Carol is a Pick Department associate and a process trainer at an Amazon warehouse in Kent, Washington. To Carol, “family is everything,” and she loves classic rock and classic cars.
Jeremy is into “cats, sports, anime, and video games,” and he works the overnight shift for Amazon in San Marcos, Texas.
Misty is an Amazon inbound dock problem solver in Etna, Ohio. She has two grandkids, and she proclaims that “crochet is my calm.”
What do all these Amazon employees have in common? They’re all completely new to Twitter and a part of Amazon’s ambassador program that is trying to make the mega-company more relatable to the public. They’re extolling the company line in virtually every tweet they write, and they’re trying their best to give off a vibe that working at Amazon is an amazing experience. Meanwhile, these Twitter accounts have given off a dystopian world/Stepford Wives vibe that has made the internet a little uneasy.
The @bornwithatail_ Twitter account might have been the first to notice that Amazon has initiated more than a dozen of its workers into the Twittersphere in an attempt to defend the company against everything from poor wages to not allowing its employees time to use the bathroom.
https://twitter.com/bornwithatail_/status/1032674364427251712
https://twitter.com/bornwithatail_/status/1032677452475195392
While these accounts might act a little like Twitter bots—all of these accounts were created this month—actual people are tweeting from these accounts.
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCJeremy/status/1032827612442382338
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCaleb/status/1032741304382509056
And what are they tweeting? That life at Amazon is pretty great.
The financial competition is pretty great.
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCJeremy/status/1032846618150793217
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCJeremy/status/1032936994593275907
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCMisty/status/1032839917636919297
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol/status/1032698443888816134
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol/status/1032832276894306304
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCLeo/status/1032324730244816897
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCindi/status/1032368814191570946
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCShaye/status/1031995219712122880
The bathroom breaks are pretty great.
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCJeremy/status/1032931641843507200
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCMisty/status/1032875904802930688
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCMisty/status/1032819004866473985
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol/status/1032850487429738501
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCLeo/status/1032705496233533440
And the fact that nobody is dying on the job is pretty great.
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCCarol/status/1032695121693827073
https://twitter.com/AmazonFCJeremy/status/1030889566545346562
According to TechCrunch, there are at least 15 of these accounts who are being paid to spout the company line.
It’s been previously reported in the past few years that Amazon warehouse workers are often tasked to do intensive, laborious work in intolerable conditions and to move as fast as humanly possible.
There’s little doubt the company needs continuously good PR. In February, Amazon was granted patents for a tracking device that could show management exactly where their workers are and what they’re doing—again, it’s another look into a possible dystopian worker landscape. There was a troubling report earlier this year that a number of Amazon workers have to use food stamps because Amazon’s wages are too low, and there was another report that stated workers urinate in water bottles because they feared facing discipline for taking a bathroom break.
Amazon didn’t answer Daily Dot questions about how often and what these ambassadors are supposed to be tweeting about and if the company was worried about them being labeled Twitter bots by other internet users. But in a statement, a spokesperson told the Daily Dot that the ambassadors are employees who have worked in Amazon fulfillment centers.
“The most important thing is that they’ve been here long enough to honestly share the facts based on personal experience,” the spokesperson said. “It’s important that we do a good job of educating people about the actual environment inside our fulfillment centers, and the FC ambassador program is a big part of that along with the fulfillment center tours we provide.”
So far, though, much of the internet is skeptical.
H/T TechCrunch