Amazon warehouse employee left stunned at Jeff Bezos’ response after she emailed him about pay

Tara Jones took her complaint straight to the top and sparked a major review of pay errors

A woman who was employed by Amazon went straight to the organ grinder, not the monkey, when she had a pay dispute.

Warehouse worker Tara Jones took her complaint right to the top after realising that there was a significant chunk of money missing from her monthly wage. The mum, from the US state of Oklahoma, sent the firm’s founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos an emotive email back in 2020, after the underpayment left her struggling to pay her bills. Unbeknownst to her at the time, this correspondence would go on to trigger quite the dramatic chain of events. Shortly after giving birth and while on medical leave from her role at the Amazon warehouse, Jones received a paycheque which was supposed to equate to $540 (£401.91) in value. However, she noticed that there was $90 (£66.99) missing so she reported the issue to her superiors, only for it to happen again on a number of other occasions. Out of sheer exasperation, the mum eventually decided to explain the ongoing pay issue to the firm’s former head honcho Bezos.

You know that bloke who’s worth more than $250 billion after making a fortune from the online marketplace that is Amazon? Yeah, that fella. In the email that was seen by the New York Times, Jones wrote: “I’m behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up. I’m crying as I write this email.” The publication explained that although the mum didn’t receive a direct response from Bezos, her complaint did instigate change as it triggered an internal investigation. According to the New York Times, this probe found that “Amazon had been shortchanging new parents, patients dealing with medical crises and other vulnerable workers on leave” for a period of at least 18 months. Up to 179 other Amazon warehouses may have also been impacted by this huge oversight, the report claimed, meaning hundreds of other employees could have also been drastically underpaid. It was also claimed that doctors notes that were submitted by workers were mysteriously “vanishing” in the system.

However, at the time, an Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel insisted that the tech issue was not “widespread and ongoing” as had previously been suggested. In a statement shared with The Independent, she said: “We’re disappointed when any of our employees experience an issue with their leave. The New York Times article suggested these issues are widespread and ongoing. They are not. We went back and audited the period in question to make sure employees received their pay, and to our knowledge, there are no outstanding issues. The controls we’ve implemented over the last 18 months have resulted in less than one percent of people experiencing an issue while being on paid leave. Certainly, the unprecedented nature of COVID did put a strain on our system’s ability to keep pace with demand and we’ve been hard at work investing and inventing to do better every day.” Either way, the lesson to learn from this is that going directly to the top of the chain of command can pay off, promptly. Any future Amazon disputes should probably be sent to the current CEO Andy Jassy rather than Bezos, as the billionaire stepped down from the role in 2021.

What happened next and broader context

While the original article focuses on Tara Jones’ email and the missing $90, follow-up reporting shows this was part of a much larger payroll and leave tracking problem within Amazon. The internal investigation triggered by her message found the company had been incorrectly calculating pay for workers on paid leave. This affected not just new parents but also people on medical or disability leave over at least a year and a half.

The probe revealed that errors in the company’s leave and payroll system meant that pay wasn’t always credited properly. Some employees reported missed disability payments, others ended up in financial trouble because their pay wasn’t processed correctly. In some cases people lost cars or had to sell personal items to cover costs because of the paycheck shortfalls.

The problem wasn’t isolated to Jones’ warehouse alone either. Reports claimed that up to 179 other Amazon facilities across the US might have been affected by similar payroll issues that stemmed from systemic mistakes in how leave pay was handled.

Amazon’s response was that it audited the period in question and believed it had resolved outstanding issues for most employees. The spokesman said the company had updated processes to reduce future problems and that fewer than 1 percent of workers were still affected after changes were put in place.