"We'd Spend Hours Each Week Unpacking & Throwing the Food Away" donated from Amazon

[Demovictory9]

This wasn’t the first charitable gift Amazon has given Mary’s Place. In 2016, the company provided the nonprofit with one of its unused properties in downtown Seattle, a former Travelodge, to create a temporary homeless shelter. After that building closed for construction, the shelter moved to another unused Amazon building in the same area, a former Days Inn, where it’s currently based. A few months after that, in late 2016, the company also started offering Mary’s Place free food for residents. It had just opened its new checkout-free Amazon Go store down the street from the shelter—at first as a service for its own employees, though it opened to the public earlier this year. Like most grocery operations, at the end of the day the store had leftover, pre-made food that was still good to eat but wouldn’t be sold the following day.

----------------------------

The sandwich handoff was supposed to be simple. At first, according to three former Mary’s Place employees, Amazon would deliver crates of pre-made food to the shelter; once the shelter moved to the Days Inn location in 2017, it was close enough to the Amazon Go store that Mary’s Place employees went to pick up the food themselves. But former and current staff told me it was hard to predict how much food the shelter would receive each day, with the haul ranging anywhere from five to 40 crates filled with packaged meals, like tuna and chicken-salad sandwiches, the bulk of which needed refrigeration. At around 9:30 p.m. on Monday through Friday, Amazon Go would have the food ready for pickup. Not only did staff not know how much to expect, they often didn’t have enough refrigerator space back at Mary’s Place to store it all—which meant the small, already time-strapped shelter staff on evening or overnight shifts had to throw away the food or else find another home for it, since it was too late to serve it at that evening’s meal.

“It would be this panicked scramble,” one of the former Mary’s Place employees said. “It was always more than we could fit in the refrigerators that we had, which were mostly full of the food that we as a shelter bought to feed people.”

“It would be this panicked scramble.”
— A former Mary’s Place employee
Staff also weren’t told how long it had been since the food was last refrigerated. “We often don’t know how long the food has been sitting out,” the current Mary’s Place employee said. “We care about the people who the food is meant to serve, and even if [the food] does get to guests, it’s not in the best condition.”

In addition to the downtown location, Mary’s Place operates six other shelters in Seattle, serving individuals and families with 680 beds each night. But Amazon didn’t deliver the food to the other Mary’s Place locations, nor did the shelter consistently set aside additional resources to distribute the donations each night, according to four sources. Often that meant Mary’s Place employees had to drive some food to other locations themselves—that is, when they didn’t simply toss it because of refrigeration space or concerns over its freshness. And since Seattle has strict composting rules, the foodstuffs had to be separated from the packaging first. “The last thing we wanted to do was throw out food,” one former Mary’s Place employee told me. “Still, we’d spend hours each week unpacking and throwing the food away.”

https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/amazon-gives-seattles-marys-place-free-food-and-real-estate-and-is-a-total-pain.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Amazon must be writing this off as a tax break

They don't give a shit how this is works, just get the goddamn stuff off our property before midnight.

[WhiteTara]

15. full retail price for garbage tax break.

[7wo7rees]

2. Starting to believe Bezos may be flat out evil. Period.

No two ways around it.

[Lee-Lee]

13. So they have donated the facility and way more food than is even needed

And that makes them evil?

Most places that provide services for the homeless would love to be in such a “tough” spot than someone is giving them a facility to shelter people in and so much food it’s more than they can use.

Criticism of Bezos and Amazon is called for in many ways, but I can’t take away from this article anything bad.

[mcar]

19. How is this evil?

Amazon donates a building and provides an unspecified amount of food daily and that's evil?

[NCTraveler]

25. Asshole is donating more food than they can handle.

Pure evil.

[mythology]

28. I think you might be letting some sort of bias cloud your view

Either that or you have no idea what the word evil means.

[Iggo]

31. He is a dick, but not for this.

Good concept, not the best execution (so far).

Whether he cares or not is another story.

[riversedge]

3. good grief. How simple would it be for Amazon to label and track the food for the pantries???? It

it what Amazon does for pete's sake.

[elehhhhna]

26. Pre made packaged sandwiches are required to have dates on them

Also can be frozen. shelter needs some freezers and it sounds whiny. Or don't accept the food. Gotta be another shelter in town...maybe they can handle this better?

[dembotoz]

4. Sounds like a need for fine tuning rather than condemnation

Not every blessing comes in perfect containers

[msongs]

5. no good deed goes unpunished nt

[LisaL]

6. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Sounds like they were getting the food for free and if it was such an inconvenience/was unusable presumably they could have declined it.

[atreides1]

7. Sure

Feed people spoiled food and if they become ill, just tell them "don't look a gift horse in the mouth"!!!

But the homeless could always decline it, right?

[Voltaire2]

9. The article doesn't actually say the food was spoiled.

[LanternWaste]

33. Is your use of reductio ad absurdum purposeful

Is your use of reductio ad absurdum purposeful, or simply another accidental fallacy?

[Arkansas Granny]

8. Do I have this right? Amazon has donated a building for the use of this shelter and

is donating large quantities of fresh food at the end of the day. The shelter says that they are receiving so much food that they don't have enough refrigerator space for it so some of the food has to be discarded, including a portion that is of questionable quality.

Surely a solution is lurking in here somewhere instead of complaining about Amazon's generosity.

[joshdawg]

10. Yes!

You got the point of the article. Thank you!

[Sherman A1]

12. How difficult would it be to contact

Other assistance groups in the area and share the extra food items? I believe that phones work in the area and a call only takes a moment or two.

[Phentex]

22. That was my first thought...

sure, it might be an unpredictable amount, but wouldn't any amount be helpful?

[FSogol]

18. Sounds like they need a larger walk-in cooler. They should get some bids and crowdfund for it. n/t

[mcar]

20. Seems like a good problem to have

Perhaps a local appliance store could donate another refrigerator.

[GusBob]

23. As the saying goes

Beggars can't be choosers

Sounds to me like Amazon, which does a business to run which includes getting things to paying customers on time, was very generous.

[NewJeffCT]

24. not just one building

they donated another building while the first was being refurbished.

[JI7]

11. can't they let them know ahead of time how much food there would be ?

or the shelter can just take what they need ?

and in cases of excess food maybe they can contact other food charities nearby that might want it ?

[Buns_of_Fire]

14. "Oh, Lord, I need a car. Please, please, please. Amen."

*Poof* A car appears.
"I wanted red."

[gollygee]

16. I see two issues

First, Amazon is being incredibly generous.

Second, when people or groups make donations, they do often think about what they'd like to donate, how easy it is for them to donate, etc., instead of what is needed. I volunteer regularly at a food pantry and we see things donated that really aren't helpful at a food pantry allll the time. And honestly the ideal thing to donate to a food pantry is money - we know exactly what we want and we can buy food much cheaper than you can.

But this is an issue of needing to tweak the details of someone's generosity. It is not an issue of Amazon being bad.

[MineralMan]

17. It sounds more like a communications problem than something

that should be a news story. Perhaps they need to discuss the issues with the Amazon people. Surely, a solution is available for all of these problems. Just saying...

[lpbk2713]

21. Could Amazon donate a small used van?

Mary's could distribute the excess to other area shelters. The van could be another tax break.

[gollygee]

27. They could also donate more refrigerators, as that seems to be part of the problem.

This seems to be largely a communication problem.

[Beaverhausen]

29. I'm going to guess that by the end of the day they will have done just that

[gollygee]

30. Probably

They probably had no idea their donations were causing problems.

[Grammy23]

34. It is not unlike the problems caused when people donate inappropriate

Clothing to be sent to disaster areas. Sending heavy winter coats, boots and hats or frilly party dresses to Haiti after a hurricane happens all the time. Even used underwear gets donated. Then someone has to sort through spike heels, faux fur coats and negligees to find the things that can be used. And then the unusable stuff has to be trashed or sent somewhere else. Big hassle. But the people sending it meant well but were not very well informed on what was needed. They just felt motivated to do something.

Our local food bank had a refrigeration problem, too. Things that could have been kept edible longer had to be given away on the spot or trashed. (Hint: if the recipients don’t have refrigeration either, chances are good it will end up trashed either way.) So they got a grant from a local organization that gives out large grants based on a well thought out plan of what you intend to do with the money. Commercial size refrigerators and freezers were purchased and the donations that could not be given away immediately could be frozen and given out as needed. Problem solved.

Making Amazon the villain in this story is looking the gift horse in the mouth. Someone needs to go back to Amazon to explain the issue or look to another organization to help raise the funds to freeze the excess donations. Or just do a fund raiser themselves. If they explain the problem, often the community will step up and help.

[Iggo]

32. And they could also keep better track of how long the food has been un-refrigerated.

But like a poster said above, this is a fine-tuning problem

[Leighbythesea]

35. An Article by The NY Times describes Amazon's

Corporate culture. Just extrapolate, and you can see how much they "care"....

Long article, mortifying, but worth the read.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

Even many Amazonians who have worked on Wall Street and at start-ups say the workloads at the new South Lake Union campus can be extreme: marathon conference calls on Easter Sunday and Thanksgiving, criticism from bosses for spotty Internet access on vacation, and hours spent working at home most nights or weekends.

“One time I didn’t sleep for four days straight,” said Dina Vaccari, who joined in 2008 to sell Amazon gift cards to other companies and once used her own money, without asking for approval, to pay a freelancer in India to enter data so she could get more done. “These businesses were my babies, and I did whatever I could to make them successful."

(Sounds like spending your own money on travel and other things was encouraged. )

Also,

Amazon employees are held accountable for a staggering array of metrics, a process that unfolds in what can be anxiety-provoking sessions called business reviews, held weekly or monthly among various teams. A day or two before the meetings, employees receive printouts, sometimes up to 50 or 60 pages long, several workers said. At the reviews, employees are cold-called and pop-quizzed on any one of those thousands of numbers.

Explanations like “we’re not totally sure” or “I’ll get back to you” are not acceptable, many employees said. Some managers sometimes dismissed such responses as “stupid” ....

There's so much more. Employee are encouraged to call each other's managers and leave criticisms of each other in voice mail. Something to that effect.

After reading the article, I started to re-think using Amazon.