They say that the only constant in life is change, which is a very beautiful thought, when you really think about it. But there seems to be, at this point, another rather unfortunate constant and that is Amazon being under fire for their anti-union approach to business.
In particular, Amazon, and subsequently its owner Jeff Bezos, have come under fire recently for being a multi-billion dollar enterprise that is, one might say, mocking its hard-working employees with incentives that are so irrelevant on a financial scale that it is just begging for ridicule from the internet.
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Incentives are a great way to motivate employees, but Amazon just showed how not to pull them off
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On April 18th, 2022, the non-profit news media organization More Perfect Union shared a picture on their Twitter of what they claim is a message distributed to Amazon workers on Easter Sunday.
The message thanks all working on Easter Sunday. And, as a token of their corporate gratitude, they have organized a raffle for anyone over a set rate in a particular section of the warehouse, who are enlisted automatically based on these criteria.
And while all seems fine and dandy as employee incentives go, the problem arises with the prize itself, which is underwhelming to say the least. The promised prize is a snack pack that includes water or soda and some candy or a bag of chips of the employee’s choice.
A picture allegedly from an Amazon warehouse surfaced online promising a $2 snack pack to the lucky winner(s) working on Easter Sunday
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More Perfect Union elaborates on just how ridiculous all of this is by putting things into perspective: imagine being a warehouse employee who works 10 to 12 hours per shift working on a questionable wage on Easter Sunday, and as a thanks you get roughly $2 worth of considerably unhealthy snacks, all the while Amazon’s CEO is valued at $137 billion and earns $152,000 every minute.
If anything, it’s begging for some ridicule from the internet, but we’ll get to it soon.
And as soon as the picture hit the internet, everyone and their mothers started ridiculing the attempt
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According to Business Insider, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos earns ~$150K a minute, putting that $2 dollar incentive to shame
It’s important to note that the tweet cites a Business Insider article, which calculates just how rich one of the richest people in the world—Jeff Bezos—really is in the grand scheme of things.
They have calculated that Jeff Bezos earns roughly $78.5 trillion per year, which is $6.54 billion a month, over $1.5 billion a week, more than $215 million a day, nearly $9 million an hour, and, by the metric the tweet uses, is actually $149,353 every minute, not 152,000, but not too far off.
While that is a lot of money, in context, he earns roughly one exotic car every minute, or nearly as much as a US senator would in a year. Or, better yet, you can check out this very nifty Bezos Calculator which shows you Bezos’ ridiculous profit at lightning-fast speeds.
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And folks online were not all too happy about this. Senator Bernie Sanders defined this as corporate greed, with Bezos already being insanely rich, and getting insanely richer every minute, calling for unionization.
CEO of Gravity Payments Dan Price also chimed in with how putting THANK YOU in all-caps makes it sound like a very caring environment in the warehouse.
Some commenters joked that not doing the raffle would have been the more respectful thing to do as the $2 incentive is insulting
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And then the rest of the internet started ridiculing just how cheap and offensive this move is. Besides the spot-on memes, some pointed out that it would have been a much better move to just give those snacks out to everyone without making it into a competition.
Others reminded people of the “banana” that was given out as thanks some time ago, which, just like with Amazon’s approach, sounds like an even bigger insult than getting nothing at all.
But the overall consensus among Tweeters was that Amazon's employees really need a union
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But all jokes aside, most were passionately bashing Amazon for its very anti-union approach, and wondering how people put up with all of this at Amazon in the first place. This was also followed up with a suggestion that, if anything, they should get both the snacks and a 50 to 100% hourly bonus for having work on Easter.
Whatever the case may be, the tweet got quite a bit of attention, hitting headlines here and there, and getting nearly 15,000 likes on Twitter. You can check out the tweet in context here.
But before you go, give us your thoughts on this matter in the comment section below!