In brief: In a not quite so grassroots fashion, Amazon has promoted several warehouse workers to be advocates on Twitter to talk about positive working conditions. Amazon's ongoing public image problem about poor treatment of warehouse employees does not appear to be getting much better as a result of the efforts made.
Several Amazon warehouse workers have been promoted to hold the title of FC ambassador. Instead of performing pick and place tasks as well as packaging up shipments, the ambassadors provide facility tours and are effectively public relations personnel on social media.
A total of 16 Twitter accounts have been identified as belonging to Amazon FC ambassadors. These employees have responded to numerous tweets that mention negative working conditions at Amazon with overtly positive messages.
Natalie, I am a fulfillment center employee. I have so many things to be thankful for because I chose to accept a job with Amazon. Seeing how everything comes together for a customer order is spectacular, and I am in awe of the whole process.
--- Michelle - Amazon FC Ambassador (@AmazonFCMichele) August 22, 2018
All of the Twitter accounts are said to be run by human employees and are not using bots to automatically generate responses. Most of the accounts identified have only been in existence for a few weeks. However, given that many tweets share similar punctuation and writing style, it is evident that there must be some amount of canned responses or at the very least strict guidelines for responding.
Despite trying to fix a public image problem, the attempt appears to be largely unsuccessful. A number of Twitter users have added the FC ambassador titles to their bios and have started responding with sarcastic messages that mock those of real Amazon employees.
Phew After a hard Day's work there's nothing like heading out through the anti-theft security gates to go to the bathroom before starting another hard day's work on my second shift. So blessed y'all! Some people don't even have one job and Lord Bezos lets me have two!
--- Amy - Amazon FC Ambassador (@fc_ambassador) August 24, 2018
In this case, Amazon is not trying to hide the fact that many of its employees are advocating for them on Twitter. All accounts have clearly tweeted out that they are indeed employees working for Amazon and have names that also make this fact clear. Transparency is evident and a good choice in this case, but Amazon may need to go back to the drawing board in order to fix its public perception problem.