talking heads on all types of
| media talking about how she didn't know anything about
| 'business', most mocking her past job as a bartender.
|
| I'm not a huge fan of any politician but you probably
| picked the worst example, she can't post a tweet without
| the right wing media machine raising hell. During the last
| election she was also primaried hard, and some of the
| biggest criticisms were here anti-business/amazon stances.
|
| [0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/04/14/study-
| fox-...
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| If AOC was a right-winger, you'd frame it as her protecting
| the free market, keeping the government from choosing
| winners/losers, and exercising good governance and small
| government.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| Actually was glad to see a corporation tweeting what its actual
| intentions were.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| I got the impression the Bezos himself was tweeting.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| But doesn't their post qualify as gaslighting? The tweets
| said peeing in bottles due to extreme performance quotas does
| not happen and it very very clearly happens all the time.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Not every untruth is "gaslighting".
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Seems more like simple lying.
| modularform123 wrote:
| Anyone who snarks at Warren gets my business!
| xbar wrote:
| The line between natural citizens and corporations is quite
| fuzzy. I do not like it.
| WalterSear wrote:
| It's quite clear cut: there are significant consequences for
| natural citizens caught acting in an illegal or immoral manner.
| ullevaal wrote:
| Threads that are union-related always seem very foreign to me on
| HN, but one of the greatest advantages of living somewhere there
| is trust between employees, unions, employer organisations and
| the government is that the basic facts can be agreed upon.
|
| So you can have things like technical committees that analyse the
| basic facts of inflation adjustments of wages, wage changes in
| competing industries or economies and real wage increases. As
| well the unions in export-driven sectors negotiating first, and
| government and services employees falling in line, in order to
| continue to compete in the global economy.
|
| I believe this trust also builds productivity, but looks like
| Jeff Bezos has a different opinion.
| gkoberger wrote:
| My read on this was that it was a snarky report done in protest.
| Ken Klippenstein is a troll who does things with a straight face,
| and likely so are people who leak to him. I don't think anyone
| really believed it was hacked, but rather it was a way to
| criticize it with plausible deniability.
| turdnagel wrote:
| Agreed, and not really worthy of a news story.
| danso wrote:
| The article includes a screenshot:
|
| https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20532639/amazon-t...
|
| Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past 2
| months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey
| this sucks!" protest. Also, seems risky to send a screenshot of
| your own ticket while logged into the ticket system, though
| maybe all the login template info is just outside of the
| cropped screenshot?
| gkoberger wrote:
| "There have been several news articles... [links]" seems like
| a clever way to get in negative articles about it into the
| system, while acting innocent.
|
| Unless you think this person actually believed nobody noticed
| these articles or the tweets? They were trending on Twitter
| long before this was posted, and I knew about them. Of course
| Amazon PR did.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| >Seems like a lot of detail (e.g. going back through the past
| 2 months of tweets to check the source label) for just a "hey
| this sucks!" protest.
|
| FWIW, this is how much detail i'd put in for the plausible
| deniability "this sucks" protest if that were me.
| notatoad wrote:
| Seems likely that the person who leaked it to Ken Klippenstein
| was the same person who opened the ticket in the first place.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The only thing that stands out to me was the callout of
| different platforms used to send the tweet.
|
| I could see, along with everything else, that being enough to
| at least make the question worth raising.
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