The Amazon Diaries

Whole Foods Worker: “Mid-level People… Don’t Trust Whole Foods Corporate Anymore.”

The grocery giant faced struggles long before Amazon showed up

Brendan O'Connor
OneZero
Published in
9 min readMar 18, 2019

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Illustration: Glenn Harvey

Valued at nearly $1 trillion, Amazon is one of the most powerful companies in the world. The Seattle-based retail giant employs over 600,000 people and operates 100 sortation and fulfillment centers in North America, sometimes sending out as many as 1 million items per day to customers. But Amazon does more than just retail. Amazon publishes its own books and comics, finances TV shows and movies, operates a Texas wind farm, builds robots, streams music, delivers prescription medications, and operates web services for everyone from Medium to the CIA. And that’s not even counting its high-profile acquisitions, which include Twitch, IMDB, Zappos, and Whole Foods, among countless others.

Nearly all of us use Amazon, one way or another. But what is it like working inside the beast? Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you stories from workers at every level of the Amazon empire to find out.

Welcome to The Amazon Diaries.

InIn June 2017, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion, not only extending its reach as a food delivery service but also picking up some 430…

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