Corporate employees of Amazon were asked on Monday to volunteer their time to the company’s warehouses to assist with grocery delivery as it heads into its annual discount spree known as Prime Day.
In a Slack message reviewed by the Guardian that went to thousands of white-collar workers in the New York City area from engineers to marketers, an Amazon area manager called for corporate “volunteers to help us out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on our biggest days yet”. It is not clear how many took up the offer.
That’s not generally what “volunteer” means. From the article,
Your quote is from the sub-headline, which was probably written by an editor if not AI. I wouldn’t put too much trust in it without supporting details. To the contrary, the detail about being able to step into a conference room to take work calls implies that they are expected to stay connected to their normal job and not bill it as vacation/time off.
The way it works in my company (not Amazon) is that office workers will occasionally be given “volunteer” opportunities to help with a temporary workload crunch and these will be paid at your normal salary. Sometimes it’s a good deal to get a break from routine, show the boss you’re a team player, and pad out weak progress on yearly goals. Other times it may require uncomfortable work and prolonged absence from home (without overtime pay). But they’re upfront about it and participation is truly voluntary.