An Illinois Amazon driver says her supervisor told her that she would be fired if she stopped delivering packages during the warnings of tornadoes in the area.
The delivery driver informed Bloomberg that her base was located in Edwardsville, Illinois, which was the same location where six Amazon employees died after a tornado struck a warehouse last week.
About 80 minutes before the tornado touched down at the warehouse, the driver said she sent a message to the supervisor saying, “radios been going off.”
However, she didn’t receive the response she felt was appropriate. The supervisor told her to “just keep driving,” adding that “we can’t just call people back for a warning unless Amazon tells us to.”
When the driver sent another message to her supervisor, about 30 minutes later, saying she could hear tornado alarms, the supervisor replied to say the driver should continue with her deliveries, according to the texts reported by Bloomberg.
The supervisor also sent another message, telling the driver to “shelter in place, for now, I just got word from Amazon,” and then said, “give it about 15-20 minutes and then continue as normal.”
The driver informed the supervisor in the following message that she was going to return to her base for her own safety and then added that there was no place to shelter near her. She also told the supervisor that and the storm would be on top of her in 30 minutes, Bloomberg reported.
“If you decided to come back, that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won’t be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are. If you decide to return with your packages, it will be viewed as you refusing your route, which will ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning,” the supervisor then wrote in the text to the driver, according to Bloomberg.
The supervisor then told the driver to stop and find shelter because a tornado had just hit the warehouse.
An Amazon rep told Bloomberg in a statement that the supervisor did not follow the company’s standard safety protocols and should have told the driver to find shelter if she heard tornado sirens.
“Under no circumstance should the dispatcher have threatened the driver’s employment, and we’re investigating the full details of this incident and will take any necessary action,” the spokesperson added.
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