by For years, Amazon has struggled to protect its corporate image, as press reports claimed its delivery drivers were throwing bottles, its warehouse workers suffered sever demands, and its aggressive tactics eroded margins for its own retail partners. .
In a decidedly unauthorized display of the retail giant, The War of Everything: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Reclaim World Ownership and Corporate Power, Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli examines the history of the e-commerce boom and its effect on the American economy.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos declined to speak with Mattioli, other than feedback he gave through Amazon’s public relations team. But she says she spoke to more than 600 people, only three of whom the company provided for interviews. That includes 17 current or former members of the company’s senior leadership team, who spoke “without the knowledge of the company,” and five current or former board members.
“Before I got the book deal, I had written a series of investigations into the company’s business practices. One of those investigations was the basis for Jeff Bezos having to testify before Congress for the first time in his career, so I had a great base of sources from the jump,” Mattioli told The Daily Beast.
Jeff Bezos testifies before Congress on July 29, 2020.
Graeme Jennings/AFP via Getty
The reporting process was dramatic at times, she recalled. In one case, “a new source asked to meet me on a corner in Midtown Manhattan so they could give me something in person. When I went to the site I was handed a manila envelope with the printed screenshots of a suicide note sent by an Amazon employee before he jumped off the roof a few years back,” she said. (The employee survived.)
At the time of the incident, Mattioli continued, “Amazon deleted the email from everyone’s inboxes, but they were my source for me and that helped add to that scene in the book.”
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said the message was deleted because “defamatory and inflammatory language was directed at others on staff, and we felt it was important to protect their safety while working to support the employee this. , his family, and his team.”
Regarding the book in general, the spokesperson said, “Amazon’s success is the result of continuous innovation for consumers and small businesses over three decades to make their lives better and easier every day. The facts show that Amazon has made shopping easier and more convenient for customers, driven lower prices, enabled millions of small businesses to thrive, and significantly increased competition in retail.”
Bezos’s rise has been widely chronicled i Bloomberg Brad Stone reporter’s book 2013 of charge The Thing Shop. Mattioli wrote in her introduction that she “wanted to focus on those who have been harmed by the company.” Bezos’s life has also changed a lot since Stone’s biography came out: He resigned as CEO of Amazon, got divorced, and joined the party circuit with his fiancée, former TV reporter Lauren Sánchez.
Below are some brief highlights from the new book:
During the Trump administration, Sánchez drew inspiration from an unlikely source.
At a party in 2020, Mattioli wrote, Sánchez reached out to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway — the inventor of the much-hyped notion of “alternative facts” — and asked for guidance on dealing with media scrutiny.
“You were thrown a lot. How do you handle it?” Sánchez asked. Bezos’ relationship with Sánchez was front-page news around the globe by then.
Conway opted for applause, Mattioli reports. “Please, have you looked in the mirror? People are jealous of you,” she said. “I would say they’re jealous because you’re dating him,” she said, referring to Bezos. (The Amazon founder had a testy relationship with Trump in part because of negative coverage of the president in Bezos’s paper, The Washington Post.)
But that evening, the bad blood didn’t seem so bad. Conway offered to join Sánchez “for a slow jog around the neighborhood,” Mattioli wrote, adding, “It was a gesture of goodwill, knowing how seriously Sánchez was exercising.”
As the head of Amazon, Bezos wasn’t just an office nerd.
During a conference in 2016, Bezos joined other business leaders on a trip in the desert, drawing inspiration from the TV show Run Wild with Bear Grylls. “The group learned how to live in the woods, made their own extensions, and ate earthworms together,” reports Mattioli. Even Bezos downed one of the worms.
At the end of his mock walk, the billionaire jumped into a Cadillac Escalade and drove off to the hotel. The rest of the attendees asked how they would get home. Suddenly, “the booming sound of the helicopter” gave the answer. Bezos, according to Mattioli, was unable to fly a chopper at the time, since he had “been in a helicopter accident years before.” (Assuming he has now changed his mind, Sánchez, a licensed helicopter pilot, can ferry him around.)
Amazon has made a strong effort to capture market share from its competitors – and from its own retailers.
According to Mattioli, Amazon’s corporate culture—killing low performers, setting huge growth targets, and demanding that workers adopt a “killer instinct”—pressured some workers to break the rules.
In a 2015 incident described in the book, the company hired a staff member from Trader Joe’s, who didn’t realize she was being recruited to help compete with her former employer. Members of the new hire’s team relentlessly pushed her to share proprietary data, Mattioli writes. The worker eventually shared some information about top-performing products at Trader Joe’s, but refused to reveal the grocer’s margins even after she was allegedly reduced to tears. Amazon later fired some of the workers involved in the incident, the book recalls.
An Amazon spokesperson insisted to the Daily Beast that “There is nothing in our culture or the way we operate that makes this ‘flagrant’ – especially when you consider that this was against policy.” He added that the company does not tolerate misuse of confidential proprietary information.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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