Pros
'Recruitment' process, via an agency, was incredibly easy. Nice co-workers.
Cons
The worst things about employment at this particular Amazon customer service facility isn't the job itself but the massive over-reliance on temporary agency workers, which pervades the entire management structure and has a huge impact on how you're assessed in your progress reviews. As a newbie CSA going through a week of mandatory shadowing, the mentoring advice is frequently conflicting (mentor one: you should contact the depot to track this order; mentor two (angrily): why the hell did you contact the depot for this?) and the poor and contradictory advice often has unfair repercussions on our performance statistics, which are sacrosanct at this job. Almost everyone, including our 'managers', mentors, etc, are temps (most of the facility), and permanency is spoken about in whispered tones as a lofty ideal which many aspire to but impossibly few seem to achieve. Oddly enough the few 'blue badges' at the facility (those on contract) often seem the most demotivated of the lot. The result is that the majority of the workforce live without much job security, motivation or critically the kind of in depth knowledge of the company and customer service procedures that you would expect from your seniors. The two weeks training new CSAs are put through initially feels like initiation into a cult with endless repetition of meaningless jargon and references to 'Jeff' (Bezos). You almost begin to buy how great Amazon is and how much it truly cares for its staff until the first person in the training class is called out for being five seconds late for break (EVERYTHING is monitored obsessively) and you realize that, yes, you're really expected to leave your desk, go through four swipe checkpoints, queue in the canteen, eat, and return, in the space of fifteen minutes. The job was exciting and challenging for about two days while fresh on the 'floor' but then became mind-numbingly boring with the same two or three issues being dealt with continuously. In addition to the overbearing monitoring from anonymous middle managers, the massive reliance on performance statistics, in which negative customer feedback is often unfairly left on the basis of the customer's experience at Amazon (rather than your performance at CSA) becomes a problem, and unpaid overtime soon becoming the norm (any contacts received before the end of your shift must be dealt with before you're allowed leave). I'm delighted that I've been offered a new permanent position beginning in February as I can't imagine that I would have lasted beyond then otherwise.
