An Amazon Prime truck in downtown Seattle near Amazon HQ. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Amazon issued a rare apology Friday night, stepping back from comments made on Twitter last week in a response to Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin over whether its delivery drivers felt the need to urinate in bottles since bathroom breaks were challenging to achieve.

The apology is an unusual admission by the Seattle-based company, which has aggressively defended itself against criticism on Twitter lately. It also comes as Amazon workers at a fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., consider a unionization effort, with a vote tally expected some time next week.

Here’s the tweet from Pocan on March 24 that set things off.

The official Amazon Twitter account @AmazonNews shot back at Pocan:

Pocan replied that he believed Amazon’s workers. And, as GeekWire reported, thousands of other users on Twitter joined in the debate.

Amazon said Friday that the tweet was “incorrect,” and “did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers.”

The company also said the tweet did not receive proper scrutiny and called its process “flawed.”

However, Amazon did defend itself a bit, saying that drivers having trouble finding restrooms “is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon.” It included several links to related stories and tweets.

“Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it,” the company wrote Friday. “We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.”

How these startups are solving Amazon’s potty problem, helping delivery drivers find relief on the go

Last week’s saga was an unusual PR pissing match for Amazon, which usually avoids such controversies. The matter took on elevated importance after Recode reported this week that the responses were coming from the top, directed by none other than founder Jeff Bezos.

Historically, Amazon has let criticism bounce off its teflon shell. And the apology points to an increased sensitivity as labor tensions rise, Bezos hands over the CEO reins to AWS chief Andy Jassy, and ongoing antitrust scrutiny.

Here’s the full apology as posted to the Amazon blog:

On Wednesday last week, the @amazonnews Twitter account tweeted the following back to Representative Mark Pocan:

This was an own-goal, we’re unhappy about it, and we owe an apology to Representative Pocan.

First, the tweet was incorrect. It did not contemplate our large driver population and instead wrongly focused only on our fulfillment centers. A typical Amazon fulfillment center has dozens of restrooms, and employees are able to step away from their work station at any time. If any employee in a fulfillment center has a different experience, we encourage them to speak to their manager and we’ll work to fix it.

Second, our process was flawed. The tweet did not receive proper scrutiny. We need to hold ourselves to an extremely high accuracy bar at all times, and that is especially so when we are criticizing the comments of others.

Third, we know that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms because of traffic or sometimes rural routes, and this has been especially the case during Covid when many public restrooms have been closed.

This is a long-standing, industry-wide issue and is not specific to Amazon. We’ve included just a few links below that discuss the issue.

Regardless of the fact that this is industry-wide, we would like to solve it. We don’t yet know how, but will look for solutions.

We will continue to speak out when misrepresented, but we will also work hard to always be accurate.

We apologize to Representative Pocan.

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