The ebike chained to a cheap Amazon bike rack some theif must have thought Amazon left outside just for him/Dominic Yamada, Facebook

Amazon undelivers…

In the America beyond Alaska, Amazon – the country’s now largest business – appears to be working hard to live up to its 2019 pledge to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The company now brags about its “more than 50,000 electric delivery vans globally,” and the 15 “electric vehicle models… from e-cargo bikes and three-wheelers to heavy-duty trucks” that is testing on the country’s roads. 

But in Anchorage, where Amazon employee Dominic Yamada was trying to do his part for cleaner air and fewer emissions of CO₂, Amazon’s Alaska leadership seems unaware of the company mission.

To start with, in a city where bike thefts are out of control, Amazon built a big, new warehouse at the corner of Dowling Road and the Old Seward Highway, where it put bike racks on the least active side of the building, the side with locked, blacked-out doors used by no one and blacked-ut windows to prevent anyone from glancing out toward the designated were still there.

Amazon’s pre-theft bike racks/Craig Medred photo

Yamada, who was commuting to work at Amazon on his environmentally friendly e-bike, had it stolen when thieves cut through the Amazon rack.

The as yet unrepaired bike rack in the designated “E-Bike Parking” area on Tuesday/Craig Medred photo

Worst of all here, Amazon installed racks built of cheap steel easily cut with a battery-powered rotary tool.  And thus, the inevitable came to pass.

“It was locked up with a good lock, so the loser decided to cut the bike rack it was locked onto, so it’s definitely someone with power tools,” Yamada posted on the Facebook page of Anchorage Bicyclists last week in a plea for help in finding his main means of transportation in the state’s largest city. 

For better or worse, he got some helpful suggestions on what to do, which  clearly left him frustrated. Among these suggestions were to ask for help from his employer in recovering the bike and investigate whether the company’s insurance policy would cover his loss.

“Do you think I haven’t talked to managers and other higher ups at Amazon?” he responded. “Their lack of assistance is why I’m posting to Facebook to get more eyes on it.”

His frustration only grew as more advice came in.

“Maybe you should suggest to Amazon to build you a place for bicycles that people can’t break into. At the hospitals, they have fenced-in cages for bikes, and they get a key from security ( for employees only),” an Anchorage nurse and cyclist posted. “Then you can also lock your bikes up in the cage. They (Amazon) have enough employees, they should provide some security for you.”

“Doing that doesn’t bring my bike back,” Yamada shot back. “Also, do you think I haven’t been in talks with my managers? They are effectively useless. That’s why I’m on Facebook. Get a clue.”

He did later calm down and explain that his telling “Amazon to build a safer place to lock up bikes isn’t helping in any way….My one, single voice complaining to my bosses at a multi-billion dollar company isn’t going to do jack shit.”

He might well be right about that. Often this is the way things are at billion-dollar companies. They tend to develop huge bureaucracies that can get in the way of fixing relatively small problems.

As Yamada eventually confessed on Facebook, “it’s not my boss that isn’t doing anything. It’s a warehouse supervisor of some sorts that isn’t helping in any way. Unsure of his name as I talked to him once due to this incident for five seconds and I’m terrible at remembering names.”

Amazon, according to other employees, has cameras surrounding the Anchorage warehouse, but Yamada hasn’t been able to get the video from those cameras.

“When I made a police report,” he wrote, “they told me I would have to get in contact with whoever has the video footage. and they would have to send it to the police. But (Amazon is) seemingly ineffective on the matter as they claimed they have to outsource it to someone out of state.”

Or, in simple terms, Amazon doesn’t seem to care much that an employee’s bike was stolen while locked down at its warehouse. One cannot help but wonder what the reaction would be if thieves started stealing employees’ cars and trucks from the Amazon parking lot.

Would supervisors ignore those thefts, or only the thefts of the climate-change-friendlier electric cars?

And what about incentivizing employees to engage in climate-friendlier behaviors, not to mention generally healthier behaviors? The U.S. is now suffering through epidemics of both obesity and sloth. American fitness is at an all-time low.

The country became a world leader in Covid-19 deaths because of this lack of fitness and the associated high rates of chronic diseases, or what came to be called ”combordities” although the latter term, technically, defines someone with two or more chronic diseases.

Amazon’s public relations office in Bellevue, Wash., did respond to questions about this call on Monday. PR Specialist Intern Tuku Rania responded quit quickly to an email and left a voicemail saying that she and “co-worker Louis Tran…were just calling regarding the media inquiry for Dominic Yamada’s ebike. We just wanted to have a quick discussion regarding any questions so, yes, please call back.”

Two voice mails left on Tuesday, however, went unanswered.

Anchorage readers of this website might want to keep their eyes open for a ZDZA e-bike as pictured above. Yamada is of the belief his might be the only one of them in the state’s largest city.