`Sorry,’ said the note through my door. `Sunday I have to deliver all parcels!’
Outside, on the top step, sat a package in a grey plastic envelope.
I had come to the door as soon as I heard the snap of the letterbox moments before, but already the delivery driver had vanished into the grey drizzle.
It was the exclamation mark that got me. A slash and dot of anxiety, stealing seconds which were clearly precious, just to make a human plea for understanding.
2020 is the year the invisible became visible.
A virus measuring a mere thousandth of a millimetre wide is now as visually familiar as the Eiffel Tower.
Cleaners that no one noticed when visiting hospitals have been applauded in the street.
Children who slipped into school dinner halls for their only meal of the day had more than a million people petitioning Parliament to defend their right to eat.
And the gig economy became the symbol of lockdown. At one stage the only cars and vans on the road, filled with white and brown packages, circling their beat like strange outliers.
In the early days they were the only ones wearing masks. A bizarre sight at a time when the prime minister was emphatically declaring face coverings to be unnecessary.
Outliers, indeed.
Shortly after lockdown I nervously ventured out for a fast-food takeaway, torn between elation at finally not having to cook all three meals of the day and trepidation at this re-entry into society.
Queuing meekly outside on my yellow circle I was startled by a tall man in a bright bib push pass everyone and barge through the door.
Confronted by staff, his body language became agitated, his voice bordering on hysterical.
Finally allowed in, he barrelled out seconds later, the flat parcel previously tucked under his arm now a bulky repository for someone’s greasy lunch.
I realised his anxiety had been desperation to get that order so he could deliver it and reflected on the sheer pressure he must be under.
Amazon sent someone out to our house this week.
He warned of a new crime wave which sees robbers follow delivery drivers to steal parcels left on doorsteps.
Taking them back to the depot causes unwanted complications for their system – which is why customers receive multiple packages in a single day from the company.
He explained each driver delivers between 120 and 200 parcels – depending on the geographic spread of their route – in an eight-hour shift.
Those workers are at least free-range.
Ambulances were called out 600 times to 14 Amazon warehouses in the UK between 2015 and 2018, for, the GMB said, workers collapsing in unsafe, intense working conditions.
When the pandemic started, unions revealed the firm had ordered `compulsory overtime’ following a spike in online shopping.
That is unlikely to have lessened with the stop-start high street closures ahead of the busiest shopping season of the year.
By October in America, more than 20,000 Amazon employees had been infected by the coronavirus, according to its own figures.
One of the most chilling things I have seen is its recent TV ad featuring staff assuring us EVERYTHING IS FINE.
I say that as someone currently living through a pandemic. All they are missing is a copy of today’s newspaper as `proof of life’.
Last month it announced full-time employees will get a £300 bonus. And part-timers £150.
Completely unconnected, I’m sure, to strikes in France and Italy over coronavirus concerns and Black Friday protests in 15 countries.
The IWGB union says it will organise Amazon’s Flex delivery drivers in the new year.
It said delivery workers will be working through the pandemic over Christmas without the right to annual leave, sick pay or trade-union representation.
Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, by the way, is worth $180bn and accumulated so much money over the last nine months that he could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and be as rich as before the pandemic.
Just… Why wouldn’t you?
