An employee directly emailed Jeff Bezos about her pay and she couldn’t believe his response.
The brave warehouse worker contacted the Amazon boss to complain after feeling frustrated with being underpaid by his company.
Little did she know how the act would would impact other employees on leave from the firm.
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Tara Jones works in an Amazon warehouse in Oklahoma and sent a direct email to Bezos in 2020 after finding out that she was being underpaid by $90 of the $540 she was owed while on leave.
"I'm crying as I write this email"
Her email triggered an internal investigation which uncovered that workers on leave were in fact being underpaid.
It also revealed that there were huge problems with Amazon payroll and human resources.
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In the note to the billionaire, the new mother wrote: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up.
“I’m crying as I write this email.”
According to The New York Times, the issue went on for at least 18 months with 179 warehouses being affected.
One worker in the report ended up having his car repossessed and he and his wife were forced to sell their wedding rings just to afford food and pay their medical bills.
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Other employees who were on medical leave were automatically fired after the company’s attendance software recorded their leave down as absences.
Amazon employs over 1.5 million people and has been heavily critiqued for its treatment of staff.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, to share their views, one user wrote: “This is inexcusable.”
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A second said: “But Jeff is busy in space tourism ignoring the problems on Earth.”
A third claimed: “I know someone fired from a job she loved because Amazon's software registered ‘no show’ or ‘lateness’ in the 2 weeks after she had an abortion and unexpected problems. Her manager's protests were ignored by the Amazon machine.”
And a fourth added: “Seriously, wowww come on back to Earth Jeff…”
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An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave.
“The controls we’ve implemented over the last 18 months have resulted in less than 1% of people experiencing an issue while being on paid leave.
“Certainly, the unprecedented nature of Covid did put a strain on our system’s ability to keep pace with demand and we’ve been hard at work investing and inventing to do better every day.”
Since then, the company has promised to become “Earth’s best employer”, all thanks to one employee’s email to the top boss.