The Intercept has an important story out about Amazon’s drivers. If you have not been following, there is this long standing claim by some drivers that in order to meet Amazon’s performance measurements of how fast they deliver, they find they have to pee in a bottle and defecate (sorry for being indelicate here) in their delivery bags. Amazon has persistently denied this. Now there is a lot of new evidence they were full of what their employees put in the mail bags. One internal document reads:
“We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” the email continues. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know if may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”
It took me a little while to read and re-read this paragraph and the rest of it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was bothering me. I mean, we know what Amazon is like. We know they are the best company in the world to be a customer of, and not so great to be an employee of. We know about Day 1 and all that. What’s so annoying here that we didn’t know about?!
Then it hit me.
They are not sending angry memos because the drivers have to poop in the delivery bag. This isn’t some a-ha moment that maybe they should calculate 5 minutes into the route scheduling so people can go to the bathroom like human beings. That is not at all what they are saying!
What they mind is not the inhumanity of how they treat drivers. They mind the side effect of the inhumanity. The poop left over in the bag is still there when the next driver is dispatched to make another bunch of deliveries. It interferes with the efficiency because the next driver has to meet performance metrics, same as the previous now relieved one.
Now, I am not bringing any of this up to change Amazon. Jeff Bezos absolutely did not become the richest individual ever by waking up in the morning and saying: “Oh, Tzvika has a good point about my aggressive business tactics, let me send an email to change them”.
But it would be nice to have an opt-out.
I mean, I am an Amazon Prime customer for decades. I’ve ordered so much stuff. I couldn’t live without my kindle. I couldn’t live without Mrs. Maisel either. But it would be nice to have a setting on my account page that says: “I don’t mind if the pack of USB cables I ordered arrives a day late so that the person who delivers it can stop for a bio break.” I would definitely check that setting. Wouldn’t you?
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Let us zoom out a bit from the smelly day old poop in Amazon’s delivery bags, and look at the bigger picture for a second. How did we get here? We got here because tenacious business executives at Amazon and most other companies, are constantly striving to optimize their business. If you can drive up some metric like deliveries per shift from 6.4 to 6.8 with some incentive, why shouldn’t you?
That’s all find so far as it goes. I do it too. But what I’ve learned is you have to leave something on the table and not optimize everything.
The great person who taught me to leave something on the table is called Stuart Diamond of Getting More fame. Years ago I was fortunate enough when he was brought into Google to deliver a 2 day negotiations workshop (for some reason, Google did not optimize away 2 days of training for useful work). His negotiations system is full of great tactics and I highly recommended it. But in the middle of it, he tells a story that has stuck with me to this day, about a decade later.
The story which I will probably butcher a bit, goes like this: Professor Diamond was at this hotel and had no running water in his room. When he checked out of the hotel the next morning, he used some of his negotiation tactics like applying to standards and establishing a human connection. “Do you think a room without hot water is worth the same as a a room with hot water?” Stuff like that. The clerk offered him a 50% discount. He said thank you, and said he will accept a 25% discount. Not because he didn’t like more free money. But because he wanted to come back to the hotel again.
The lesson is you have to leave something on the table. Now if only we could convince Amazon’s analytics and operations teams to leave a little more time for bathroom breaks. Maybe Professor Diamond could teach his class in Seattle too. There are folks there who need it.
I love the idea of a checkbox - I would tick the box in a second.
WHAT WOULD POLITICIANS TAKE FROM THIS STORY///