Flex takes care of “last mile” deliveries, the most complicated part of getting goods from where they’re made to your doorstep. 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. 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. Welcome to the future of package delivery. 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.
Technology was allowing these people a good life, but it was just making me stressed and cranky. 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. 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’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.
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