Amazon was lampooned on social media Thursday after sharing a video highlighting “AmaZen”, a small enclosed booth installed in an Amazon warehouse where employees can go to “focus on their mental wellbeing”.
The human-sized box has an interactive kiosk inside, where workers can watch videos about “mental health” and “mindfulness practices”. Critics of the company, which has come under fire in the past for not allowing workers sufficient bathroom breaks, putting them in danger of frequent injury, and forcing them to spend hours on foot, said the company’s money would be better spent supporting its labor force.
Amazon workers: Literally dying in stressful conditions.
— TalkPoverty.org (@TalkPoverty) May 27, 2021
Amazon: Have a phone booth with a mindfulness video for “wellness”!https://t.co/jnZI8cujAZ
“I feel like livable wages and working conditions are better than a mobile Despair Closet,” writer Talia Levin tweeted.
i feel like livable wages & working conditions are better than a mobile Despair Closet https://t.co/k4stnC0Ws0
— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) May 27, 2021
Others noted that Amazon employees – warehouse workers and delivery drivers – have long complained about an absence of bathrooms, a feature the company would perhaps do better to invest in than a sensory deprivation box. This is not Amazon’s first social media controversy. The company recently came under fire after challenging a user on Twitter for reporting its workers urinate in plastic bottles due to lack of bathroom access.
the AmaZen “ZenBooth” is here! a Porta Potty would be more useful to its intensely exploited and surveilled workers but I appreciate Amazon’s commitment to the bit https://t.co/U0GLysPqkP
— Alex Press (@alexnpress) May 27, 2021
Amazon has seen its profits explode during the pandemic, but worker wages have remained largely the same. In April, workers voted against forming a union in one of its Alabama warehouses after the corporation mounted an aggressive campaign against organizing.
Jeff Bezos announced in February he would step down as chief executive officer of the company, which he founded. The chief executive of Amazon Web Services will take over the role on 5 July.
Amazon did not immediately respond to request for comment.
