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I need to ask a question before I answer this question. Having worked in a number of restaurants from Luby's to Braums to McDonalds to Whataburger to Carl's Jr. to Steak N' Shake to Eurest Dining Services, I noticed one poor working condition that is consistent in absolutely every restaurant kitchen I have ever worked in; the kitchen floors are always becoming greasy, which is why special-slip-resistent-soled restaurant shoes are required for working in the restaurant industry. The floors are mopped and mopped and mopped throughout the day and evening hours but the busier the restaurant gets during lunch rush or evening rush, the more hazardously slippery the floors become. In spite of slip-resistent shoes, people slip and slide along the floors to fill customer orders in an “at-risk and somewhat substandard” work environment. Every night between the hours of midnight and three a.m., the floors are freshly mopped with a sanitizing and degreasing solution and there is very little slip hazard; however, the floors could rightly be considered a poor working condition. Now, the question I need to ask: Is this the result of the restaurant industry being allowed to “get away” with maintaing poor employee conditions or is it the result of the work processes required to perform the work necessary for the restaurant to stay in business? My assessment is the later. The restaurant is not at fault for the greasy floors because the deep fryers, food preparation processes, and grills produce a greasy environment that happens to “settle” onto the floors; consequently, the floors become coated with grease. I had managers who had the floors mopped every two or three hours in an effort to minimize the slip-hazard, but while work was being performed, the condition of a slip-hazard existed. The management and labor who worked in the restaurant industry understood and accepted the risk and consumers who patronized the business acquiesced to the potential hazard by continuing to do business with the restaurant industry.Now let's address Amazon's obviously perceived reputation for getting away with poor working conditions. Just like I have worked in a number of restaurants because they were about the only jobs I could get when I really needed an income, I have also worked in a number of warehouses for the same reason and I will honestly tell you that Amazon…based on my 28-month work experience at an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Texas…is getting a bad rap here. Comparatively speaking, Amazon maintains the cleanest, most comfortable, and possibly safest warehouses I have ever worked in. What is more, Amazon addresses complaints and concerns about work conditions and safety issues faster than anyone I have ever worked for regardless of industry.LIGHTING: The UPS Walnut Hill Hub center I worked in during the mid-1980's had the worst and dimmest lighting I have ever experienced in a warehouse setting. Everything moved in shadows. On the brown slide where I worked sorting and moving boxes by their zip codes, it felt like I was working in twilight. Whereas, Amazon has always been extremely well-lit with extra lighting coming on automatically throughout the warehouse via the wonder of motion sensors as one enters an area. I know there have been complaints about a lack of windows in Amazon facilities but I have honestly never worked in any warehouse that gave windows an architectural consideration. I was actually fired from that UPS hub center for incorrectly reading two zip codes because I really couldn't make them out in the dark at the speed I was supposed to read them at in order to make rate.CLIMATE-CONTROL: I worked as a temporary in a warehouse at DFW airport for the six-week Christmas rush in 2013 without climate control; it happened to ice and snow—a lot—that year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was wearing ski pants, a parka, heated socks and padded gloves and still felt like I had to defrost myself after 12-, 14-, sometimes 16-hour shifts. Sixteen hours was the maximum shift anyone could work in a day and the closer we got to Christmas, the more 16-hour shifts we worked. I had to sleep in my truck between shifts because the parking lot was iced over and I was iced into the parking lot … tires fuzed to the pavement. I felt frozen for the entire six weeks as I helped unload mail from tractor trailer rigs without heat in the warehouse and sort mail trays and packages by zip code so they could be reloaded onto other tractor trailer rigs or onto overseas cargo planes. It was friggin' cold. I was never so glad to be “let go” of a job as I was on that Christmas Eve of 2013.I incurred the opposite extreme working as a temporary for the June-July-August (summer months) in Texas picking and packing automotive parts for a major warehouse. There was no air conditioning except for in the small section of management offices in the building. We had two overhead fans for the entire building which could have housed at least two football stadiums. The owners were from New York and this was… TEXAS! Summer in Texas in a warehouse like that is as close to hell on earth as I ever want to get. Talk about your sweat shops! And, no dress code. I couldn't have seen more undressed, under-dresssed actors unless I had been on the set of a porn movie in process of being filmed. These people wore no clothes! Sexual harrassment wasn't frowned upon; it was an encouraged employment policy and was business as usual. There were people who worked the job and there were people who played on the job: we received the same paycheck amounts for being there the same number of hours but—what can I say— I am a fool with a work ethic who knows I don't look good naked. I saw it. I heard it. Management and labor alike turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to it. It was just something that went on in the course of a business day. The girls giggled about it and jiggled all over the place to encourage attention; the young men strutted around like peacocks in full-feather in a henhouse. I wrote a letter of complaint to the temporary agency I worked for and was threatened with immediate replacement. The warehouse was covered in dust. The boxes I picked were covered in dust. My hands were black after just starting my shift and stayed that way all day because no gloves were provided for any of the workers but you could bring your own. Half of the RFID scanners didn't work; if you could find one at all. It was a disorganized mess. The whole warehouse was a dirty, dimly-lit, dust-encased, poorly-ventilated, ineptly supervised disaster waiting to happen. It is a miracle a single order ever went out of that warehouse completely fulfilled. They did provide free gatorade, air conditioning in the breakroom, and car-loan discounts if you were a “real” employee.Say what you will about Amazon but there is a dress code and it is enforced; the heaviest jacket I have ever had to wear in the building in the dead of winter is a zip-up hoodie and summer may be hot but the building temperature is a far far cry from what I would consider a “sweat shop.” There is no air conditioning just for management; they get the same thermostat the rest of us peons get. Temperature-wise it is a level playing field. Amazon provides gloves and (PPE) personal protection equipment. The company also provides first-aid, band-aids, and over-the-counter medicines like ibuprofen and tylenol. There is a market in the breakroom so you can buy a meal if you forget your lunch. The lockers are clean and abundant. Security is polite, professional, and courteous. The cleaning crew does a kick-ass, bang-up job keeping the trash empty, the bathrooms clean, and the breakroom neat. The floors are clean. That said…Amazon is not a perfect work environment. No work environment that runs 24, 7 is going to be perfect. But, Amazon, in my opinion, tries harder to accommodate its workers with a safe, clean, organized work environment than just about any place I have ever worked. To drive that point home I would personally be willing to give a fresh, clean, crisp $100.00 bill to anyone from Amazon who could last the same 6-weeks in the same cold conditions at that DFW warehouse working 16-hour shifts and then do the same identical 3-month summer shift at that motor parts warehouse I did because when you complain about the work conditions at Amazon you don't know what you are talking about or how good you have it. I am not saying Amazon is perfect. I have gripes and complaints about it too. I am over 50 with 10 years of college and a master's degree in accounting from an accredited university and although I have applied for other jobs within Amazon, I cannot even get an interview for those positions. I have seen countless 20-something-year-olds with a fraction of my education and practically none of my work experience or Amazon-tenure get hired or promoted into management and supervisory roles while the best job I can get with Amazon is standing on a line packing boxes 10-hours a day. I need the paycheck; what's more, I need the insurance Amazon provides so I do it—not exactly self-actualization but life doesn't come with guarantees, at least mine hasn't. I attribute my lack of promotability within Amazon to my age of 50-plus years. I am simply not qualified to be a 12-year old manager; a 10-year old supervisor; or, a 5-year old executive because I have never mastered a Leap-Frog device and it has been years since I have been acquainted with anything manufactured by Fisher-Price. In Amazon's defense some of these young people are incredible: smart, talented, personable, and capable. Some are not; most are overly-ambitious, self-interested spoiled brats with only personal gain in mind. They could care less about Amazon as a company as they knock over anybody who gets in between them and the Amazon candy-bowl, which they want all for themselves. They want self-promotion even without qualification or consciousness or consideration of anyone else. It is all about me, me, me and what can I get and where can I go and how many bodies can I step on as I pile up corpses on my way up the ladder of my own personal success. If Amazon has an Achilles heel, it is this…in hiring and retaining people who are only interested in cheating or cutting-corners to be the fastest rate-maker; pushing their way into corporate “clicks” of people who can foster their development and advancement without consideration for anyone or anything other than how can I help myself and what can I do for me; pulling unethical or compromising strings to position themselves into a spotlight where they can be moved around or moved up…in doing this Amazon defeats itself. Older responsible workers get discouraged and leave; talented, educated, hard-working employees get ignored and passed over; Amazon is left with the rotten apples in charge of everything —eventually—who cry “it's unfair,” “it's unfair,” because it is all about me, me, me; what I can get; and what I want. Screw the company, I want it in my paycheck and in my pocket and I want it all now. So, unions come in; owners lose options, control…the downward spiral takes hold.Life isn't fair. Anyone who has worked or lived any length of time will tell you life is not fair. If you have a backbone, you suck it up and you make the best of it. You sleep in a cold truck if you need a paycheck and that is what a job requires. You sweat your entire body weight in a single day picking automotive parts if that is what a job requires. With an education or without an education, you do what you have to do to earn a living, put food on your table, and survive. Having an education doesn't guarantee you the opportunity to ever get a chance to use it. For me, education was a waste of time, money, intellectual resources, and talent. I sacrificed a lot and got very little…other than massive student loan debt.Still, I am convinced I am better for having earned an education. I can tell you in all honesty that it is not the conditions at Amazon that need improving…the actual warehouse work condtions far exceed many I have encountered. What Amazon needs to improve is its company culture with its high school student body policy of electing the most popular, albeit only marginally competent, young person to be student body president…no experience, no education, nothing much to offer other than a nice picture of a bright-faced kid on a poster. I have seen countless older employees who are perfectly capable of doing the job at the rates Amazon requires get “railroaded” out by these young entitlists. So, why does Amazon get away with poor work conditions? In a nutshell, because those who are complaining and belly-aching, and griping about the lousy work conditions at Amazon have no real-world experience about what it is like to work in a real sh@#-hole warehouse nor do they have a clue about the existence of the rathole conditions in other warehouses. They need perspective and they don't have it. Instead of picking all the time on big-bucks Bezos because he made a lot of money from a good idea; instead of pulling him through the mud because his name makes for good, profitable publicity and click-bait; why don't people in the press try to expose other companies with less cash who have real problems that need to be addressed. Poor working conditions at Amazon? ….simply a money-making mirage for the mainsteam media and a soapbox for socialist politicians.This is entirely my own opinion and no one else's. I am not a champion of Jeff Bezos. In fact, I honestly believe that were he to apply for a job with Amazon today, he would not be hired for any job other than the one I currently do because of his age. He got the breaks in life; I did not—no harm; no foul. Just the way it is in life sometimes. I did the best I could given the circumstances and resources I had available to me. I do not feel he should be persecuted for having been successful. I am not a champion of Amazon. In fact, I am planning to quit Amazon at the end of September 2018; I am simply not interested in mastering “Leap Frog,” which means I don't “fit” the company culture. C'est la vie.