Asking a delivery driver to dance is deranged – but Amazon bosses appear to disagree

theguardian.com:

Being an Amazon delivery driver sure sounds like a blast: you get to see the world (well, part of it anyway) as you cruise the open road. Yes, the hours are gruelling. Yes, you sometimes have to pee in water bottles because there’s not enough time and no available facilities in which you can take a proper bathroom break. Yes, hauling heavy packages means you are at high risk of being injured on the job. Yes, creepy surveillance equipment tracks your every move. But you know what? You get the unparalleled satisfaction of knowing that your hard work is helping Jeff Bezos afford an obscenely large superyacht. And while the work may be difficult, there are also moments of joy: you get to jive on the job! According to Vice, TikTok users have started leaving notes in the Amazon app asking their delivery drivers to dance for their door cameras. Then these delightful people post the videos on social media.

There are, I suppose, some delivery drivers who may enjoy being told to do a chicken dance as they drop off a package. But many of the drivers that Vice spoke to understandably found the dance requests demeaning and irritating. “I’ve only seen these requests in the app,” one driver from upstate New York said. “If they said it in person, I would probably smack the shit out of them.” And that driver would be justified: asking an Amazon worker to dance for your amusement is, to put it bluntly, deranged.

It would appear that the PR suits at Amazon HQ would beg to differ. Amazon’s official TikTok account has been boosting the dystopic trend and sharing videos of delivery people dancing on command with cutesy little comments like “poppin’ and lockin’ while box droppin’”.

It should be said, of course, that these drivers are not being