Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal to a Jury of Their Co-Workers
I worked at Amazon developing various portions of the core software that drives their website. Code I wrote runs billions of times per day...<p>While there, I was told to do many things that I think are not a valuable use of my time. I pushed back on many, and attempted to keep productive. It was very frustrating and stressful.<p>Eventually the stress came to a head and I vehemently told my boss that I thought the task I was being told to do was idiotic. I requested to go home for the day sick for mental health reasons, as I was unable to cope with the stress that moment.<p>My boss refused to let me leave for the day and continued arguing with me. The discussion then obviously went too far and I said &quot;I would like to kill [someone who is my friend at Amazon].&quot; I meant it only as an expression of the intensity of how much I was upset. The friend I mention knows this also and would confirm this if asked. I was just freaked out and stressed beyond my capacity to deal.<p>My boss forced me to go back to work after this exchange. After 4 hours he then came and got me and took me to a meeting with HR and security. They accused me of threatening to kill my coworker ( which is a horrible misunderstanding ) I explained clearly that I meant no such thing, and pointed out that I asked to and needed to leave for mental health, and they didn&#x27;t care.<p>They said I have to go home at that point and would be forbidden from returning to work for 2 weeks. This upset me further. I assumed I would never be returning and was being fired. I pleaded with them to just give me the day off as requested and they refused. They forced me to stay home for a week.<p>I went home and told my wife what happened. She had just passed the first trimester of her pregnancy. She saw the doctor about the pregnancy 2 days previous and the baby was perfectly healthy and there were no problems.<p>After learning what happened to me at work, she was so stressed over it that she started bleeding later that day. If I was fired at that moment I would lose my house and be homeless in Seattle; I didn&#x27;t have the funds to endure that.<p>She had a miscarriage 2 days later as a result of the stress and worrying. She nearly bled to death. My child died because of Amazon&#x27;s reckless disregard for mental health.<p>Amazon did allow me to return to work after a week. I went back to my job and had to continue working for the same manager responsible for my child dying for another 4 months.<p>During that time I told anyone who would listen at Amazon what happened.<p>Eventually HR approached me and told me I could not keep telling people and they would fire me if I do.<p>They gave me the following four choices:
1. Quit of my own accord and tell whomever I want ( no severance )
2. Continue talking about it at work and get fired
3. Stop talking about it and retain my job ( my performance was high and I had recent great reviews; they had no other issue with me )
4. Accept a severance of $30,000 and leave the company peaceably ( layoff )<p>I chose option 4 and started my own startup ( carbonstate.com ) I only had enough funds to run my startup for a year, and have not made any money on my product. I have since had to rejoin the industry to pay bills.