Drivers who spoke to Motherboard described not being allowed to carry defensive spray and inadequate training.
For Arturo Solozano, it was just another average day as an Amazon delivery driver. He would drive to a stop, pick out the right package from the back of his van, and walk up to the entrance to set it down before returning to his vehicle. Nothing special. But on one stop, something went wrong.
“I was walking back to the step van, and as I was stepping up, I felt something grab me by my ankle and pull me down,” Solozano said. “I thought, ‘What the heck was this?’”
Solozano turned around to find a stray dog had bitten him, and drawn blood.
“I was like, ‘Damn, this really hurts,” he said. “I called my dispatch, and one of them told me, ‘Just sit tight and try to keep working until I can find someone to help you.’ I was trying to continue on my route. I don’t want to be behind. They’re always asking, ‘How come you’re behind?’ I’m trying to do it, but I just got bit, and it’s hurting a lot to walk.”
Solozano tried to continue delivering for almost two hours, while he waited for his dispatcher to find somebody to take his place. On average, Amazon delivery drivers get around 10 hours a day to complete between 150 and 200 stops. In those two hours, Solozano only managed to do nine.
“All my stops are pretty close to each other, so those nine stops I could’ve probably done in about 15 minutes, but it was taking over an hour,” he said. “It was just hurting so much. I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to go to the hospital.’” The next day, his delivery route took him to the same place, he said.
Solozano is far from the only delivery driver to get attacked by a dog while on the job for Amazon. The subreddit for Amazon drivers is full of posts from workers sharing gruesome images of the aftermath of such attacks. Last year, an Amazon driver was found dead on a customer’s front lawn after being attacked by dogs. Though police did not initially announce a cause of death, they said at the time that he had suffered “a tremendous amount of trauma to his body consistent with canine bites.”
Amazon has a financial incentive to continue sales even if the delivery of them puts their workers in danger. They aren’t going to side with their minimum wage disposal employees over the person who has given them permission to charge his credit card every month.