Amazon's Pay to Quit Program – Warehouse Employees Face Interesting Yearly Challenge

If you are an employee of an Amazon fulfillment center and you’re not particularly happy with your job, a new program they’ve implemented might just be the solution to your problems – and theirs.

It’s called the “Pay to Quit” program, and it’s just what it sounds like. If you don’t like your job, you get paid to leave.

The amount you are paid is in direct proportion with the number of years you’ve been an Amazon employee. Those who walk away during the first year of their jobs get $2,000, while those employed four years are more get $5,000.

You may be wondering why a company would want to implement such a program. In his letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained that he hopes no one takes him up on his offer. He wants them to be happy enough to want to stay.

That said, in the long run it isn’t healthy to employ someone who doesn’t want to be there. It is Amazon’s thinking that if they are presented with such an offer, they will take a longer, harder look at what they really want to do. The offer arrives via letter to fulfillment center employees once a year, under the headline, “Please Don’t Take This Offer.”

The Pay to Quit program was officially created by Zappos.com, an Amazon sister online company that sells shoes and apparel. Zappos.com was purchased in 2009.

So far, fewer than 10% of employees who have received the offer have taken it and left the company. Oh, and just in case you were wondering … career Web site Glassdoor.com says that Amazon fulfillment employees average about $12 per hour, which translates into about $25,000 per year (source).