Amazon trying to cover their ass?

Updated Wednesday, September 4, 2024 5:10 p.m. EST - Amazon reached out to deny the reports of a crack down on singing along with the radio in trucks and provided this PR video clip as evidence. A PR spokesperson told Jalopnik: “This post is completely inaccurate. Amazon has never issued guidance or communications to Delivery Service Partners that prohibits singing in the vehicle.”

https://youtu.be/3ddtY_iOrk8

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        The real question is… why the fuck should anyone be micromanaged to this fucking extent. It’s probably hurting actual productivity… even if their broken ass metrics are showing an improvement.

        It fucking sucks to be deprived of the joy in what you do - there isn’t much joy in delivery to begin with but vibing to the music while driving down an empty stretch of road is one of the little ones… the more you suck the joy out of a job the less shits your employees will give.

        • eramseth@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Heard about this a while back. I think the real explanation is that amazon wants cameras in their vehicles to monitor their drivers. But Amazon’s insurer says “if you have this video we want to see it, and if your drivers are distracted in general, your insurance rates are going up” and/or when there’s an incident, any evidence of distracted driving will be leveraged against amazon… so instead of getting rid of the cameras, they are micromanaging their employees not to be distracted while driving, where “distracted” includes talking on the phone and also singing or speaking.

          It’s all really shitty tbh.

          I get that with a company as big as Amazon, small margins can make a big difference, but… pretty sure that’s just an argument against giant fucking companies running everything…

        • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          maybe it’s because the more time wage slaves are thinking about not being allowed to sing, the less time they’re thinking about how shitty the pay is

            • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              I had a job where my boss got angry at me for playing music in my office with the door closed, because I was wasting bandwidth. On my ipod. So I used headphones.

            • shalafi@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Now I want to see a black Amazon driver dressed as a slave, singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”, and getting chewed out over an in-van loudspeaker.

              “Yuhsir! Won’t happen again suh!”

              Can you imagine the emergency PR meetings?!

          • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            I feel like the more workers are generally miserable, the more they’ll be disgruntled

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        They’re not actually monitoring that specific thing. They have a camera looking at the drivers and the recognition software happens to interpret singing as the driver being “distracted”, but they don’t actually want to modify the software so they are doubling down on what the software has decided.

        • FarFarAway@startrek.website
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          3 months ago

          Kinda the same way my car tells me I’m not looking at the road if I tilt my head 2 inches to the side or back. Its constantly giving me warning, and I’m constantly yelling that I am looking at the road! How else could I go around this turn!

          At least I have the option of covering it with black electrical tape. Jeeze.

          • DrPop@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            As someone who wears glasses I have to turn my head to check my mirrors. I would get so frustrated with that.

            • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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              3 months ago

              I, for one, am in favor of volume limits. Too many times ambulances get stuck behind cars whose drivers simply cannot hear the siren.

            • eramseth@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Not necessarily, but there’s a difference between something being illegal and something being perceived by an insurance company as increasing risk. There are a lot of things that are legal and risky.

              • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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                3 months ago

                Insurance wanting employees monitored so they can deny coverage or excuse an increase in premiums is not much of “ok yeah that makes sense”.

                With that logic our own cars are going start monitoring us and have us hand the data over to insurers so they can let you off the hook for the “privacy fee” or whatever as long as you then don’t sing in your own car.

                This isn’t about risk. Its about humans not being allowed to be humans.

                • eramseth@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  Oh I totally agree and yes we’re already on that path.

                  The solution here is probably more like no cameras spying on your employees for every second of their shift. Give them a job and let them do it or not do it.

    • heyoni@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      What? No, you’re seeing masks because of the surge in covid. Article was updated to say Amazon is refuting the claim. It’s bogus.

          • TommySoda@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It means you were being sarcastic. Usually people put it at the end of a comment to emphasize they weren’t being serious.That’s the only reason I can think of why you said that.

            • heyoni@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              But I wasn’t. There was/is a surge in covid cases and this article is apparently completely false.

              • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                You’re really so much of a, as you’d say, “fucking moron” that you just instantly believe Amazon when they pinky swear they’re not femtomanaging their drivers xD if you’re not being paid to spread this disinformation that’s just sad

                • heyoni@lemm.ee
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                  3 months ago

                  It’s not about believe Amazon you idiot, it’s about not believing the first and very egregious claim. Which I was right to doubt because apparently it’s an internal issue with how the system detects distractions and is being corrected internally lol. The workers coming on to complain and garner outrage over it are fucking babies and frankly disingenuous because they know there aren’t actually any rules against singing in the van.

      • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        You forgot to put Amazon in your username, I thought they required that from paid shills?