Dealing with the pain of Amazon

I am a former employee who was there for three years, so I pretty much know all the ins and outs of the place. I got offered a new job and then I finally stuck up for my fellow amazonians. When I finally made the move to change jobs, I was burned out from amazon. It was for lesser pay but betterment of health. In a place where there is no medical waiver and your job is only held by the amount of vacation and pto, the unpaid time (upt) you have is no good. They set it up this way, so that you get your vacation which can be from anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks a year. You get 48 pto hours for sick, and 80 unpaid time for everything else in a year.  upt has to be used by the hour and pto can be used as minute or more. So you have 12.8 days a year you can use, after that you're fired. I remember asking if I could get a break if there was a government state of emergency, and they said no. I was in a neighboring state to the one I worked when I couldn't get back due to the emergency situation.

So with no leeway and understanding for honest people's situations and at least 4 to 8 mandatory overtime weeks in a year, you can see how this can be hard to survive. I started at the young age of 19 years old working for three years there and knew after that my 401k and stocks were vested in my account, it was time to get the hell out. I can only imagine how hard it is for older people who need it more and were stressed out and stuck. They had to deal with the pain of amazon. 

When I got the new job offer, I found out that would also be my last day at Amazon. I walked in to our stand up for our amazon people managers. I found out then that they were forcing me to transfer into a department and job that I told them I was not comfortable doing. Also, the prior people in that job were not happy. I described to them how I take my department and numbers with pride and I don't want to be thrown in another department at will and then force to perform at a new rate also. I told that to my personnel advisor. My manger came over later that day and asked why I don't want to be trained. I said because I was not comfortable going to a department that I would be rarely doing and then get forced to make the new numbers. He clearly doesn't know that no means no and kept hassling me until I went to hr. When in hr, I was greeted by our senior ops manager. After talking to him for a while, he said we were good. Only, I then found out after lunch that I was still going to be forced into that department. I went to the hr office again with hr and senior ops, but this time was different. It started out where we left off. But then it changed to me getting tagged teamed by those couple of bullies that they were. I did not feel comfortable with the way I was being treated and I felt trapped in the room. They gave me these option and I'll never forget it: Option 1: use pto option 2: use upt option 3: go to be trained in other department and option 4: choose none of the options. I said I would choose 4 and work in my department the rest of the day. They said no, I said what does 4 mean then, and they said you don't choose any of the options. So I was very scared for what was going on and decided to leave the room, and when I did they called security instantly. That's when I was brought into another room where I said I was not comfortable with what's going on at all. They said why don't you want to go to this department, I finally admitted that I was going through some back pain and was not comfortable with that department's process. The hr rep then said I could have a paper that would let me have time off to get a doctors appointments set up. He also would check to see if I would be physically cleared to work in the other department. After 5-10 minutes of waiting for him to come back, he comes in saying the issue was insubordination and brings in security to walk me out. 

I'm so glad I left that horrible place.