Amazon asked corporate employees to help fulfill grocery deliveries for Prime Day

Amazon has asked its white collar employees to help fulfill grocery deliveries for Prime Day, according to The Guardian. The company has reportedly sent out a Slack message to its corporate workers in New York City, asking for "volunteers to help [it] out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on [its] biggest days yet." That message went out to everyone from engineers to marketers. Specifically, Amazon wants its officer workers to "volunteer" their time in two-hour shifts between 10AM and 6PM from Tuesday to Friday this week. 

The volunteers are "needed" to pick items for grocery orders from Amazon's Fresh warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They're expected to pack the groceries in bags and boxes and then place them on receiving carts. Since the volunteers can't completely abandon their normal jobs, they will be able to take calls and meetings in a conference room. New York is one of Amazon's busiest locations, and the company most likely expects an increase in grocery orders this week, since it offers Fresh discounts for Prime Day. Couple that with a free trial for its delivery services, and people are bound to put in orders during the event. 

Amazon is known to hire thousands of extra workers to help fulfill the surge in orders for Prime Day, which takes place from July 8 to July 11 this year. So why did it have to ask corporate employees to volunteer? Well, the manager who sent out the call said it would help "connect" Amazon's warehouse and corporate teams. Griffin Buch, Amazon's spokesperson, said this wasn't the first time that Amazon's corporate employees have been "invited to volunteer" for warehouse fulfillment. "This support is entirely optional, and it allows corporate employees to get closer to customers while enabling our store teams to focus on the work that’s most impactful," Buch explained.

To note, Amazon doesn't have a great track record when it comes to the working conditions in its warehouses. A previous report from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) showed that Amazon warehouse workers suffer more injuries that their counterparts outside of Amazon. The company has also been accused of union-busting several times in the past. 

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