
Amazon struggles to find its coronavirus footing - airstrike
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-struggles-to-find-its-coronavirus-footing-its-a-time-of-great-stress-11585664987
======
somethoughts
I'm curious if Lyft and Uber will attempt to work with national grocery store
chains to handle delivery. Most grocery stores have some sort of pick-up at
store. It seems like Lyft/Uber could be used to then convert that pick-up at
store into grocery delivery if they were integrated into the grocery stores
checkout process.

That way Lyft and Uber wouldn't have to necessarily create their own
storefronts like Instacart has and the grocery chains would be less worried
about being commoditized since the grocery chains would control the customer
relationship.

I would definitely like to use multiple grocery delivery services so as to
keep multiple grocery stores in business to avoid having Amazon/Whole Foods be
a single point of failure, but the grocery chains' delivery is backlogged.

It seems counter intuitive for Lyft and Uber to not be finding ways to keep
their drivers. Otherwise they will end up working for Amazon doing Whole Foods
delivery. In fact, IIRC Lyft was actively encouraging them to go work for
Amazon/WF [1].

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197699/lyft-amazon-
coro...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21197699/lyft-amazon-coronavirus-
ridership-decline-job-referral-warehouse-grocery-delivery)

~~~
crispyporkbites
That would not be very efficient though, instead of a chilled single truck
carrying a days worth of deliveries targeting one geographic area you’d have
20 times as many uber drivers turning up at random times. All of whom have to
be paid, not to mention the burning of fuel.

I don’t think uber have the right setup for this and even if they did I can’t
see how they have a competitive edge.

~~~
wlesieutre
They wouldn’t be better than the regular grocery delivery truck, but they have
spare capacity when the demand for grocery deliveries has probably
skyrocketed.

I wouldn’t think there are enough refrigerated trucks available in the world
for grocery stores to all scale their delivery fleets rapidly at the same
time.

~~~
wlesieutre
Plus grocery stores wouldn’t necessarily want more trucks if they anticipate
this pandemic-fueled demand being temporary. If the stores buy more trucks,
the manufacturers build more trucks to meet that demand, what happens with all
the extra trucks once this pandemic is over? Will all the new delivery
customers keep getting their groceries delivered, or will many switch back to
shopping at the store?

Given both those factors, UberEats style deliveries for groceries could make
decent sense as a temporary measure.

------
jxramos
From a customer's perspective they appear to be highly adaptive. I've
experienced a range of changes to the workflow, eg prime now orders will
replace items with near substitutes. You get a time sensitive text message to
confirm whether you approve of the replacement. Otherwise they'll make the
choice for you upon decision timeout. Non essential items still come, they
appear to be pushed back a month. This seems to be contingent on where the
item is in the warehouse network. Stuff that shipped closer to home seemed to
be a handful of days delayed or something. Jury's still out for us on how
subscribe and save will behave since we are awaiting the next batch. Amazon
has also implemented quotas on all sorts of products. Grocery delivery orders
used to reset their clocks at midnight, now they seem to randomize it since
people caught on and jumped in on the order openings. They've been rolling out
a steady stream of these workflow changes; I find it very impressive and
dynamic that they can carry this out in near realtime.

~~~
freyir
Amazon completely lost my trust due to their poor quality control and flagrant
reselling of counterfeit goods. And that makes me hesitant to buy their
groceries.

But Covid-19 has kind of forced my hand. They've consistently provided same-
day deliveries on Prime Now, whereas Instacart almost never has any available
delivery slots, or if they do, the shortest delivery time is almost a week.

~~~
mancerayder
I'm in NYC and it's the reverse. Amazon / Whole Foods is a nightmare for
delivery. OK, workflow is I spend 30 minutes putting things in my cart.
Sometimes as I click it says No Longer Available. Eventually I get to check
out. No delivery slots available. I check back again a few hours later. Now
most things have been autoremoved from my cart. Try again. Same result. Tried
every few days for two weeks.

Instacart had same day delivery and a shopper that interacts with you on the
app to ask about substitutions, using the automation of the app, and sometimes
chat and pictures. Great luck with that.

The Amazon grocery shopping experience has been an absolute nightmare. I've
stopped even bothering.

~~~
freyir
I agree, the way Prime Now removes half the items in your cart is infuriating.
Especially when the items are still available and you can manually add them
back.

------
ilamont
Amazon has also made some changes for third-party sellers, many of whom lost
income when Amazon stopped inbound shipments of non-essential goods a few
weeks ago and extended order fulfillment of many such items to April 21. This
announcement appeared on the Seller Central website yesterday:

 _In light of the evolving COVID-19 crisis, we will waive two weeks of your
inventory storage fees for products stored in the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
This is in addition to the previously announced updates including:

\- Waiving the April 15 long-term storage fees for inventory stored in the US
and Europe.

\- Pausing repayments and interest until April 30 for sellers with direct
loans from Amazon Lending.

\- Waiving April fees for those using Seller Account Management or the
Launchpad program.

We are also making policy adjustments to proactively mitigate the impact of
the crisis on the health of your Amazon seller account and you can now use the
updated Restock Inventory page and Restock report to check which products are
eligible for shipment creation._

~~~
themagician
In Australia they are actually asking companies to remove their inventory from
Amazon to make space for essential items.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/VZmdC](https://archive.md/VZmdC)

------
black_puppydog
Seems like a good place to turn to this "invisible hand" I hear so much about.

If work is more risky, and you're standing to make a killing, consider paying
your workers better?

If that ends up putting your margin so low that you can't sustain operations,
well then maybe you weren't so competitive after all...

~~~
earthboundkid
> If that ends up putting your margin so low that you can't sustain
> operations, well then maybe you weren't so competitive after all...

I think that the crisis is revealing that a lot of "efficiency" in today's
economy was just disguised fragility. If we can't take month off without
triggering social collapse, uh, maybe we're not building a robust system?

------
a_lieb
Are there any online stores where we have good evidence that they have _good_
practices around COVID-19? Despite the crushing demand, Costco seems like one
employer that might try extra hard to see after the safety of its workers.

~~~
zszugyi
Costco have been criticized for having their corporate employees work from
home until way later than most tech companies in the Seattle area. For
example: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-
cor...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/costco-coronavirus-
covid-death-office-open)

------
fovc
If you're in NYC, check out
[https://shop.usepepper.com/](https://shop.usepepper.com/)

They deliver groceries from restaurant suppliers, so it's logistically more
efficient, helps support those businesses through the crisis, and steers away
from the AMZN monoculture.

Disclosure: friend of one of the founders

~~~
claudeganon
Given everything that’s been going on with Instacart and Amazon strikes, can
you speak to compensation and safety for their delivery workers?

------
AznHisoka
It looks like the number of visits to Amazon the 2nd week of March increased
the same % as it did the 3rd week of Feb (year to year). why would this be
true if the pandemic only became more urgent in Mid March?

~~~
pampa
Some people looked at China and Italy, extrapolated, and sarted preparing
before SHTF?

~~~
davidw
That is exactly what I did. I have friends and family in Italy (they're doing
ok so far). I saw what was happening and that there was no reason to think "it
can't happen here".

------
deeblering4
Are any companies providing hazard pay to employees being exposed to COVID-19?

It seems like an appropriate thing to do for “essential” workers who are being
regularly exposed.

~~~
jmckib
Not sure if it counts as hazard pay, but it says in this article that all
Amazon fulfillment employees are getting a $2 raise through April.

~~~
Cthulhu_
$2 per hour I presume, and do they get paid overtime as well?

------
gwbas1c
I've been interviewing for a role within AWS and the process is frustrating.
I've had two situations where the interviewer didn't show up and they
rescheduled later.

I hope this isn't "business as usual" when interviewing with Amazon.

~~~
EpicEng
My brother has had an interview scheduled for weeks, moved many times. First
he was supposed to meet with the hiring manager... then they said the hiring
manager wasn't approved (they had some other term) for interviewing. Then the
hiring manager changed. Then the group he would be joining changed. Then the
boss of the second hiring manager in the old group called him directly and
offerred a 1 year contract to hire position and asked that he not mention it
to the internal recruiter (what?!). Now the hiring manager has changed again.

Ridiculous.

~~~
rcaught
How many red flags does he want?

~~~
EpicEng
Apparently at least one more. That sweet sweet $AMZN is too tempting.

------
ForHackernews
Elsewhere:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738592)

"Amazon fires worker who led strike over virus"

------
crispyporkbites
It must be so hard being the biggest online retailer in the West when
literally every brick and mortar shuts in one go. These things are minor,
everyone is still ordering from amazon by default. Coronavirus is more like a
wet dream for Bezos than a challenge.

~~~
colechristensen
All you have to do is sell food to stay open. Sometimes not even that. Most of
the big box retailers added grocery in the last couple of decades. Even office
max was open a few days ago when I needed some shipping supplies.

~~~
CydeWeys
This varies significantly on a state by state basis.

~~~
colechristensen
I'm in Santa Clara county, CA. Where it first started and the first
restrictions were put in place (a short walk from the first case in a hospital
in the US). I can imagine that there are a few places stricter, but I haven't
heard of any of the traditional big box stores closing (at least any of them
which would have a banana for sale).

------
freepor
This is what happens when an economy pays essential workers like throwaway
workers and then the throwaway workers realize it.

~~~
krapp
The throwaway workers _always_ realized it, and so did the public who mostly
didn't care as long as they got their stuff on time, and probably still don't.

If anything, hostility towards Amazon employees seems to have increased
because now the public feels like their complaints are interfering with the
delivery of essential goods.

------
blunte
Fortunately for Amazon, while their retail side may be suffering, their cloud
side should be booming.

~~~
ctvo
Where did you get their retail side is suffering? The article is about the
massive, holiday like demands and how they’re working to meet it.

------
davidw
Everyone should have paid sick leave so they don't have to choose between
doing the right thing (staying home) and paying rent. Everyone should have a
safe working environment.

~~~
lonelappde
Sick leave is just "higher pay + unpaid leave" with extra steps. Sick leave
means "get a doctor's note to prove you are sick" or wrestling with what
counts as "sick".

~~~
arthens
No it's not.

Unpaid leave puts people in the position of having to decide between health
(and not infecting their coworkers) and losing money. Paid sick leave instead
puts employees in the position of being able to look after themselves (and
their coworkers) without penalties.

It might seem like a trivial difference for people who make decent money, but
it's a huge difference for people who are not in a good financial situation.

> get a doctor's note to prove you are sick

Only if you work for a company that doesn't trust its employees.

I've only worked in countries with paid sick leave, and I honestly don't
remember if I ever had to present a doctor's note.

~~~
chii
>> higher pay + unpaid leave

if your pay was low, and you get sick leave, then management is going to count
the sick leave as part of your pay (even tho you don't necessarily use it up).
This then incentivises the worker to "use up" sick leave even if they aren't
sick.

Higher pay + unlimited sick leave (unpaid) means that the pay is upfront. The
total amount paid being the same would mean that the worker doesn't have to
fake a sickie every now and then to get their fair share of their wages.
Managers also would not see any sick leave as the worker taking advantage.

------
dang
A related article is [https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/15/21180737/amazon-
deliverie...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/15/21180737/amazon-deliveries-
delayed-coronavirus)

(via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22742054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22742054),
but no thread there)

------
beamatronic
Amazon, treat your workers well, or you won't have a business.

~~~
robertfw
Bezos asking for donations for a fund to help his workers was the final straw
for me. The gap between his wealth, and the way they treat workers, is
obscene.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Apparently that was overblown.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/no-jeff-bezos-doesnt-want-your-
pub...](https://www.cnet.com/news/no-jeff-bezos-doesnt-want-your-public-
donations-for-amazon-workers/)

Because otherwise, yeah, that's incredibly insulting.

~~~
lozenge
But he did offer Whole Foods employees to donate their holiday days to other
employees.

~~~
cowsandmilk
Bezos did nothing of the sort, that was a policy that existed at Whole Foods
before it was bought by Amazon.

~~~
lozenge
And re-emphasised as a "solution" for employees in the current situation.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-ceo-employees-
do...](https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-ceo-employees-donate-
vacation-coronavirus-report-2020-3?r=US&IR=T)

