 "A person works at the Amazon warehouse, busy on Prime Day, in Melville, New York, US. Reuters file")
Ahead of the much-anticipated Amazon Prime Day, the company has reportedly asked its corporate employees to run down to the warehouse and volunteer their time to assist delivery workers with dispatching groceries.
According to a report by The Guardian, a Slack message went to thousands of white-collar workers in the New York City area, including engineers to marketers, from Amazon’s area manager, calling for “volunteers to help us out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on our biggest days yet”. It is, however, not clear how many employees signed up for the task.
What would they do?
The manager noted that those taking up the volunteer job are “needed” to work Tuesday through Friday this week in two-hour-long shifts between 10 am and 6 pm in an Amazon Fresh warehouse located in Brooklyn. Corporate employees will be required to pick up items, prepare carts and bags of groceries for delivery and pack boxes on receiving carts.
While carrying out these tasks, employees would be allowed to take meetings and attend calls in between. The manager noted that volunteering would give corporate and warehouse officials to “connect”.
‘Not the first time’
An Amazon spokesperson, Griffin Buch, said this is not the first time corporate employees have been asked to lend a hand in the warehouse ahead of a major sale.
“This support is entirely optional, and it allows corporate employees to get closer to customers while enabling our store teams to focus on the work that’s most impactful,” he said.
Amazon regularly brings on thousands of additional warehouse workers ahead of its annual Prime Day sale, which features major discounts on thousands of items and leads to a spike in orders and delivery demand. Amazon Fresh, a service for Prime members that’s separate from its Whole Foods subsidiary, is also offering deals during Prime Day this week.