Pros
- Some degree of autonomy - You'll get fit doing this job
Cons
- On paper the pay looks OK, but hardly great, but you need to work more than a day to pay for a the van so when shifts are not regular you will soon find you earn less than minimum wage. - Amazon's policy is to outsource as much as possible to wash their hands of their responsibility to treating employees with respect and humanity. Doing this jobs lacks both. A person is a unit of productivity and a day's work is the maximum they can possibly squeeze out of you before you drop down exhausted. There are countless better ways to make a living, especially with a clean driver's license - You will find you are so busy that you need to pee in a pot that you carry in the cab as you do not have time to take even a toilet break. (if you are an Amazon customer, always wash your hands when you receive a parcel as it may have been peed on in the back of the van) - You will often be delivering 250+ parcels a day, often with over 150 drops so lots of maneuvers and lots of pressure, especially in the dark. The risk of accidents is HIGH and there is constant pressure to complete your route within the timeline. - You will be delivering for 7+ hours but you still have to get to the depot in the morning to collect your parcels, with waiting time and then return any undelivered items at the end of the day. IT'S A LONG DAY. Don't expect to have any energy left to do anything else once you've finished even if you are 25 years old! - Amazon flex app is AWFUL. There are no enforced breaks as they know full well you don't have time to take them. You are running around like crazy all day and if you want to finish on time you need to cut corners which includes leaving parcels outside which often get lost or stolen. Your team is measured against KPIs and if you don't meet them Amazon will pull the contract with virtually zero notice and give it to another contractor. - Routes very massively, with some virtually impossible to complete in time. Amazon flex has taken me into fields and up farm tracks where there is no room to turn. Sometimes the GPS fails and it thinks you're in another location or it goes into stand-by adding more pressure to your day. You have little control over the routes and often it's more time consuming to override them. They are ill thought through with farm drops planned at the end of the day in the dark. You will often find yourself back on the same street or road that was difficult to access first time for a second or third time or circling back into the town centre on the way somewhere else in a street you were in 15 minutes earlier!! At least an hour a day could be saved with better routes. - Routes can be dropped by Amazon at zero notice and suddenly you don't have work for the day - There is no guarantees of work. So outside of peak periods you may only get 2 or 3 shifts a week. Once you've paid for the van, you're earnings less than minimum wage. - DON'T DO IT TO YOURSELF. YOU DESERVE BETTER. CLEANING TOILETS WILL PROBABLY GIVE YOU MORE SELF-ESTEEM
