- A since-deleted viral TikTok showed a UPS driver unhappy with the amount of Amazon packages a customer ordered.
- During this year's Prime Day, customers bought more than 250 million items from Amazon.
- Several carriers deliver millions of Amazon packages every year, including FedEx, UPS, and the USPS.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
A TikTok showing a UPS delivery driver clearly unhappy with the amount of Amazon packages he had to deliver to a customer went viral on Wednesday before it was deleted.
"This is absolutely ridiculous. Another sucker ordering stuff on Amazon," the driver can be heard saying to himself as he carried a large Amazon box to the front door. "I got this great deal here on Amazon. I need to buy 16 million things because Amazon told me to."
"We appreciate our employees' hard work," a UPS spokesperson told Insider in a statement. "But these comments do not reflect our commitment to exceptional customer service."
Lorelai Mentzer, a soon-to-be-mom who captured the moment on her Ring Doorbell, usually makes TikToks about her dog to send to friends and family. She had no idea how viral the video – which had 219,200 views in just one day – would soon become.
"My initial reaction was that my feelings were hurt," Mentzer told Insider. "I was a little embarrassed by the number of packages I had and thought to myself, did I really need all those? Am I a bad person for ordering this many packages?"
Mentzer is seven months pregnant and her husband is recovering from colon cancer, making Amazon Prime delivery a safe and convenient option for the couple. This particular shipment included a breast pump, 30 pounds of dog food, and vitamins.
With this week's Amazon Prime Day breaking record sales, delivery drivers were overwhelmed with the number of packages ordered.
"I'm sure he had seen enough Amazon packages probably to last a lifetime this week," Metzer said.
While much has been written about Amazon drivers suffering from the stress of growing package counts, they aren't the only workers impacted by the tech giant's popularity. The amount of Amazon orders affects the nation's entire delivery system. Amazon uses multiple carriers to deliver billions of packages every year, including FedEx, UPS, and the United States Postal Service.
Amazon's annual shipping costs skyrocketed from 2019 to 2020, increasing from $37.9 billion to $61.1 billion.
Mentzer ultimately decided to delete the video. "This is why people don't want things to go viral," she said. "You have such a mix of some nice support... and then you have people who are really really upset."
On Wednesday, she asked her local UPS office if she could buy the delivery driver lunch.
"My intent is certainly not to get him reprimanded," Mentzer said. "I just want him to understand that while it may look like we're sitting here just ordering packages willy nilly, there are people who can't go to the store."