Amazon’s Poo Problem Reeks to High Heaven

• Amazon delivered soiled diapers to a New Jersey family.
• Some Amazon workers have been caught defecting in customers’ yards.
• Amazon’s treatment of employees and contractors is largely to blame for its ‘Poo Connection.’

Peanut butter and jelly. Batman and Robin. Mario and Luigi. Amazon and poo. Okay, so that last pairing might not be a particularly famous double team, but it’s one that seems to be cropping up with surprising regularity these days.

Yes, really, because on Friday WPIX-TV reported that Amazon sent a New Jersey family a package of soiled diapers. That’s right, poo.

Of course, the family didn’t intend to order poo. Instead, they ordered two boxes of diapers from the “Amazon Warehouse,” which deals in returned items at cut prices. Unfortunately, some poor soul at Amazon forgot to check the package the Sales family eventually received. So unbeknownst to Mrs. Sales, when she went to take a ‘fresh’ diaper from her newly delivered package, she picked up an unusually heavy and stinky specimen.

To be fair to Amazon, it offered the Sales family a refund. It also provided the following statement:

We work hard to provide customers with a great experience and deeply regret that this situation did not live up to our high standards. We worked directly with the customer to address this situation.

The retail giant claims that “this” situation did not live up to its “high” standards. However, Amazon and poo have been in the news together more times than it would care to admit. And to be honest, this association isn’t a coincidence.

Amazon Special Delivery

An Amazon-contracted courier relieves himself outside homes in Sacramento. (Photo credit: Nemy Bautista/Facebook)

For instance, a number of delivery drivers contracted by Amazon have been caught pooping in customers’ yards. In July, a British customer filmed an Amazon driver relieving himself in her garden. She posted the video on social media, writing, “Amazon….what a pile of [poo emoji] it is literally what they deliver to you!!!”

She isn’t the only Amazon customer who’s received this kind of special delivery. Back in November 2017, a California woman also happened to capture a defecating Amazon courier on her CCTV system. In her case, the courier’s supervisor came to literally clean up the mess his colleague had made. “He was in shock when he saw the size of ‘it’,” the disgruntled customer later said on Facebook.

Is this all just a big coincidence, or does Amazon have some kind of inherent affinity for excrement? Well, investigations support the second option. In 2016, a BBC documentary about UK-based Amazon delivery drivers revealed that at least some of them were forced to defecate in bags. Why? Because Amazon and the third-party delivery services it contracts pressured them into working 11-hour days without toilet breaks.

So there you go. Amazon workers aren’t despicable barbarians who get a kick out of pooping outside. No, they’re simply overworked and underpaid, as a 2018 Business Insider investigation also discovered. That’s why the occasional customer catches them doing strange things in their yards. It’s also probably why the Sales family received soiled diapers.

Revenge Of The Poo

But Amazon’s ‘Poo Connection’ doesn’t end there. No, there’s one final twist to this tale, and it comes from the customer side of things.

Many Amazon customers have experienced delivered packages being swiped by porch thieves. Some of them have developed a novel retaliation for this crime. And unsurprisingly enough, it involves the use of poo.

This past Christmas, for example, a Missouri family exacted revenge on a serial package thief by putting soiled diapers in a used Amazon box and leaving it on their doorstep. Likewise, the previous holiday season saw a Florida woman put a week’s supply of dog poo in a bag and then package it.

Clearly, there’s something about poo and Amazon. Whether it’s overworked employees or victimized customers, the recurring manifestation of excrement is a sure sign that something isn’t quite right with the world’s largest online marketplace. So maybe it’s time the company let its employees and contractors take more toilet breaks.