Taking the Piss Out of Amazon

Amazon may not care about their workers’ bladders, but they do care a lot about selling stuff.

 

⁠Their drivers urinating in bottles has been reported in the past, but what wasn't known is that some claim they also get penalized for having those urine-filled bottles in their truck when they return to the warehouse. (Of course, Amazon deny this, even maintaining that drivers receive reminders to take regular breaks on the Amazon Delivery app). To avoid penalties, they end up discarding the bottles by the side of the road. 

 

Enter Oobah Butler (right): He visited Amazon fulfillment centers to spot, verify and collect bottles of drivers’ pee, and then turned all that urine into an ‘energy drink’, creating a fictitious brand “Release”, which he planned to sell on Amazon. 

 

The new product looks like the real McCoy, with slick branding that’s virtually indistinguishable from genuine stuff. Brand name running vertically down the bottle, Gen Z yellow (er, piss) for the color palette, a lightning bolt and the bold promise of “energy”. And an ingredient list detailing the chemical makeup of pee! 

 

Even more clever is Butler’s attempt at creating a “sustainable” beverage that “embraces waste”. Writing in Vice, he shares the imaginative copy they build into the faux brand. “The world’s first fully reusable energy drink”, where all consumers have to do is “simply fill it back up to the brim and start again”. 

 

“Infinite refills”, indeed. 

 

From there, it's laughably straightforward for Butler to get Release listed for sale on Amazon, with very few checks and balances in place to ensure the product he was selling was safe and legal. 

 

He then gamed the Amazon algorithm, turned it into a “bitter lemon” drink, and after emailing Amazon employees for a couple of months, voila – he’s got the best-selling bitter lemon energy drink on Amazon, proving that maybe it doesn’t take much to create a best-selling brand. 

 

At one point, he was even contacted by an Amazon representative ready to handle the packaging, shipping, and logistics through the Fulfillment by Amazon program. (No members of the public were actually sent driver urine; instead Butler corralled a group of friends into making the purchases). When he saw the product listed for sale, Butler felt "initially really excited and found it very funny", he says. "Then when real people started trying to buy the product, I felt a bit scared". 

 

Amazon spokesperson James Drummond called it a "crude stunt". And just to clarify, the company had emphasized that "safety is a top priority for Amazon and we require all products offered in our store to comply with applicable laws and regulations. We have industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed and we monitor our stores for genuine product safety concerns”. 

 

FYI, this ploy was all part of Butler’s new documentary “The Great Amazon Heist” – which was aired on UK’s Channel 4 on October 19, 2023.