Amazon Tells Moms They Must Trade Privacy for Support
The shocking demand faced by new mothers at "Earth's Best Employer"
This is not a funny story. But to give us some altitude before we plummet into depressing reality, let’s start with a light-hearted digression perfectly suited to what follows.
If you’ve ever seen the classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you’ll recall one of its more hilarious scenes. Ferris wants to spring his girlfriend, Sloan Peterson, out of school to play hooky with him and his best friend Cameron. He gets Cameron to call the school’s principal, Ed Rooney, and impersonate Sloan’s father, requesting she be excused because her grandmother has died. Which, of course, isn’t true.
We might be tempted to extract from this scene a lesson about anticipating and nullifying someone’s attempt to expose truth when you’re intent on deceiving them. But that’s not the right lesson.
There are actually two lessons.
Rooney is a moron, because only a moron would make the request he did.
Being an overconfident moron is the path to humiliation and failure.
It would be excellent to live in a world where such a comically morose exhibit of overconfident idiocy could only be found in film scripts and other realms of fantasy. Sadly, the real world is actually a lot more disturbing.
In that real world, there are companies which make profit by delivering products and services. They employ humans, who take the actions and operate the processes that create the profit. Said humans rely on said employers for their livelihoods, creating an inherently lopsided relationship.
Humans are naturally nonlinear beings who differ from machines by sometimes needing help, support, and communication. They sometimes don’t fit neatly into organized categories, and sometimes experience circumstances that require exceptions from normal work policies. In those moments, humans are extremely vulnerable. Because they need something from their employer, who holds all of the power and may decide to not give it to them.
Now ask yourself. Which life circumstances make you feel most vulnerable?
You can make a case for many. Finding out Santa Claus isn’t real. Finding out SpongeBob isn’t real. Finding out David Hasselhoff is real, and was a rampant sex symbol.
But somewhere high on the list is being a new parent. A new life depends on you for everything. That precious new life is your entire world. It gives you meaning. And it confers upon you a more solemn responsibility than anything else ever could. A new mother, having carried and nurtured a life into the world, feels the weight of world in a whole new and much heavier way. It now feels like a minefield teeming with threats, through which you must guide another person.
We can understand a lot about an employer based on how it treats employees when they are most vulnerable.
Which is what makes an Amazon policy regarding new mothers one of the most shocking and repugnant examples of workplace fuckery I can recall seeing in quite some time.
I’m going to share with you the content of a questionnaire given to an Amazon employee. She was instructed to answer the questions and return it by a date a few weeks into the future, at which point her request would be “considered” by a bespectacled 26-year-old she’d known for less than a month. If he approved, he would send it forward for at least six more approvals.
That’s not a joke. Six more. Any one of them can say no and kill the request. All of them have to say yes, including a company Vice President, for the request to be approved.
I’ve taken the content out of its native form to protect the anonymity of the person who shared it with me, having done so on that condition.
It was leaked to me by a current employee other than the individual directly impacted. When I saw the questions, it beggared my belief that it could be real. So I asked others. They assured me it’s all too real.
With minor variations, this questionnaire is the core of Amazon’s HR-approved “exception handling” process when a new mother asks for a temporary license to work from home while adjusting to the feeding cycle of her newborn.
It’s an outgrowth of CEO Andy Jassy’s universal Return-to-Office (RTO) edict, which strongly discourages exceptions and requires they be granted at executive level.
What is your baby's date of birth?
Does the baby take a bottle?
Do you pump? If so, have you been able to take breaks needed to do so? If not, what is causing the barriers to do so?
Does the baby eat solid foods?
What is the start and end date of your request?
Are you able to use lactation rooms on site? If not, why not?
What are the barriers you will face going into the office, versus working from home Please be advised, we need to clearly understand your in office barriers.
Does your role require you to be in the office or travel (outside of commute) for any reason or part of your role?
Are there any in-office accommodations that will meet your needs instead of work from home, such as extended breaks, or intermittent time off?
How many days a week are you requesting to work from home?
Before I analyze this lamentable exhibit of creeping techno-feudalism, it’s worth remarking how this once again shows something I’ve written about previously: Amazon must be awfully desperate — more than it admits — to get people back into the office. Using tactics this cynical to add friction to reasonable employee requests reflects desperation.
My speculation is that Amazon:
(a) Needs to raise occupancy rates before it refinances commercial real estate,
(b) Needs to increase footfall in business districts to retain sweetheart tax deals,
(c) Is desperate to increase attrition and reduce labor costs before its AI investments inevitably belly flop in a company-breaking kerplunk,
(d) Is keen to genuflect for President Trump in the corrupt but mistaken belief it will result in favorable taxation, regulation, contracts, or tariffs, or
(d) Some combination of the above and/or other things I can’t imagine.
I’m confident the reason for Amazon’s draconian RTO edict is not what CEO Jassy says, which is something about office culture. You don’t need to alienate large segments of your workforce to improve the culture, and in fact doing so is likely to trigger the opposite.
More in the link.
Whatever the real reason for RTO, it doesn’t justify the harassment, indignity, or injured privacy of any employee.
So let’s ask ourselves a few key questions that will help illustrate why it’s happening nonetheless.
Can Amazon Use This Questionnaire?
If you’re like me, you didn’t have a calm or recoilless reaction to the questionnaire. The exact words I uttered are not fit for print.
And yet, for the most part, a process like this is permissible. An employer is entitled to ask reasonable questions to assess the needs of an employee and how to best support them. An employer may condition certain support requests on how valid and necessary it assesses them to be.
Asking questions can also help assure a request is genuine, and that too is fair. Some employee benefits, when totally frictionless, can become a bonanza of abuse. I once had an associate take enough bereavement leave to account for seven sets of dead grandparents, yet he could only name one set after we cottoned on. So we started asking some basic questions to reduce the ease by which our good and trusting nature could be preyed upon.
But we never went “full Rooney” and asked to see a corpse.
That’s the equivalent of what this survey does, straying way over a line requiring only common sense to notice and respect.
Questions 2 and 4 are asking a new mother about her baby’s feeding habits. This is an invasion of privacy. There is no valid business need to know that level of detail. The best assessment of the needs of the baby will come from the mother. It is extremely disrespectful to second guess or audit her assessments. Asking her to reveal private information about her baby’s habits as a condition to be given a temporary parenting support accommodation is unacceptable. Even asking the baby’s age in Question 1 is pushing it, because it raises the implication that some Amazon stooge might decide the baby’s age is dispositive in deciding whether it needs what Mom has already decided it needs.
But the grotesque violation is in Question 3.
“… do you pump?…”
Let me illustrate why this is appalling by giving you two examples of how a conversation like this can go.
Case A: a new mother doesn’t ask to work from home. She simply tells her employer she needs to express milk. She’s happy to attend work onsite provided her employer accommodates. The Fair Labor Standards Act and Protection for Nursing Mothers Act list the actions required by an employer when such a request is made. As you would imagine, these include providing a private room and paid break time for lactation, and suitable storage for milk. Employers who fall afoul of these standards can be sued for discrimination. You might be surprised how often that happens, but you probably wouldn’t be. Enough that an ordinarily dormant US Congress felt moved to pass a new law with strengthened protections in ‘23. The key to Case A is that it’s the mother’s choice to inform the employer she is lactating and would like support.
Case B: a new mother doesn’t say anything to her employer about pumping milk at work. She just asks to work from home. In this case, she’s choosing not to delve into mechanical detail about what happens with her body or her baby’s feeding. Some mothers will prefer this more discreet and private approach. They may not be as open to discussing the matter with strangers or distant acquaintances. They may not want their male boss envisioning them pumping milk out of themselves. Such modesty remains commonplace in society, and is reasonable.
In Case A, discussions of human anatomy sufficient to fulfill the request are legit. In fact, the mother takes the initiative in providing them.
In Case B, an employer reading into a request by asking breast-related questions is inappropriate. It’s prying. It’s defeating the entire purpose of the employee’s request to be away from the workplace, which was most likely to maintain separation between a very private act and their public persona.
Amazon believes it’s been clever here by applying Case A logic to Case B requests. Whenever a mother makes a request to work from home, it defaults to a position that lactation must be the reason, and therefore the details are fair game.
But that’s assuming facts not in evidence. If the reason is some other reason, it has grossly infringed on an employee’s privacy by opening a conversation about her lactation routine.
It’s not only gross, but more than a little cynical.
But as to whether Amazon can do this, the answer is basically “yes” so long as it doesn’t delve below the meniscus of detail in its questions. It might technically be astray from what is allowed, but not so much as to get itself on the wrong side of a lawsuit. The risk it takes in such questions is, Amazon evidently feels, low enough to justify what it gains by discouraging new mothers from making requests to work from home.
The gray area Amazon tramples through in Questions 2-4 could become a rod for its own back later, depending on the fidelity with which it carries out the remainder of its duties under the law.
But whether Amazon can do this is, to me, the wrong question.
Should Amazon Use This Questionnaire?
No. Not a million years. This is just wrong.
We should not need laws or courts to tell employers how to be respectful. Or how to be considerate of their people, particularly those who are vulnerable and putting their dignity at hazard to get support.
Amazon knows better. The company claims it strives to be Earth’s Best Employer. It constantly propagandizes about being a welcome environment for all sorts of people. Surely someone has thought before asking new moms intrusive questions unnecessary to their support.
But I know for a fact that women impacted by this policy have complained that it’s a bad approach, and all they’re getting is a shoulder shrug and “well, that’s our policy.”
I spoke with three current Amazon moms.
One was unfazed. “It’s in line with what I expect, especially in today’s job market.”
Another was disengaged. “They’re treating motherhood like a defect. My manager turned supporting me into a big deal. Everyone knows my business. Why is having a baby an exception? Why don’t they expect it? Now I feel like every interaction I have, colleagues are thinking of me as a brood mare instead of a professional.”
The third was pissed off, and told me she’d quit if she could afford it. “My career and dignity are under assault for daring to exist normally. I feel like they would demand to see my nipples if they could.”
Policies that make employees feel like this are reprehensible.
Key Observations
What we can learn from this depends on whether we think it is an intended outcome of the CEO’s RTO edict or an unintentional bureaucratic misfire.
If it wasn’t intended, then our key lesson is one about executive insight. Jassy should understand that when he makes a demand of his people, it is heavy-handed by definition. As it filters through each layer of a tall vertical structure, it’ll become more demanding, more exaggerated, and less flexible as managers seek to assure compliance. To do what the big boss wants.
Maybe Jassy lacked the proficiency, despite his $40M salary, to foresee a “show us your nipples” approach to new moms. Indeed, one of his apologists told me I should cut him some slack, as he’s never been a mom.
To which I replied (a) if he doesn’t know how his own company works, he should resign, (b) I never feel sorry for a man who eats dinner on a yacht, and (c) if it wasn’t his intention, he’s had plenty of time to hear about it and fix it.
I find it far more probable that Jassy and his inner circle knew exactly what kind of shit show they were creating. It’s consistent with a nascent corporate philosophy that abhors the inconvenience and cost of human non-linearity.
And if this is an intentional outcome, then Amazon is operating in a discriminatory manner. It is disadvantaging new moms by making them choose between privacy and support.
Some will argue that it’s not illegal, and they might be proven right. But the disadvantage is emotional and psychological. As it distorts how these women feel about their work relationships, it becomes practical. In all cases, it is real. The fact US employment law has decomposed into a breeze-blown aerosol does nothing to change that, or to excuse Amazon.
So what we learn in this case is a reinforcement of what we already knew. Amazon has become a soulless and uncaring place to work. It lacks empathy, and actually enforces that lack of empathy at all levels with policies that force fielded HR agencies and managers to be cold and inhumane with employees.
Mary Jones, an alias I give to a current Amazon employee, went from loving to hating her job in the space of weeks. All because she chose to enrich her life by adding to her family.
She wanted to work from home for a few weeks because the anxiety she experiences as a normal feature of work makes postpartum life difficult for her. She lactates at a higher frequency, in a more irregular pattern, and can become emotionally disregulated before and after the process. These issues dissolve when she is away from work.
Explaining all of this to a male manager with whom she had no relationship and limited rapport broke her spirit. But then he went on leave, and shared his notes with a proxy manager who lacked the maturity and discretion to keep her personal details to himself. Soon she was getting friendly, well-meaning, but totally embarrassing remarks from her teammates. Congratulating her on the approved request to work from home so she could lactate. Wishing her well on her milking journey.
How dehumanizing and ridiculous. It reads like a cautionary tale on giving untrained ingenues authority and then forcing them to exert that misbegotten authority in service of the worst policies ever dreamt up.
How can any Amazon executive or board member say with a straight face that this company values its employees or respects the notion of family?
If my wife had come home and told me this story, my response would have been delivered as I double-timed out of the house, climbing into my car to go deliver a well-deserved ass kicking to some hapless functionary.
“Send your resignation email and then send the police to your workplace to pick me up. I’ll be the one sitting on the curb with swollen knuckles.”
But if this has happened to you, well, my advice is the same I gave privately.
Go to work as much as you need to and not a second more. Gut it out. Follow the rules, but object and challenge and make requests when it makes sense.
Most importantly, document everything. Keep copies, forward yourself emails. Make a record of what’s happening, including how it makes you feel and what you say and do in response.
Because eventually, when you become too much trouble, they will dispose of you. But if you’ve documented everything, you just might have the basis to sue for discrimination.
Because that’s what we call it when you make someone leave their job because being a mother made them feel unwelcome. And it remains discriminatory whether you explicitly intended it, lithely accepted it, or negligently allowed it to happen. And it also remains discriminatory whether a court agrees or not.
I don’t pretend Amazon has a conscience. Nor do I pretend the American government, via regulation or legislation, will do anything about a situation like this.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write our legislators. And it doesn’t prevent us withholding our business until Amazon starts using its power and money to do better.
Tony is a former Amazon operations director and an independent expert voice on leadership and organizations. The opinions expressed here are his own.
This is essentially the same questionnaire I had to fill out after major surgery that required six weeks of recovery and twelve more of physical therapy. Just one more of many reasons I was compelled to leave.
Horrid and intrusive questionnaire. Option (f) might be: they DGAF about retaining women.