senior software engineer

zone leader

warehouse associate

software engineer

quality manager

Amazon Stores

The upper management needs work at the Amazon Fresh location in Franconia, VA. When I was taken on, I was told we are supposed to be THE flagship, groundbreaking, store on the East coast. We are suppossed to be a training store which trains other stores, to set the standard, on how other stores operate as Amazon Fresh, expands in the DMV. They will literally, hire anyone and there is no interview process. They want us to do our work without the sufficient staff required, which made our work shifts very stressful. I could'nt take my breaks when I needed to. They took no account of weekends and holidays when we should have the amount of staff needed to accomadate, call outs, sick workers, lunch/evening customer rushes,  supplies needed for our department. The training ambassador role was forced, upon me. (No, it did not increase one's pay.)  I worked in front-end as a cashier, the customer service desk area and manning the dash cart area (the dash carts are extremely, gimmicky and buggy, and honestly a HUGE HEADACHE, when we were short-staffed, which was all the time, practically). I also worked where they needed me in other departments (which was frequently, which made our department staffing short).  Safety concerns were raised about the employee entrance, people trailing in before/after store hours, but were not taken seriously. Other concerns were  improved, at a snails pace. I was a grocery associate and while my coworkers were great to work with, my team leads were exceptionally hard workers, who were our direct supervisors, alot of upper management/deparment manager's positions, were literally a revolving door. They would leave before training their replacements and the new replacements would be absolutely, CLUELESS about how things are done. I don't beleive most of them have ever worked a retail job/ customer facing role, EVER in their lives. Everything comes from the top down, so if they didn't know about a procedure or process it was not a good look, on their part. I did not have ANY confidence in our upper management (store managers and our department manager) to get the work done to support their team leads or other associates, which is a shame. 

You do the most menial and easy task such as stocking shelves, counting products to see if they match inventory numbers, scan and receive products, rotate products based on expiration date and you get paid more than decent to do basically unskilled mindless physical labor.

What is terrible about it is management does not care about anything except numbers on paper. What do I mean by this? They tell us our goal is to keep the store stocked, clean, faced, and have all products received in a certain manner and time. But none of that happens cause management just doesn't care or do any actual real management. Associates don't rotate expired products, the don't properly stock products, etc... and when you report it to management they don't do anything about it. HR issues are rampant and corporate and HR just turns a blind eye to everything. Corporate does a lot of arm chair policy from Seattle without having a single clue of how the stores actually operate. Get little to no training whatsoever, and the rampant and blatant nepotism in the company is very obvious. All they care about is how many things you scan essentially, not the quality of your work or if you did it correctly. Working hard and doing your job correctly and efficiently does not get rewarded at all. You get paid the same as all the people who stand around and do nothing 70% of the time, and all management does is give you more work because you are reliable, but gives you no credit or recognition for it.

Amazon itself is terrible hypocritical company to work for. They constantly shove politics into your face via their newsfeed and then tell you that you're not allowed to talk about politics or do anything political in the company. They claim that they take Covid seriously but then lay off the janitors who are responsible for keeping the store clean, they put up useless annoying plastic screens that just cramps up the store more making it hard to social distance and communicate, blast the most repetitive depressing loud music through out the store making it even harder to communicate due mask already muffling people, which goes against CDC guidelines about not yelling or singing due to increase droplets. They don't enforce social distancing, people going around hugging each other, some associate walk around without their masks most of the time, not to mention people touch their masks constantly and touch everything.

I heard plenty of horror stories for Amazon over the years about how strict the company was for everything. Computers timing your productivity and time way from said computer, short breaks, no incentives, etc. My factory was far more fair with these things. There was computers that track your productivity and how long you've been away/inactive, but as long as you're actually focusing on the job then there's some leeway. The entry level work is so brain dead easy that you actually have to try to underperform. 

Bathrooms are distanced quite a bit away from some work stations, so traveling to and from a bathroom (and using it) takes a decent chunk of time and some factories will really crack down on how long you're gone. Some stations can be a 3-5 minute walk to a bathroom, but you're expected to never be away from your computer for more than ~5-10 minutes. My factory was understanding of this, but some factories will come down on you hard if you take more than 5 minutes to use the restroom even though it might take you 6-10 minutes just walking to said bathroom. 
 
There are no rewards for excelling at your job. They actually hold competitions for fastest at this, or highest quality of this, but the rewards or so pitiful that it doesn't motivate you to push for higher numbers. For example: They might hold a competitions for who stows the most and you get a prize. You'll have to actually really bust your butt to compete because you're competing against ~250 and the work you're stowing isn't even. If you somehow manage to have god on your side and you get a good assortment of work that allows you to get good numbers and win then your prize will be something like "Here's this 25 cent tootsie pop or here is $1 that you can only spend in our cafeteria and nothing is $1."

Overall, it's a big company with high turnover because for the most part they don't care about those at the bottom. They try to push you for the highest numbers knowing that it might actually physically be impossible with the work they have, but there is no benefits even if you do somehow beat the odds. 

Moving up through the company seems to be relatively easy, but my understanding is that there is a cap to high how you can climb if you started at entry level. All of the important management were people brought in and none of them started at Amazon and worked their way up. 

A typical day at work would breeze by. I would ring up customers' totals and bag all of the items unless someone else wasn't busy and they'd come help me bag groceries. If there were no customers, we'd spend our time double bagging and chatting with each other. I learned to be quick when ringing people up and bagging because everyone is in a rush and values their time. People displayed this either passively or aggressively when I first started. Some would just display an impatient body stance while others would get verbal about it. I was always trying my best but they didn't know that I had just started there and was still in training. I had learned the checkout computer register system quickly because I had recently worked at Target and it was similar to their system. So then I got left on my own sooner than normal. I ended up with a lot of questions about how to do important things that don't occur that often but I think I still should have learned. Different managers had different expectations so I had to change my behavior to meet them. Workplace culture was very positive and accepting of new employees, which is good because new people are always starting and needed help learning the intricacies of the job. The hardest part of the job was that I was working on the same level as 1 of my past students when I taught elementary school. (This was a very personal concern.) The most enjoyable part of the job was that I was able to talk with other adults throughout my shift. This was new to me because I was used to teaching where I was in my own classroom all day long with just my students. So Amazon Fresh Grocery Store was my favorite job since I quit teaching! I recommend it to anyone who is willing to work hard and wants some simple freedoms at work. My downfall was arriving to work on time each day as we had to sign in with a badge. Even 3 seconds would be considered late.

Directly at the Amazon Fresh Location in Manassas.

For Overnight..

At the start of the hiring process, we went from about 12 people to now 2 surviving new hires. Had been switched, along with others, from paleo foods, to store center, to the challenges that is Inventory control. Our team shrank drastically in just less than a few months. And still were expected to reach out unrealistic task quotas. Last straw was finding out that day-time shift workers and even zone leads purposely mess up inventory to meet their own goals. 

Management is too lost on a power trip that their only solution is searching for "hardworking" new hires to fill and replace rather than finding the core problems and solutions. 

I take pride in my hard work ethic, but not when I'm constantly told I'm not fast enough, and constantly hearing our screaming radio to keep going faster. 

I was only behind because I was responsible for constantly having to correct the most messed up Inventory store count I've seen in years, and it gets worse to terrible after a week from our bin audits from reasons I listed above.

Everyone that isn't a zone lead or in Management is absolutely miserable and are strongly trying to look elsewhere for other opportunities.

Funny how managers and zone lead supervisors can never go as fast as me without barely any errors or mistakes. Though they are the ones that idly talk and joke around more than the entire overnight staff combined, or what's left of it at this point. 

If you're able to put up with the stress and workload of 3 people, and desperate for money and healthcare, and career building learning benefits after 90 days. Then this job is right up your alley because the hiring process is extremely easy as they don't ask for a resume and hire you on the spot after general background checks and information! 

That's the Amazon Game! It's your choice to play this grueling challenge to your advantage..

I worked at Amazon Fresh which is located at the North Riverside location in Illinois. You apply, you get an email about a week later to come in for a presentation that they will show to everyone about Amazon Fresh, and then walk around the store. I worked here for about 10 months and overall the experience was meh. The coworkers are the only thing that makes being there more tolerable. Luckily all of my coworkers were pretty cool and I did enjoy working with them. Unfortunately, I had to leave because the ZLs would go around to other departments and spread false rumors about you or other people, ZL's would throw people under the bus just so they can look good to the ASM for that promotion...it was awful. Trust me, even if you don't bother anyone someone is going to gossip about you. It just made the work environment pretty bad. Our ASM (assistant store manager) was also not great at all. The ASMs clearly had favoritism towards some ZLs, they gossip about you and they do not care about you as an individual at all. None of the management will recognize your efforts and contribution and will take credit for your hard work. On an average day, the store is pretty slow and quiet, especially in the mornings. You would do tasks that were assigned from your ZL throughout the day. You get lunch if you work more than 5 hours, and two 10-minute breaks every 2-3 hours or so. Every Saturday you accrue PTO and vacation time off which was pretty nice and a small discount that you can apply on the Amazon website. Overall, the coworkers were the only thing that I liked about working here. 

Generally speaking, Amazon is a great company to work for.  Their culture is much more superior than other companies around the world.  When it comes to using your personal paid time off there's a lot of flexibility too which is uncommon amongst different companies around the world.  For example, if you wanted to attend a professional sporting event the same day as an 8-hour shift or even shorter, you're allowed to use a couple hours of your overall personal time off to create some flexibility for yourself.  Despite you taking off, they put flex shifts in place that are 4 hours long that anyone can pick up to counter the demand for employees on a given day/even a given time based on when they expect a truck delivery.  However, they have many weaknesses.  The biggest weakness they've is poorly managed supply chain.  As a result, I think Amazon needs to establish a strong supply chain at the corporate level so that they've their supply chain down to a science.  Throughout my employment with Amazon Fresh, a lot of items were damaged out that wouldn't have been damaged out if Amazon knew what they were doing from a supply chain standpoint.  What happen was too many items were sent to the Amazon Fresh location I worked at.  As a result, a lot of those items didn't sell before their expiration date which resulted in those items getting damaged out and ended up costing the company a lot of money too.  

Overall, Amazon is a great company to work for.  They just need to get their act together in regard to certain aspects of their company like establishing a strong supply chain department at the corporate level that they don't currently have in place.

My training consisted of being shuffled around to open stores to learn from others that barely knew how to do their job. From top management down few employees had any grocery experience. Training is a joke. They hand you a tablet and you watch a bunch of videos, most of mine had nothing to with my job (why am I learning about warehouse security and waste management when I'm working at a grocery store). You are expected to learn your job on your own, when you seek help that lead hardly knows what they are doing. Each manager does things their way, it ends up confusing associates and suddenly they are getting yelled at for doing the job wrong, which is unfair it is not the associate's fault if they were taught wrong by another manager. The tech is cool but causes more problems and extra work. Depending on what department you are in your day will consist of counting, recounting, and then counting again. Everything is built on automation. Ordering for the store is done outside the store level. You end up with ridiculous overstock issues no matter what location you work at managment says it happens because your inventory count is wrong.  Even if the count is right corporate still sends way too much, I think its because they are trying to empty the warehouse, I worked grocery before and it happened from time to time, but this is another level. The amount of food that gets thrown out or donated is insane. Instead of having an actual reciever everyone does it so things get messed up there. The excuse for mismanagement and all the waste is the store is new and all kinks will work out soon. Im sure the tech kinks will resolve before the mismanagement does. 

Amazon Fresh is a very new store, there are only a few in this country and I work at the second one built in Illinois. Overall it's about the same as your basic grocery store but a lot of things are unorganized and this leads to a high turnover rate. For example, I've had issues with my schedule since I started. I was hired for part time but the scheduling software they use gives me full time hours or sometimes no hours at all. In fact, I was actually fired (although it says that I voluntarily terminated) because the scheduling software completely took me off of the schedule. In addition to this, the store is extremely understaffed and so they expect us to take on extra work. A lot of employees have left because it looked like they had no hours when in reality it was just a problem with the app but no one corresponds with you so there's no way to know. Also, the entire store is very unsafe. The ladders they give you are wobbly and there's no one to spot you,  they have you working in the cooler (30° environment) and don't provide you with any jackets, coats, or gloves. I've worked in the freezer my whole shift before while trimming and crisping vegetables so my hands were wet and cold for 7hrs. I wouldn't recommend working here at all. The pay isn't worth the mental and physical stress that you undertake. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
The flexibility and the ability to pick your shift on the atoz app,, the work/life balance, the pay is decent, the job will help you lose weight cause it's very physical, and some of the managers and the coworkers are pretty cool

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
When you're working for outbound you are scored  and on a time limit for picking orders. It gets stressful when the item is missing and I have to take a few minutes to search for the item in the store. If I can't find the item then I have to use a talkie to let the manager on duty know that the item is missing and you need their approval to either hit missing item or substitute. It's stressful cause it takes up too much time and it affects my pick rate, and the managers judge your performance based on your pick rate

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The work environment is positive for the most part. Most of the staff is friendly and helpful, and the site is clean. The managers care about their employees and sometimes provide snacks or catering lunch in the break room

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I arrive maybe an hour early for work so I can get myself settled, make coffee and eat breakfast. I do my job which can range from 4hrs to 8 plus hours then I go home.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Senior software engineer 6 salaries reported	$325,000 per year
Zone leader 1 salary reported	$16.50 per hour
Warehouse associate 1 salary reported	$15.50 per hour
Software engineer 1 salary reported	$257,500 per year
Quality manager 1 salary reported	$94,600 per year

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