Neither do toilets. You literally set a side a small room with table, chairs and Microwave. There is a lot of things that don't generate revenue but you do them anyways to prevent revenue and reputation loss. Like security guards,cameras,parking lots,etc... These things support the people and process that generate revenue. If walking to a breakroom is 2 minutes (4 total) the employee has 26 extra minutes now, they can slack off or get back to work faster and be more productive and less tired and frustrated (less mistakes). Either way that's 26min work isn't being done so there is no loss in revenue.
And yeah, kudos to them if that's true. It's easy to pick on Amazon but your run of the mill warehouse job is always worse and pays half as much
And you're right, they could afford to be more flexible with employee time and productivity might rise, but that's just not their culture. Their culture is that employees are responsible for meeting expectations, no excuses. If they want productivity to rise, they just raise quotas and crack down on time off task. They complain about the cost of the pain medication employees use from the dispensary. They abuse trialware because they don't want to pay for the licenses. That's just who they are.
This is a company that will assign you to indefinite six day, twelve hour weeks if business needs call for it, but will complain if you're a minute late from break. It's possible that bad press or not wanting to be the Democrats' straw villain in 2020 might cause policies to drift in a more progressive direction, though.
>It's easy to pick on Amazon but your run of the mill warehouse job is always worse and pays half as much
That's true. To be fair, the base wage is extremely competitive in most markets for entry level work, and the health insurance is really good, and most people aren't peeing in bottles and the like. But even then, "it's not literally the worst possible job" is kind of damning with faint praise.
Break areas don't generate revenue. FCs are designed around efficient product flow first, people second. If employees have to waste fifteen minutes of a half hour break walking to and from the break room as a result, then they can just walk faster. But not run, that's a safety hazard.
>Why not let people take a lot of breaks, so long as their performance metric is on point?
Actually... they did just roll out a program that lets people take a minute break every 45 minutes or so, without it affecting their metrics. So that's something.