Terry Crews is getting roasted for starring in an Amazon ad where he excitedly works at one of the company's warehouses


Terry Crews is getting roasted for starring in an Amazon ad where he excitedly works at one of the company's warehouses



Ben Gilbert,Dominick Reuter
Thu, November 11, 2021

Terry Crews/Amazon

Actor Terry Crews is being dragged by critics for his latest Amazon commercial.

The ad features Crews excitedly exploring one of Amazon's fulfillment centers.

Amazon warehouse jobs have high turnover, which former employees say is because of how they're run.

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" star Terry Crews is being criticized for his starring role in a new Amazon ad.

The ad, which Crews posted to his TikTok account on Tuesday, features Crews visiting an Amazon warehouse, participating in a variety of different jobs, and speaking to a handful of employees.

He lifts boxes, shrink-wraps a pallet of boxed goods, and preaches the many benefits of working in Amazon's warehouse jobs - jobs that have extraordinarily high turnover because of the demands and tedium of the work, Amazon warehouse staffers told Insider.

"Wait, I get to drive a forklift?" Crews says in the ad.

"I 'got' to drive a forklift for 15 years. I was never excited about it," one Twitter user said in response to the video. "As a matter of fact, EVERY DAY I would contemplate driving my car into a ravine on the way to do it."

These types of responses were littered across social media, especially on Crews' own TikTok account.

Terry Crews/TikTok

Amazon warehouses, which Amazon calls "fulfillment centers," are at the center of Amazon's e-commerce empire and enable the company to rapidly ship consumer goods around the US.

Current and former Amazon warehouse workers have repeatedly accused the company of putting productivity above workers, to the extent that employees are punished or fired for taking bathroom breaks that are deemed too long.

Employees whom Insider spoke with in June all cited similar issues: the monotonous nature of the work, the surveillance of their productivity, and the resulting rapid burnout.

Specifically, the current and former employees said entry-level warehouse jobs were most ripe for turnover, including "pickers," who pick items for orders, pack those orders into boxes, and get those boxes loaded into trucks.

"It's super tedious, and no one wants to do it," one employee in Michigan said.

These are among the many criticisms being leveled at Crews' new Amazon ad, to say nothing of the luxury watch he's wearing in it: It appears to be a Panerai Luminor Submersible watch, which is valued in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

Amazon warehouse workers, making $18 an hour working full time, can expect to earn about $35,000 a year.

Check out the full ad on TikTok, or watch it below:

@terrycrews

##ad @Amazon has got gigs (and benefits) for days. So, check them out. Like now!♬ original sound - Terry Crews