- Former Gopuff managers say executives called out managers when employees took bathroom breaks.
- Gopuff had been hiring Amazon managers over the past few years to remake their operations.
Last year, the rapid-delivery company Gopuff started adopting the Amazon playbook for running warehouses — and that included grilling managers over why workers were taking bathroom breaks.
The order of the day at Gopuff is hitting metrics — almost at all costs. Former Gopuff managers said the pressure to make sure the company was hitting its benchmarks of delivery times and pack times was so intense that their bosses often called out employees who took bathroom breaks.
The scrutiny was the result of Gopuff's headfirst commitment to remaking the company in the Amazon mold and hiring extensively from the retail giant. Controversies around bathroom breaks had become common inside Amazon, as employees have publicly complained or even sued the company with claims they were penalized for taking bathroom breaks.
In the past two years, Gopuff hired dozens of people from Amazon who brought along the company's obsession with companywide metrics and hard-nosed style in calling out employees who fell below those figures, according to a dozen current and former employees who spoke with Insider.
In one instance, a former Gopuff manager told Insider he had to explain to his superior on a call that the reason the warehouse fell below its target numbers the previous day was one of the two employees on duty was in the bathroom.
"Why didn't we plan for that?" the Gopuff operations executive replied. "How can we anticipate that problem?"
Another former Gopuff manager said he had to go as far as reviewing camera footage to prove to an executive that an employee was indeed off duty at a time when the warehouse metrics slowed down.
Amazon's style didn't fit inside Gopuff, current and former employees said. Namely, the retail giant had nearly unlimited resources to hire staff members, whereas Gopuff cut back on resources to preserve cash and underwent two rounds of layoffs this year. In addition, Gopuff was often stretched thin and had to prioritize one part of the operation at the expense of others.
For instance, last year when Gopuff instituted companywide metrics for the maximum time workers should take to pack a bag, managers had to redirect employees who were receiving shipments and put them on packing duty. That contributed to a problem of deliveries piling up outside warehouses and going to waste, according to three former Gopuff employees.
Executives would also sharply criticize managers and employees who missed the mark.
"We'd have an exec making $250,000 a year asking about an associate who's making 16 bucks an hour and criticizing them for sitting down," a former manager told Insider. "I used to go nuts with my supervisor about how unbelievably cold and crass it is."
Read the full story about how an Amazon hiring spree changed Gopuff's culture here.
Work at Gopuff? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at tdotan@insider.com or Twitter DM at @cityofthetown. Check out Insider's source guide for suggestions on how to share information securely.