An Amazon spokesperson told HuffPost on Friday that the denial was due to an error in Scott-Windham’s time off request and said she has the company’s “full support.”
What sort of reasonable “error” could possibly deny something like this?
It’s the “we didn’t expect the news to pick this up and start reporting on it. We don’t want this kind of bad press” error.
Really though it does sound like a retarded mistake I don’t think anyone was sipping on a whisky, smiling and hitting the deny button.
It’s clearly an automatic deny button.
The small error that when they decided to violate FMLA laws, they didn’t realize anyone was watching.
I don’t know how Amazon works but I imagine it’s some sort of form submission and she chose the wrong option.
Don’t think that makes it okay, time off requests should be considered by a human who actually interacts with the employee, in my opinion, but I can see it happening. Dealt with that when I worked for Walmart. I definitely got a few days off that I submitted through the automated system online and have no idea if anyone ever approved.
My entire impression of HR at amazon warehouses is HR is there to onboard new hires and occasionally act as an equivalent to t1 tech support. You go to the amazon worker subreddit and about half the posts talking about a problem have comments like ‘yeah just call corporate HR they’ll fix it’ because onsite HR fucked something up.
edit: Also worth noting, that same subreddit is pointing out that medical leave of absence is always approved by default with 30 days to provide proof so yeah she probably put in for the wrong type of leave.
Most people who have worked at an amazon warehouse will tell you the same story: yes amazon sucks, no not for that reason in the news. Amazon was the 2nd best warehouse I’ve worked at, but that’s more a condemnation of the industry than praise for amazon.