Thread by @theintercept

Documents show Amazon is aware drivers pee in bottles and even defecate en route, despite company denial interc.pt/3vZdi3U by @kenklippenstein

If employees actually had to pee in bottles, Amazon said, “nobody would work for us.”

Yet the practice is so widespread due to pressure to meet quotas that managers frequently reference it during meetings and in formal policy documents and emails provided to The Intercept.

The practice, these documents show, was known to management, which identified it as a recurring infraction but did nothing to ease the pressure that caused it. In some cases, employees even defecated in bags.

Halie Marie Brown, a 26-year-old resident of Manteca, California, who worked as a delivery driver for an Amazon delivery contractor told The Intercept that the practice “happens because we are literally implicitly forced to do so, otherwise we will end up losing our jobs.”

While Amazon technically prohibits the practice — documents characterize it as a “Tier 1” infraction, which employees say can lead to termination — drivers said that this was disingenuous since they can’t meet their quotas otherwise.

“They give us 30 minutes of paid breaks, but you will not finish your work if you take it, no matter how fast you are,” one Amazon delivery employee based in Massachusetts told @kenklippenstein.

Asked if management eased up on the quotas in light of the practice, Brown said, “Not at all. In fact, over the course of my time there, our package and stop counts actually increased substantially.”

“Every single day of my shift, I have to use the restroom in a bottle to finish my route on time. This is so common that you’ll often find bottles from other drivers located under seats in the vans,” said a Houston-based driver associate who works for an Amazon contractor.