At the end of last winter semester, I wrote my final essay about Jeff Bezos and his enormous riches. I concluded that he is immorally rich and abuses American capitalism. I am anti-billionaire because I don’t believe someone can be so wealthy without harming others (but that’s a point for another article). A few weeks after I had written my Bezos essay, I started my summer job as an Amazon driver. Here are some of my thoughts on being an Amazon driver.

Scheduling and Fatigue

As an Amazon Driver, you have to work four days a week, ten hours each day. You have to work at least one weekend day, and as a newcomer, I was scheduled to work both. I worked my four days back-to-back and I had a three-day break. While this schedule allows for three days off per week, which is awesome, it also is exhausting to work four days in a row. Amazon does follow guidelines to protect their drivers from being dangerously fatigued while driving, but there were still many times I felt too dazed, tired and bored to keep driving. The hours felt slow and the country roads seemed endless. The driving and delivering became so routine that the actions involved became thoughtless. As the act of driving was so mundane, truthfully, I often would forget to follow safety guidelines.  Sometimes my speed would slip into ten over the limit or I’d forget to buckle my seat belt, but the worst was when I’d be distracted from checking my delivery device while driving (like we were supposed to).

Loadout

As most would expect, a driver’s day is primarily delivering packages and driving around. However, most people do not know how a driver’s day starts. Drivers get to their designated warehouse to grab their delivery device and van keys before locating their van and load time. Then, loadout, where all of the drivers independently load their van up with over 300 packages, begins. Drivers only get fifteen minutes to find their packages, transport them to the van and load them all in a secured and neat manner. How a driver organizes their packages dictates how easy the rest of their day will be. Sometimes the workload sucks, and a driver doesn’t have enough time to pay close attention to the organization. This will make their day much more difficult. By 10:00 a.m., I’d already be soaked with sweat. However, the rest of the day was always physically easier than loadout. 

Technology

Throughout the day, drivers must use multiple apps to keep track of their driving habits, deliver the packages, communicate with their dispatch and more. While you’d think Amazon would have the best of the best devices and technology, this isn’t the case. We used smartphones that were prone to trash batteries, connectivity issues, glitches and navigational mistakes. Additionally, these issues occur while drivers are having to constantly check their devices while driving.

Not only were the delivery devices unreliable, so were many of the vans we drove. Most of them had broken doors, missing floor pieces, broken phone mounts and other issues. Amazon does not give you the tools needed to succeed in this job, and issues with the delivery device and van can completely ruin a driver’s day. 

Fighting Boredom

So how do drivers stay sane alone in a car all day? Personally, I listened to music and podcasts, but eventually, that got boring. Music became just noise, and I ran out of podcast episodes. While it’s amazing not having a boss in the van with you all day, it can get lonely. Luckily, I had friends who also drove for Amazon. We would occasionally join conference calls where we’d all just chat about our days. What comes along with this is that I got to hear all of the stories about my fellow drivers’ days. Hearing how their device was glitching out would make me feel better about my van door being jammed closed. 

Final Thoughts

Being an Amazon Driver was an interesting experience. I wouldn’t recommend this job due to the lack of improvement available within the company, and the physical intensity. I also think Amazon poorly prepares their drivers to succeed due to the company’s faulty technology. However, if you want a three-day weekend, you can handle long hours on the road and you would like time independent from supervisors, this would be an adequate option.