Return-to-work roadblocks: Amazon employees air frustrations

Nearly two months after Amazon ordered corporate and tech employees back to the office full-time, stories from employees suggest the company is still ironing out some kinks.

“The first two to three weeks, parking was a nightmare,” said one program manager who works out of Amazon’s South Lake Union campus. “Finding a desk was also a nightmare.”

“It was pretty clear pretty quickly that if we didn’t have assigned desks, they weren’t going to make us come back into the office five days a week,” said an Amazon engineer based in Bellevue.

Two employees spoke anonymously with KIRO 7 to detail the complex realities of trying to move thousands of workers back into the office full-time. Amazon mandated its employees return five days each week starting in January, after previously mandating staff work in the office three days each week.

The employee in Bellevue said they still don’t have an assigned desk and have not been given an exact date when they’ll be expected back in the office full-time.

“It’ll just be rolling building to building, as they’re able to assign every team desk,” they said, adding they were told it would happen sometime this spring.

The employee in South Lake Union told us the first few weeks in January were a bit bumpy as thousands of workers returned full-time.

“We had valet parking at one point because the garages were too full,” they said.

However, they said it seems like some of the bumps have been smoothed out.

“I’m not sure if it was because people are now taking public transportation,” they said. “Either people are finding other ways to get here or they’re just going in like different times than they did.”

They also told KIRO 7 they don’t believe everyone is fully complying with the mandate in the way the company intended. Both employees told KIRO 7 that communication has been lacking.An Amazon source told KIRO 7 it’s not that the company doesn’t have enough space, but rather just needs to reconfigure existing space.

A spokesperson for the company said that as of January 2, the “overwhelming majority” of employees have dedicated workspaces and have returned to the office full-time.

“Of the hundreds of offices we have all around the world, there are only a relatively small number that were not quite ready to welcome everyone back five days a week,” they wrote in a statement. “It’s incorrect and misleading to suggest that we aren’t ready for the vast majority of our teammates to be back in the office full-time.”

The Downtown Seattle Association has been tracking weekday worker foot traffic in Downtown Seattle. While foot traffic in January 2025 was 9% higher than January 2024, numbers were similar to most months during the fall and spring. The big difference was on Mondays and Fridays, popular work-from-home days.

The Downtown Seattle Association reported a 22% increase in worker foot traffic on those days in January 2025 compared to December 2024. The number was 36% higher compared to January 2024.

The increase coincides with Amazon’s mandate bringing workers back five days a week instead of three.

“How logistically complicated is it to transition thousands of workers from even just three days a week in office to five?” KIRO 7′s Madeline Ottilie asked Debbie Compeau, Dean of the Carson College of Business at Washington State University.

“I think it’s an incredibly challenging problem,” she said. “If we think back to 2020, when we first moved to remote work, we did that pretty much overnight, but that was a much easier thing to do…. We’ve had five years to adapt to that new normal. There are people who have never worked full time in an office.”

As other companies keep their eyes on Amazon’s transition, employees within the company have expressed mixed reactions about the return. Several on the streets of South Lake Union told KIRO 7 they enjoyed being back in an office full-time.

Others disagreed.

“Even just the idea of five days a week in office has made people willing to quit,” said the engineer in Bellevue.

“In terms of culture, I think it divides us,” said the program manager.

Follow this link to read additional stories from KIRO 7