2018.06.25 我为亚马逊运送包裹，这是个恶梦

shiyi18

TECHNOLOGY
I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare
Amazon Flex allows drivers to get paid to deliver packages from their own vehicles. But is it a good deal for workers?

By Alana Semuels
A stack of Amazon packages overlaid with a clock and a map of San Francisco
Aygun Aliyeva / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic / Google Maps
JUNE 25, 2018
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I’m sure I looked comical as I staggered down a downtown San Francisco street on a recent weekday, arms full of packages—as I dropped one and bent down to pick it up, another fell, and as I tried to rein that one in, another toppled.

Yet it wasn’t funny, not really. There I was, wearing a bright-yellow safety vest and working for Amazon Flex, a program in which the e-commerce giant pays regular people to deliver packages from their own vehicles for $18 to $25 an hour, before expenses. I was racing to make the deliveries before I got a ticket—there are few places for drivers without commercial vehicles to park in downtown San Francisco during the day—and also battling a growing rage as I lugged parcels to offices of tech companies that offered free food and impressive salaries to their employees, who seemed to spend their days ordering stuff online. Technology was allowing these people a good life, but it was just making me stressed and cranky.

“NOT. A. GOOD. DEAL,” I scrawled in my notebook, after having walked down nine flights of stairs, sick of waiting for a freight elevator that may or may not have been broken, and returned to my car for another armful of packages.

Welcome to the future of package delivery. As people shop more online, companies such as Amazon are turning to independent contractors—essentially anyone with a car—to drop parcels at homes and businesses. Flex is necessary because Amazon is growing so quickly—the company shipped 5 billion Prime items last year—that it can’t just rely on FedEx, UPS, and the Postal Service. Flex takes care of “last mile” deliveries, the most complicated part of getting goods from where they’re made to your doorstep. It also allows Amazon to meet increases in demand during the holiday season, Prime Day, and other busy times of the year, a spokesperson told me in an email.

But Flex operates year-round, not just during the holiday season, which suggests there’s another reason for it: It’s cheap. As the larger trucking industry has discovered over the past decade, using independent contractors rather than unionized drivers saves money, because so many expenses are borne by the drivers, rather than the company.

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Amazon has rolled out Flex in more than 50 cities, including New York, Indianapolis, and Memphis, Tennessee. The company doesn’t share information about how many drivers it has, but one Seattle economist calculated that 11,262 individuals drove for Flex in California from October 2016 to March 2017, based on information Amazon shared with him to help the company defend a lawsuit about Flex drivers.

On the surface, these jobs, like many others in the gig economy, seem like a good deal. But Flex workers get no health insurance or pension, and are not guaranteed a certain number of hours or shifts a week. They are not covered by basic labor protections such as minimum wage and overtime pay, and they don’t get unemployment benefits if they suddenly can’t work anymore. And when workers calculate how much they’re pulling in on a daily basis, many don’t account for the expenses that they’ll incur doing these jobs. “A lot of these gig-type services essentially rely on people not doing the math on what it actually costs you,” Sucharita Kodali, a Forrester analyst who covers e-commerce, told me.

One Amazon Flex driver in Cleveland, Chris Miller, 63, told me that though he makes $18 an hour, he spends about 40 cents per mile he drives on expenses like gas and car repairs. He bought his car used, with 40,000 miles on it. It now has 140,000, after driving for Flex for seven months, and Uber and Lyft before that. That means he’s incurred about $40,000 in expenses—costs he didn’t think about initially, such as changing the oil more frequently and replacing headlights and taillights. He made slightly less than $10 an hour driving for Uber, he told me, once he factored in these expenses; Flex pays a bit better.

Miller’s wife has a full-time job with benefits, so his Flex earnings are helpful for paying off his family’s credit-card bills. But “if I were trying to make this work as a single guy on my own, it would be tough to do that,” he said. His costs might actually be lower than what most drivers spend: The standard mileage rate for use of a car for business purposes, according to the IRS, is 54.5 cents a mile in 2018.

I became an Amazon Flex independent contractor by downloading an app, going through a background check, and watching 19 videos that explained in great detail the process of delivering packages. (I did not get paid for the time it took to watch these videos, and there was no guarantee that I would be approved as a driver once I watched the videos.) The videos covered topics such as what to do when a customer decides they don’t want their order anymore (“Isn’t this customer nuts?!” Amazon asks), and how to deliver alcohol (asking customers how old they are, it turns out, is not an acceptable form of checking ID). Because the videos were followed by quizzes, I actually had to pay attention.

After I was finally approved as a driver, a process that took weeks, I signed up for a shift. Flex drivers get work by opening the app and clicking on available shifts; current Flex drivers told me that newbies get offered the best hours and rates. My first shift was from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, delivering packages from an Amazon logistics center in South San Francisco, about 30 minutes from my apartment. Different shifts offer varying rates; my three-and-a-half-hour block was going to net me $70, according to the app, though of course I had to pay for my own fuel and tolls. The app would tell me where to pick up the packages, where to drop them off, and what route to take, so the task seemed pretty easy. I anticipated a few leisurely hours driving between houses in a sleepy San Francisco suburb, listening to an audiobook as I dropped packages on doorsteps, smelling the lavender and sagebrush that grace many front lawns here.

My first hint that the afternoon was not going to be the bucolic day I had imagined came when I drove into the Amazon warehouse to pick up the packages. I was handed a yellow safety vest to wear inside the warehouse so other drivers could see me, “compliments of Amazon,” a man told me, and I was directed to a parking spot where a cart of packages awaited. I began loading them into my trunk, but paused when I saw the addresses printed on them. I was assigned 43 packages but only two addresses: two office buildings on Market Street, the main thoroughfare in downtown San Francisco. This meant driving into downtown San Francisco in the middle of a workday, stashing my car somewhere and walking between floors and offices in the two buildings.

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“Where am I supposed to park?” I asked the two men who were guiding traffic in the warehouse, as I loaded giant boxes and slim white Prime envelopes into my overstuffed car. They both shrugged. “Lots of people just get tickets,” one told me.

I was still feeling optimistic as I headed through 30 minutes of traffic to downtown. I saw container ships on the horizon of the bay as I drove up Highway 101, and for a moment, felt like an integral part of a global delivery chain that brought these packages from China, across the sea, to the port, over the roads, into the backseat of my car, and now to the people eagerly awaiting them.


By some measures, delivering packages is one of the few “good” jobs left in America for people without college degrees. The Teamsters represent roughly 260,000 UPS workers, who make about $36 an hour. The American Postal Workers Union represents about 156,000 clerks and support workers, who make, on average, $75,500 annually, according to the union. The National Association of Letter Carriers, which did not respond to requests for comment, represents the actual Postal Service delivery workers.

Yet these union jobs are under pressure. “These are good jobs, and they can get much worse really fast,” Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who writes about the trucking industry, told me. The Teamsters recently gave workers the go-ahead to call a strike amid ongoing contract negotiations, although the two sides said late last week they’d reached a tentative deal. The APWU is about to begin contract negotiations too. Workers are pushing back over weekend deliveries and the lower pay and benefits given to part-time employees. UPS now has a second tier of part-time workers who make as little as $10 an hour; the Postal Service has added workers it calls “city carrier assistants” who make less than regular mail carriers.

And then, of course, there’s Flex. If the delivery workforce continues to shift toward non-unionized workers and independent contractors, the industry could go from one where workers can support a family to one where they are making less than minimum wage. That’s what happened in the long-haul trucking industry, according to Viscelli. The average long-haul trucker today makes about $40,000, down from the equivalent of $100,000 in 1980.

“There’s been a whole movement to try to contain costs and undercut labor costs by classifying drivers as independent contractors so companies don’t have to worry about wage laws,” says Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who has filed numerous lawsuits against tech companies for misclassifying workers as independent contractors. Amazon Flex employees sometimes make below the minimum wage in the city where they live—including in Seattle, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour—and they do not receive time and a half for the hours they work past 40 hours a week, according to a lawsuit Liss-Riordan filed on behalf of Flex workers in U.S. District Court in Washington State. (Amazon said it does not comment on pending litigation.)

For some people, being an independent contractor is one of the best parts of driving for Flex. Jeremy Brown, a 36-year-old driver in Milwaukee, told me that he likes the freedom of being his own boss. If he wakes up in the morning and doesn’t feel like driving for Flex, he can go back to sleep, or spend his time leading the music worship service at his church, or homeschooling his kids. He makes enough money—about $120 a day, when he factors in expenses—from Flex that his family relies on it for the bulk of their income.


Brown often finishes his two-hour shifts in a shorter time than Amazon has estimated they will take. But if a Flex driver requires longer to complete their deliveries than Amazon has calculated it will, they don’t get paid for the extra time. (An Amazon spokesperson told me that “the vast majority” of blocks are completed within or in less than the estimated time.) If the driver gets into a car accident, the driver, not Amazon, is responsible for medical and insurance costs. If a driver gets a speeding ticket, the driver pays. (UPS and FedEx usually pay their trucks’ tickets, but Amazon explicitly says in the contract Flex drivers sign that drivers are responsible for fees and fines­.)

Because of the way Flex works, drivers rarely know when blocks of time will become available, and don’t know when they’ll be working or how much they’ll be making on any given day. Brown likes to work two shifts delivering groceries for Amazon, from 4:30 to 6:30 a.m. and from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m., but the morning we talked, no 4:30 shifts were available. He sometimes wakes up at 3 a.m. and does what Flex workers call the “sip and tap,” sitting at home and drinking coffee while refreshing the app, hoping new blocks come up. He does not get paid for the hour he spends tapping. Twice in the last year, he’s been barred from seeing new blocks for seven days because Amazon accused him of using a bot to grab blocks—he says he just taps the app so frequently that Amazon assumes he’s cheating. When he is barred from seeing blocks, he has no recourse but to repeatedly email Amazon, which has never led to his suspension being lifted. Amazon also does not break down how much he receives in tips and how much he receives in pay from the company—for all he knows, people are tipping him $20 and Amazon is paying him less than minimum wage. And he doesn’t have a boss he can ask what’s going on.


Kelly Cheeseman, an Amazon spokesperson, told me that Flex is a great opportunity for people to be their own boss and set their own schedule. If workers prefer to be full-time employees, rather than independent contractors, the company has a “wide variety” of full- and part-time opportunities, she said. (Of course, many of the full-time jobs are physically challenging as well. Chris Miller, the Cleveland worker, told me that he preferred working as a contractor to working as an employee for Amazon, which is infamous for high levels of stress and pressure among employees.)

Cheeseman said that most Flex workers are doing the job as a side gig to make money when they’re in school or raising kids. But Nikolay Akunts, a driver who administers a Facebook group for Flex workers in the Bay Area, told me that 70 to 80 percent of the drivers in the group are doing so full-time. (Akunts drives for Flex in Sunnyvale, California, from 4:30 to 8:30 a.m. and then goes to his full-time job at a software company.)

Even people who work for Flex full-time know they can’t always depend on the app to make money. Akunts said that people often get “deactivated,” which means they receive a message telling them they can no longer drive for Flex. Sometimes the workers don’t know why they’ve been terminated and their contract annulled, he said. It can take as long as a month to get reinstated. Akunts, who likes working for Flex and makes a lot of money doing so, told me that he’s one of the only drivers left after three years delivering packages in Sunnyvale who hasn’t been deactivated or quit. “Amazon keeps you on a high standard,” Akunts said. If someone ordered a grocery delivery but doesn’t answer the phone, Akunts keeps trying—the customer might be in the shower or on the other line, he said. This dedication to the customer, he said, is what Amazon expects from its workers.


When I arrived at the Market Street address where the first batch of packages was supposed to be delivered, I swiped “I’ve arrived” on the Flex app. The app informed me that I should actually be delivering the packages via the freight elevator on Ellis Street, in the back of the building—a two-minute walk, but a traffic-choked 10-minute drive, away. Once I arrived, I discovered there was nowhere to park legally. I was already nearly an hour into my shift and hadn’t delivered a package yet, so I parked at a red parking meter reserved for trucks with six wheels or more from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and started to make trips to the building, my arms full of parcels.


Flex drivers often fill their cars to the brim before delivering packages. (Alana Semuels / The Atlantic)
I tried to move quickly so that I wasn’t leaving my car unattended for very long, but after walking in circles through the building, I reemerged onto Ellis Street and encountered a parking-enforcement officer about to write me a ticket. I explained my difficulty: that I was delivering for Amazon, but there was nowhere to park, given that I didn’t have commercial plates. What was I supposed to do? My only option, because I was driving a personal car, he said, was to park in a garage or deliver the packages at night. But lots of people risk it and park illegally at meters, he told me—the number of parking citations issued in the first three months of the year for people parking illegally at red and yellow meters grew 29 percent from 2016, according to data provided to me by the city. I eventually persuaded him not to give me a ticket, which would have cost $110 and wiped out my earnings for the day, but even as he pulled away, he warned me that another officer could be coming by soon and wouldn’t hesitate to write me one. Later, when I returned to the warehouse, I encountered a few Flex drivers who had two people in the car, presumably so one could drive and watch out for traffic-enforcement officers while the other hopped out to deliver packages.

Parking headaches weren’t the only problem. One of the packages I had to deliver was a huge box weighing more than 30 pounds. Because of the limited parking, I ended up walking two blocks with it, resting every 100 steps or so. At one point, a friendly police officer tried to lift it for kicks and groaned audibly. The security guard at the front door of the office building chastised me for carrying the box, and told me that I should be using a dolly to transport it. (None of the 19 videos I had to watch to be a Flex driver recommended bringing a delivery cart or a dolly.) Had I injured myself carrying the package, I would not have been able to receive workers’ compensation or paid medical time off. I also would have been responsible for my own medical care. Brown, the Milwaukee Amazon Flex driver, is the sole provider for his family, and uses BadgerCare, the Wisconsin health-insurance program for low-income residents, for his family’s insurance.

And then there was the fact that the Flex technology itself was difficult to use. Flex workers are supposed to scan each package before they deliver it, but the app wouldn’t accept my scans. When I called support, unsure of what to do, I received a recorded messaging saying support was experiencing technical difficulties but would be up again soon. Then I got a message on my phone telling me the current average wait time for support was “less than 114,767 minutes.” I ended up just handing the packages to people in the offices without scanning them, hoping that someone, somewhere, was tracking where they went. (Amazon says it is constantly taking driver feedback into consideration to improve Flex.)


Two of the small offices I was supposed to deliver packages to were locked, and there was no information about where to leave the deliveries. When I finally reached support and asked what to do with those undeliverable packages, I was told I could either drive them back to the warehouse in South San Francisco, 35 minutes away through worsening traffic, or keep trying to deliver them until the recipients returned. When I tried to use the app to call the recipients, it directed me to the wrong phone numbers; I eventually called a phone number printed on an office door and left a message. But there was no efficient way to register my problems with Amazon—I was on my own.

All my frustration really hit when I went to the second office building on Market Street, home to a few big tech companies. One of them took up multiple floors, smelled strongly of pizza, and had dog leashes and kibble near the front door. Young workers milled around with laptops and lattes, talking about weekend plans. They were benefiting from the technology boom, sharing in the prosperity that comes with a company’s rapid growth. Technology was making their jobs better—they worked in offices that provided free food and drinks, and they received good salaries, benefits, and stock options. They could click a button and use Amazon to get whatever they wanted delivered to their offices—I brought 16 packages for 13 people to one office; one was so light I was sure it was a pack of gum, another felt like a bug-spray container.


Until then, I had been, like them, blithely ordering things on Amazon so I wouldn’t have to wait in line at a store or go searching for a particular product (even though I knew, from talking with warehouse workers, that many of the jobs that get those packages to my door aren’t good ones). But now technology was enabling Amazon to hire me to deliver these packages with no benefits or perks. If one of these workers put the wrong address on the package, they would get a refund, while I was scurrying around trying to figure out what they meant when they listed their address as “fifth floor” and there was no fifth floor. How could these two different types of jobs exist in the same economy?

Gig-economy jobs like this one are becoming more and more common. The number of “non-employer firms” in the ground-transportation sector—essentially freelancers providing rides through various platforms—grew 69 percent from 2010 to 2014, the most recent year for which there is data available, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of Census Bureau and Moody’s data. Big cities such as San Francisco, Boston, and Denver led the growth, according to Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. Regular payroll employment in ground-transportation companies grew at a much slower rate, Brookings found.


People are worried that automation is going to create a “job apocalypse,” but there will likely be thousands more driving and delivery jobs in upcoming years, according to Viscelli. Technology has allowed people to outsource the things they don’t want to do; they can now have someone else go grocery shopping for them, pick up their takeout, bring them packages in less than two hours so they don’t have to go to a store. “We’re going to take the billion hours Americans spend driving to stores and taking things off shelves, and we’re going to turn it into jobs,” Viscelli said. “The fundamental question is really what the quality of these jobs is going to be.”

This shift could create even more congestion in cities as hundreds of small passenger cars flood the streets. It also could fundamentally change people’s relationship with their employers—think of people like Chris Miller, the Ohio Flex driver, who for years was a full-time employee at various radio stations, and now is on his own. “It concerns me that this could be the way of the world,” he told me.

There are efforts to make some of the people who drive for Flex employees rather than independent contractors, a move that worker advocates say could go a long way in improving the quality of these jobs. The lawsuit filed by Liss-Riordan in Washington State, for example, argues that Flex drivers are employees, not independent contractors, because they receive unpaid training about how to interact with customers and handle deliveries, they must follow Amazon’s instructions about where to make deliveries, and they can be terminated if they don’t follow the company’s policies. Liss-Riordan filed the lawsuit on behalf of five plaintiffs, but is hoping to add more.


The California Supreme Court ruled in April that businesses must use an “ABC” standard when deciding how to classify workers. The standard, already in use in Massachusetts and New Jersey, means that a worker is an independent contractor only if the work is done without direction and control from the employer, outside the course of the employer’s usual business, and is done by someone who has his or her own independent business doing that kind of work. This may make it harder for employers to classify workers as contractors—but still, it will be hard for Amazon Flex workers in California to change their classification. They will have to file a formal complaint or take the matter to court, assuming Amazon and other gig-economy companies do not reclassify them on their own.

Liss-Riordan says one of the biggest obstacles to getting workers to take legal action over their classification is that many Flex workers agree, upon signing up to deliver packages, to resolve disputes with Amazon through arbitration. Companies can now use arbitration clauses to prevent workers from joining together to file class-action lawsuits, because of a May Supreme Court ruling. (A new lawsuit now in front of the Supreme Court argues that transportation workers are exempt from that rule.) Looking back through the many things I’d agreed to when signing up for Flex, I found that I, too, was governed by a binding arbitration agreement. The only way to opt out of this arbitration agreement would have been to inform Amazon that I did not want to be covered by it within 14 days of signing the agreement.


For me, being an independent contractor meant that the job was lonely, with no colleagues to share stories with, and no boss to ask about the many confusing aspects of being a first-day driver. (Flex drivers complained to me that even when they do contact support with a complaint, they often receive back a form letter, making them feel like they are working for a robot rather than a company that employs actual humans.) Many drivers take to Facebook to share stories and tips, but I found those pages only much later. My sole interactions, aside from the parking-enforcement officer, were with the people receiving the packages, who often said a distracted “thank you” as they tore open their packages, and with receptionists, who would nod me to mail rooms overflowing with brown boxes.

Being an independent contractor also meant that the job was hard to leave behind, even when I was done for the day. A few hours after I’d finished my shift, I received a call on my cellphone from a woman to whom I’d tried to deliver a package earlier that day. There had been no instructions about where to leave the package, but she told me she had frequently asked Amazon to leave her packages at another office. As she began chastising me—and Amazon—for my failures, I told her I wasn’t responsible anymore and hung up the phone. Even weeks after I’d stopped driving for Flex, I kept getting new notifications from Amazon, telling me that increased rates were available, tempting me to log back in and make a few extra bucks, making me feel guilty for not opening the app, even though I have another job. And I didn’t even have to put up with the early, unpaid hours of the “sip and tap” drivers who depended on Flex for work that they never knew for sure was coming the next day.


Flex was not a good deal for me. My shift lasted slightly longer than the three and a half hours Amazon had told me it would, because I had to return two undeliverable packages to the South San Francisco warehouse. On my traffic-choked drive there, I passed a billboard showing a man who had made millions through bitcoin sitting on a beach.

My tech-economy experience was far less lucrative. In total, I drove about 40 miles (not counting the 26 miles I had to drive between the warehouse and my apartment). I was paid $70, but had $20 in expenses, based on the IRS mileage standards. I had narrowly avoided a $110 parking ticket, which felt like a win, but my earnings, added up, were $13.33 an hour. That’s less than San Francisco’s $14 minimum wage. I eagerly awaited my paycheck, which was supposed to be deposited into my bank account the Friday after my shift. It never came. Something had gone wrong with the way I entered my bank-account number into the app, and when I wrote to support to report this, I received a form letter back that said I was emailing Amazon from the wrong email address. I’m still corresponding with Amazon to figure out exactly how to get paid—more time spent trying to eke out a meager wage in the gig economy.

We want to hear from you. Please email your response to letters@theatlantic.com.

Alana Semuels is a former staff writer at The Atlantic.




技术
我为亚马逊运送包裹，这是个恶梦
亚马逊Flex允许司机从他们自己的车辆上运送包裹，并获得报酬。但这对工人来说是一笔好买卖吗？

阿拉纳-塞缪尔报道
一堆亚马逊的包裹，上面有时钟和旧金山的地图
Aygun Aliyeva / Shutterstock / Arsh Raziuddin / The Atlantic / Google Maps
2018年6月25日

在最近的一个工作日，当我踉踉跄跄地走在旧金山市中心的街道上时，我确信我看起来很滑稽，手臂上装满了包裹--当我掉了一个并弯腰捡起它时，另一个掉了下来，当我试图把那个包裹放进去时，另一个也倒了下来。

然而，这并不好笑，真的不好笑。我穿着一件亮黄色的安全背心，为亚马逊Flex工作，在这个项目中，这家电子商务巨头向普通人支付报酬，让他们用自己的车辆运送包裹，每小时18至25美元，不计费用。我争分夺秒地在被开罚单之前完成送货任务--在旧金山市中心，没有商业车辆的司机在白天很少有地方可以停车，同时我也在与日益增长的愤怒作斗争，因为我拖着包裹去科技公司的办公室，这些公司为员工提供免费食物和可观的薪水，这些员工似乎整天都在网上订购东西。技术让这些人过上了好日子，但它只是让我感到压力和暴躁。

"不是。A. GOOD. 我在我的笔记本上写道，在走完九层楼梯后，我厌倦了等待可能已经坏掉的货运电梯，回到我的车里，拿着另一个胳膊上的包裹。

欢迎来到包裹交付的未来。随着人们越来越多地在网上购物，像亚马逊这样的公司正在转向独立承包商--基本上是任何有车的人--将包裹送到家庭和企业。Flex是必要的，因为亚马逊的发展如此迅速--该公司去年运送了50亿件Prime商品--它不能仅仅依靠联邦快递、UPS和邮政服务。Flex负责 "最后一英里 "的交付，这是货物从生产地到家门口最复杂的部分。一位发言人在一封电子邮件中告诉我，它还允许亚马逊在假日季节、Prime Day和一年中的其他繁忙时期满足增加的需求。

但Flex全年都在运营，而不仅仅是在假日季节，这表明还有另一个原因。它很便宜。正如大型卡车运输业在过去十年中发现的那样，使用独立承包商而不是工会司机可以省钱，因为许多费用是由司机承担的，而不是由公司承担。

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一个戴着手表和手套的人处理一个亚马逊的包裹。
亚马逊可能有假货问题
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亚马逊已经在50多个城市推出了Flex，包括纽约、印第安纳波利斯和田纳西州的孟菲斯。该公司没有分享关于它有多少司机的信息，但一位西雅图经济学家根据亚马逊与他分享的信息计算出，从2016年10月到2017年3月，有11262人在加利福尼亚州为Flex开车，以帮助该公司为有关Flex司机的诉讼辩护。

从表面上看，这些工作，就像临时工经济中的许多其他工作一样，似乎是一笔好买卖。但是，Flex工人没有医疗保险或养老金，也没有保证每周一定的工作时间或班次。他们不受最低工资和加班费等基本劳动保护措施的保护，如果他们突然不能工作了，也不会得到失业救济金。而且，当工人们计算他们每天的收入时，许多人没有考虑到他们从事这些工作所产生的费用。"报道电子商务的Forrester公司分析师Sucharita Kodali告诉我："很多这些工作类型的服务基本上都是依靠人们没有计算出它的实际成本。

克利夫兰的一位亚马逊Flex司机，63岁的克里斯-米勒告诉我，虽然他每小时挣18美元，但他每开一英里要花大约40美分，用于汽油和汽车维修等费用。他的车是二手车，行驶了4万英里。在为Flex公司开车7个月后，现在已经有14万英里了，在这之前还有Uber和Lyft。这意味着他已经产生了大约4万美元的费用--这些费用是他最初没有想到的，比如更频繁地更换机油，更换车头灯和尾灯。他告诉我，一旦算上这些费用，他为Uber开车每小时的收入略低于10美元；Flex的工资要高一点。

米勒的妻子有一份有福利的全职工作，所以他的Flex收入有助于偿还他家的信用卡账单。但是，"如果我作为一个单身男人，想靠自己的力量做到这一点，那就很难了，"他说。他的费用实际上可能比大多数司机的花费要低。根据美国国税局(IRS)的数据，2018年因业务目的使用汽车的标准里程费率为每英里54.5美分。

我通过下载一个应用程序，通过背景调查，并观看19个视频，详细解释了交付包裹的过程，从而成为亚马逊Flex的独立承包商。(我没有因为观看这些视频的时间而得到报酬，也不保证我看完视频后会被批准成为一名司机）。这些视频涵盖的主题包括：当客户决定不再需要他们的订单时该怎么办（"这个客户是不是疯了？"亚马逊问道），以及如何送酒（事实证明，询问客户的年龄并不是一种可接受的检查身份的方式）。因为视频后面有测验，我实际上不得不注意。

在我最终被批准成为一名司机后，这个过程花了几个星期，我报名参加了一个班次。Flex司机通过打开应用程序，点击可用的班次来获得工作；目前的Flex司机告诉我，新手会得到最好的工作时间和报酬。我的第一份工作是在星期二上午11点到下午2点半，从旧金山南部的亚马逊物流中心运送包裹，离我的公寓大约30分钟。不同的班次提供不同的费率；根据应用程序，我的三个半小时的工作将为我带来70美元的收入，当然，我必须支付自己的燃料和通行费。该应用程序会告诉我在哪里取包裹，在哪里放包裹，以及走什么路线，所以这个任务看起来很容易。我预计会有几个小时悠闲地行驶在旧金山郊区昏昏欲睡的房子之间，一边听着有声书，一边把包裹放到门口，闻着这里许多门前草坪上的薰衣草和鼠尾草。

当我开车到亚马逊仓库去取包裹时，我第一次意识到这个下午不会是我想象中的田园风光。我被递给一件黄色的安全背心，让我在仓库里穿上，这样其他司机就能看到我。"亚马逊的礼物，"一个男人告诉我，我被引导到一个停车位，那里有一车包裹在等待。我开始把它们装进我的后备箱，但当我看到上面印着的地址时停了下来。我被分配了43个包裹，但只有两个地址：旧金山市中心的主要街道--市场街的两座办公楼。这意味着要在工作日中开车到旧金山市中心，把我的车藏在某个地方，然后在这两座大楼的楼层和办公室之间行走。

读者对打工经济的隐患进行了评价。

"我应该在哪里停车？" 当我把巨大的箱子和细长的白色Prime信封装进我那辆臃肿的汽车时，我问在仓库里引导交通的两个人。他们都耸了耸肩。"很多人只是收到了罚单，"一个人告诉我。

当我穿过30分钟的交通前往市中心时，我仍然感到很乐观。当我沿着101号公路行驶时，我看到了海湾地平线上的集装箱船，有那么一瞬间，我觉得自己是全球快递链中不可或缺的一部分，它把这些包裹从中国运到海上，运到港口，经过公路，运到我的汽车后座，现在又运到急切等待它们的人们手中。


从某种程度上说，运送包裹是美国为数不多的没有大学学历的人的 "好 "工作之一。美国卡车司机协会代表大约26万名UPS工人，他们的时薪约为36美元。美国邮政工人工会代表大约15.6万名职员和辅助人员，据该工会称，他们的年薪平均为75,500美元。全国邮递员协会（National Association of Letter Carriers）没有对评论请求作出回应，该协会代表的是实际的邮政服务配送人员。

然而，这些工会工作正面临着压力。宾夕法尼亚大学的社会学家Steve Viscelli告诉我，"这些都是好工作，它们可能会很快变得更糟，"他撰写了关于卡车行业的文章。在正在进行的合同谈判中，卡车司机协会最近允许工人举行罢工，尽管双方在上周末说他们已经达成了初步协议。APWU也即将开始合同谈判。工人们对周末送货以及给予兼职员工的较低工资和福利提出了异议。UPS现在有第二层的兼职员工，他们的时薪低至10美元；邮政部门增加了被称为 "城市邮递员助理 "的工人，他们的收入低于普通邮递员。

然后，当然还有Flex。如果投递劳动力继续向非工会工人和独立承包商转移，该行业可能从一个工人可以养家糊口的行业变成一个收入低于最低工资的行业。维斯切利说，这就是长途卡车运输业的情况。今天，长途卡车司机的平均工资约为4万美元，比1980年的10万美元要低。

"曾对科技公司错误地将工人归类为独立承包商而提起大量诉讼的律师Shannon Liss-Riordan说："现在有一个整体运动，试图通过将司机归类为独立承包商来控制成本和降低劳动力成本，这样公司就不必担心工资法。根据Liss-Riordan代表Flex员工在华盛顿州美国地方法院提起的诉讼，亚马逊Flex员工的工资有时低于他们所在城市的最低工资，包括西雅图，那里的最低工资是每小时15美元，而且他们每周工作时间超过40小时，就没有获得半天时间。(亚马逊表示，它不对未决诉讼发表评论）。

对于一些人来说，作为独立承包商是为Flex开车的最好的部分之一。密尔沃基36岁的司机杰里米-布朗告诉我，他喜欢当自己老板的自由。如果他早上起来不想为Flex开车，他可以回去睡觉，或者用他的时间在教堂带领音乐崇拜，或者在家教育他的孩子。他从Flex公司赚到了足够多的钱--如果算上开支，每天大约120美元，他的家人的大部分收入都依赖于此。


布朗经常在比亚马逊估计的更短的时间内完成两小时的工作。但是，如果Flex司机需要比亚马逊计算的时间更长的时间来完成他们的交付，他们不会得到额外时间的报酬。(亚马逊的一位发言人告诉我，"绝大多数 "区块都是在估计的时间内完成或少于估计的时间）。如果司机出了车祸，医疗和保险费用由司机负责，而不是由亚马逊负责。如果司机收到超速罚单，则由司机支付。(UPS和联邦快递通常会支付卡车的罚单，但亚马逊在Flex司机签署的合同中明确表示，司机要对费用和罚款负责）。

由于Flex的工作方式，司机们很少知道什么时候会有时间块，也不知道他们什么时候会工作，也不知道他们在任何一天会赚多少。布朗喜欢分两班为亚马逊运送杂货，从早上4:30到6:30，以及从6:30到8:30，但在我们谈话的那天早上，没有4:30的班次。他有时会在凌晨3点起床，做Flex员工所说的 "啜饮和敲击"，坐在家里一边喝咖啡一边刷新应用程序，希望有新的区块出现。他花了一小时来敲击，却没有得到报酬。去年有两次，他被禁止在七天内看到新的区块，因为亚马逊指责他使用机器人抢夺区块--他说他只是频繁点击应用，以至于亚马逊认为他在作弊。当他被禁止看到区块时，他没有办法，只能反复给亚马逊发电子邮件，但这从未导致他的暂停资格被取消。亚马逊也没有细分他收到多少小费，以及他从公司收到多少工资--他所知道的是，人们给他20美元的小费，而亚马逊给他的工资低于最低工资。而且他也没有老板可以问他发生了什么事。


亚马逊发言人凯利-切斯曼(Kelly Cheeseman)告诉我，Flex是一个很好的机会，可以让人们自己当老板，自己设定时间表。她说，如果工人愿意成为全职雇员，而不是独立承包商，该公司有 "各种各样 "的全职和兼职机会。(当然，许多全职工作在体力上也有挑战性。克利夫兰的工人克里斯-米勒告诉我，他更喜欢作为承包商工作，而不是作为亚马逊的雇员工作，亚马逊因员工的高压力和高水准而臭名昭著）。

Cheeseman说，大多数Flex工人在上学或抚养孩子的时候，把这份工作作为副业来做，以赚取收入。但负责管理湾区Flex员工Facebook群组的司机尼古拉-阿昆茨（Nikolay Akunts）告诉我，该群组中70%至80%的司机是全职工作。(阿昆茨在加州桑尼维尔为Flex开车，从早上4点半到8点半，然后去他在一家软件公司的全职工作）。

即使是全职为Flex工作的人也知道，他们不能总是依靠这个应用程序来赚钱。阿昆茨说，人们经常被 "停用"，这意味着他们收到一条信息，告诉他们不能再为Flex开车。他说，有时工人不知道他们为什么被终止，他们的合同被废除。要恢复原状可能需要一个月的时间。阿昆茨喜欢为Flex工作，并为此赚了很多钱，他告诉我，他是在桑尼维尔送了三年包裹后，唯一没有被停用或辞职的司机之一。"亚马逊让你保持一个高标准，"阿昆茨说。如果有人订购了杂货快递，但没有接电话，阿昆茨会继续尝试--客户可能在洗澡或在另一条线上，他说。他说，这种对客户的奉献精神是亚马逊对其员工的期望。


当我到达第一批包裹应该送达的市场街地址时，我在Flex应用程序上刷了一下 "我已到达"。该应用程序告诉我，我实际上应该通过埃利斯街的货运电梯运送包裹，在大楼的后面，步行两分钟，但开车要10分钟，交通拥堵。当我到达时，我发现没有地方可以合法地停车。我已经上了将近一个小时的班，还没有送过一个包裹，所以我把车停在一个红色的停车计时器上，这个计时器是为早上7点到下午6点有六个轮子以上的卡车保留的，我开始往大楼跑，怀里装满了包裹。


柔性卡车司机在运送包裹前常常把车装得满满的。(Alana Semuels / The Atlantic)
我试图快速移动，以免我的车长时间无人看管，但在大楼里转了一圈后，我重新出现在埃利斯大街上，遇到了一位准备给我开罚单的停车执法官员。我解释了我的困难：我在为亚马逊送货，但没有地方停车，因为我没有商业牌照。我应该怎么做呢？他说，由于我开的是私家车，我唯一的选择是把车停在车库里，或者在晚上送包裹。但他告诉我，很多人冒着风险，在收费处非法停车--根据市政府提供给我的数据，今年前三个月因在红色和黄色收费处非法停车而发出的停车罚单数量比2016年增长了29%。我最终说服他不要给我开罚单，这将花费110美元，并使我当天的收入化为乌有，但即使在他离开时，他警告我，另一名官员可能很快就会过来，并会毫不犹豫地给我开罚单。后来，当我回到仓库时，我遇到了几个Flex司机，他们在车上坐了两个人，大概是为了让一个人开车并注意交通执法人员，而另一个人跳出来送包裹。

停车问题并不是唯一的问题。我必须交付的一个包裹是一个巨大的箱子，重达30多磅。由于停车位有限，我最终带着它走了两个街区，每走100步左右就休息一下。有一次，一位友好的警察试图抬起它来踢一脚，并发出了呻吟声。办公楼前门的保安责备我背着箱子，并告诉我应该用滑轮来运输它。(在我为成为一名Flex司机而观看的19个视频中，没有一个视频建议我带着送货车或独轮车。) 如果我在搬运包裹时受伤，我将无法获得工伤赔偿或带薪医疗休假。我也将负责自己的医疗。密尔沃基亚马逊Flex司机布朗是他家庭的唯一提供者，他的家庭保险使用威斯康星州低收入居民的健康保险计划BadgerCare。

还有一个事实是，Flex技术本身很难使用。Flex的工作人员应该在交付每个包裹之前进行扫描，但应用程序不接受我的扫描。当我打电话给支持部门，不知道该怎么做时，我收到了一条录音信息，说支持部门正在经历技术困难，但很快就会恢复。然后我在手机上收到一条信息，告诉我目前支持的平均等待时间是 "少于114,767分钟"。我最后只是把包裹交给办公室里的人，而没有扫描它们，希望有人在某个地方跟踪它们的去向。(亚马逊表示，它正在不断考虑司机的反馈意见，以改进Flex。）


我本来要送包裹的两个小办公室被锁住了，也没有关于把包裹放在哪里的信息。当我最终联系到支持部门并询问如何处理这些无法投递的包裹时，我被告知要么把它们开回南旧金山的仓库，在日益恶化的交通中行驶35分钟，要么继续尝试投递它们，直到收件人回来。当我试图使用应用程序给收件人打电话时，它把我引向了错误的电话号码；我最终打了一个印在办公室门上的电话号码，并留下了信息。但是，没有有效的方法来登记我与亚马逊的问题，我只能靠自己。

当我来到市场街的第二座办公楼时，我所有的挫折感才真正袭来，这里有几家大型科技公司。其中一家公司占了好几层楼，散发着强烈的比萨饼的味道，前门附近有狗链和狗粮。年轻的工人们拿着笔记本电脑和拿铁咖啡，谈论着周末计划。他们从技术的繁荣中受益，分享公司快速发展带来的繁荣。技术使他们的工作变得更好--他们在提供免费食物和饮料的办公室工作，他们得到了良好的工资、福利和股票期权。他们可以点击一个按钮，使用亚马逊把他们想要的东西送到他们的办公室，我为一个办公室的13个人带来了16个包裹；其中一个很轻，我确信它是一包口香糖，另一个感觉像一个喷虫剂的容器。


在此之前，我和他们一样，轻率地在亚马逊上订购东西，这样我就不必在商店排队或去寻找特定的产品（尽管我从与仓库工人的交谈中知道，把这些包裹送到我家门口的许多工作并不好做）。但现在技术使亚马逊能够雇用我去送这些包裹，而且没有任何福利或津贴。如果这些工人在包裹上写错了地址，他们会得到退款，而我却在四处奔波，试图弄清楚他们把地址写成 "五楼 "时是什么意思，而那里根本没有五楼。这两种不同类型的工作怎么可能存在于同一个经济体中？

像这样的技工经济工作正变得越来越普遍。根据布鲁金斯学会对人口普查局和穆迪数据的分析，地面运输部门的 "非雇主公司"--基本上是通过各种平台提供乘车服务的自由职业者--从2010年到2014年增长了69%，这是有数据可查的最近一年。布鲁金斯学会大都市政策项目高级研究员兼政策主任马克-穆罗（Mark Muro）表示，旧金山、波士顿和丹佛等大城市引领了这种增长。布鲁金斯大学发现，地面运输公司的正常工资就业率增长速度要慢得多。


维斯切利说，人们担心自动化会造成 "就业启示录"，但在未来几年可能会有成千上万的驾驶和送货工作。技术已经允许人们将他们不想做的事情外包出去；他们现在可以让别人为他们去买菜，拿他们的外卖，在不到两个小时内给他们带来包裹，这样他们就不必去商店了。"我们要把美国人花在开车去商店和从货架上取东西上的十亿个小时，变成工作机会，"维斯切利说。"根本问题是这些工作的质量将是什么。

这种转变可能会在城市中造成更多的拥堵，因为数以百计的小型乘用车充斥在街道上。它还可能从根本上改变人们与雇主的关系--想想像俄亥俄州Flex公司的司机克里斯-米勒这样的人，他多年来一直是各广播电台的全职雇员，而现在却自食其力。"他告诉我："我担心这可能是世界的方式。

人们正在努力使一些为Flex开车的人成为雇员，而不是独立的承包商，工人倡导者说，此举可以大大改善这些工作的质量。例如，Liss-Riordan在华盛顿州提起的诉讼认为，Flex的司机是雇员，而不是独立承包商，因为他们接受了关于如何与客户互动和处理交货的无偿培训，他们必须遵循亚马逊关于交货地点的指示，如果他们不遵守公司的政策，他们可以被终止。Liss-Riordan代表五名原告提起诉讼，但希望能增加更多原告。


加州最高法院在4月裁定，企业在决定如何对工人进行分类时必须使用 "ABC "标准。这个标准已经在马萨诸塞州和新泽西州使用，意味着只有在没有雇主的指示和控制，在雇主的正常业务范围之外，由自己有独立业务的人做这种工作的情况下，工人才是独立承包商。这可能会使雇主更难将工人归类为承包商，但在加州，亚马逊Flex的工人仍然很难改变他们的分类。假设亚马逊和其他零工经济公司不自己对他们进行重新分类，他们将不得不提出正式投诉或向法院起诉。

Liss-Riordan说，让工人对他们的分类采取法律行动的最大障碍之一是，许多Flex工人在签约交付包裹时，同意通过仲裁解决与亚马逊的纠纷。由于最高法院5月的一项裁决，公司现在可以使用仲裁条款来阻止工人联合起来提起集体诉讼。(现在在最高法院面前的一项新诉讼认为，运输工人可以不受这一规则的约束）。回顾我在签约Flex时同意的许多事情，我发现我也受到了有约束力的仲裁协议的约束。选择退出该仲裁协议的唯一方法是，在签署协议的14天内通知亚马逊，我不想受其管辖。


对我来说，作为一个独立的承包商，意味着这份工作是孤独的，没有同事可以分享故事，也没有老板可以询问作为第一天的司机的许多令人困惑的方面。(灵活的司机向我抱怨说，即使他们联系支持部门进行投诉，他们也经常收到一封表格，让他们觉得自己是在为一个机器人工作，而不是一个雇用真正人类的公司）。许多司机在Facebook上分享故事和提示，但我是很晚才发现这些页面。除了停车执法人员之外，我唯一的互动是与收到包裹的人，他们在撕开包裹时常常心不在焉地说着 "谢谢"，还有接待人员，他们会向我点头示意，让我去看满是棕色盒子的邮件室。

作为一个独立的承包商，这也意味着即使我完成了一天的工作，也很难离开。在我下班的几个小时后，我的手机接到了一个女人的电话，我在那天早些时候曾试图给她送一个包裹。她没有说明把包裹放在哪里，但她告诉我她经常要求亚马逊把她的包裹放在另一个办公室。当她开始责备我和亚马逊的失败时，我告诉她我不再负责了，并挂断了电话。甚至在我不再为Flex开车的几个星期后，我还不断收到亚马逊的新通知，告诉我可以提高费率了，诱惑我重新登录，多赚几块钱，让我为没有打开这个应用程序而感到内疚，尽管我有另一份工作。我甚至不必忍受 "啜饮和敲击 "的司机们过早地无偿工作，他们依赖Flex的工作，但他们永远不知道第二天会不会来。


Flex对我来说不是一笔好买卖。我的工作时间比亚马逊告诉我的三个半小时略长，因为我必须把两个无法投递的包裹退回到南旧金山的仓库。在我驱车前往的路上，我经过一个广告牌，上面显示一个通过比特币赚取数百万美元的人坐在海滩上。

我的科技经济经历远没有那么有利可图。我总共开了大约40英里（不算我在仓库和我的公寓之间开的26英里）。我的工资是70美元，但根据国税局的里程标准，我有20美元的开支。我勉强避免了一张110美元的停车罚单，这感觉像是一场胜利，但我的收入，加起来，每小时13.33美元。这比旧金山14美元的最低工资还少。我急切地等待着我的工资，它应该在我下班后的星期五存入我的银行账户。它从未到来。我在应用程序中输入银行账户号码的方式出了问题，当我写信给支持部门报告此事时，我收到了一封回信，说我用错误的电子邮件地址给亚马逊发了电子邮件。我仍在与亚马逊通信，以弄清楚如何获得报酬--在打工经济中，我花了更多时间试图赚取微薄的工资。

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Alana Semuels是《大西洋》杂志的前工作人员作家。