He didn’t order this punch from Amazon!
Tensions between Upper West Siders and Amazon delivery workers boiled over last week when an unhinged female employee clocked an unsuspecting resident in the face outside his West End Avenue building, according to the victim and police.
“She probably has some sort of anger management problems and working for Amazon doesn’t sound like a picnic,” said James Hanks, 41, who suffered a shiner after the worker delivered a roundhouse to his left eye in a confrontation partially caught on video.
Hanks received the hard-hitting delivery at 2:20 p.m. on Nov. 20, as he was heading out of his 16-story, pre-war apartment building near 100th Street on an otherwise sleepy Sunday, according to a police report. When he got to the lobby, he heard the Amazonian “making a scene with the doorman, yelling at him,” he said.
Hanks gave the worker a look, “like why are you blocking the door and yelling.”
The Amazon worker then turned to Hanks, screaming about what his problem was. When he told her he wanted to leave the building, she let him go, but continued raging at the doorman, Hanks said.
When he got outside, Hanks, an IT worker, said he whipped out his iPhone camera and snapped a photo of the worker. “She got mad at me and started yelling at me a bunch and … I decided to start recording her, ” he said.
That’s when the worker — about 6 inches shorter than the 6-foot Hanks — allegedly socked him in the eye.
The doorman called police and cops canvassed the area with Hanks, but nobody — not even Amazon workers in the area — claimed to have seen the suspect or recognized her from the snap.
An exasperated Hanks complained to Amazon about the attack, but he received an automated response from the corporate giant saying they were very sorry about his “delivery experience.”
Fumed Hanks: “I said I was assaulted!”
The company has now “escalated” their probe into the incident, he said.
The punch is the latest salvo in the war between Amazon and the UWS.
Residents and business owners over the summer said they had had enough of the contract delivery drivers causing traffic chaos by double-parking their mammoth trucks and hogging huge stretches of Big Apple streets.
“They rub people the wrong way because they take up too much space. … I don’t think any other delivery business would get away with it,” Hanks groused, adding, “It has been over a week since I first started communicating with Amazon about this incident and they have yet to acknowledge that an assault took place … there’s no accountability.”
Hanks is preparing now to fight a corporate behemoth.
“I’m going to wait and see if Amazon is going to take action. If Amazon doesn’t want to acknowledge responsibility, then I may have to do something legally to get their attention,” he said.
Said the former customer: “I’m doing business with Walmart now to stick it to the man.”
Amazon did not return messages.