The human costs of Black Friday, explained by a former Amazon warehouse manager

VOX:

While this may be great for Amazon’s bottom line, all this shopping has a real human cost. As plenty of Amazon employees have attested, working in the company’s warehouses is grueling. Earlier this summer, a former Amazon fulfillment center manager from California reached out to me after I wrote about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sparring with Amazon over worker rights and pay rates. (The battle ended in Amazon raising the hourly rate to $15 an hour but cutting company stock grants and bonuses.) The former Amazon employee, a US Air Force veteran, requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.

This story is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about shopping on Amazon but, like all the other stories about working conditions at an Amazon warehouse we’ve seen over the years, it shows how hard the job is.