Sources detail attempts by Amazon delivery drivers in Chicago to beat peers to new orders by hanging smartphones in trees near Amazon's delivery stations
- Scammers seem to have rigged Amazon system to get orders first — Operation reflects ferocious rivalry for gigs in a bad economy Tweets: @kateconger , @parismartineau , @caseynewton , @kimbhasin , @reganonymous , @jgamblin , @bigblackjacobin , @vinncent , @parismartineau , and @shiraovide Tweets: Kate Conger / @kateconger : “The phones in trees seem to serve as master devices that dispatch routes to multiple nearby drivers in on the plot.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... Paris Martineau / @parismartineau : tired: shadows on the cave wall wired: 7 phones in a tree outside of whole foods https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Very relatable to me as someone who would hang smartphones in trees near gay bars to get more Tinder matches https://twitter.com/... Kim Bhasin / @kimbhasin : A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: Smartphones dangling from trees. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Michael P. Regan / @reganonymous : Amazon drivers taking a page from high-frequency traders https://www.bloomberg.com/... Jerry Gamblin / @jgamblin : The smartphone tree is blooming. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Edward Ongweso Jr / @bigblackjacobin : You wanna get mad at looting? https://www.bloomberg.com/... Vincent Bevins / @vinncent : Ah here we go, more evidence that our society is irreparably broken https://www.bloomberg.com/... Paris Martineau / @parismartineau : a lovely well functioning economy we have here https://www.bloomberg.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Truly, @spencersoper's story on Amazon delivery couriers hanging phones from trees to get first in line for orders is the perfect encapsulation of the gig job market. A combination of human ingenuity, algorithms and sad. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The phones-in-trees scheme is an escalation of a pattern the coverage has tracked for years: when a reporter spent a day as an Amazon Flex driver in San Francisco she made less than minimum wage after expenses, so the margin between getting dispatched first and waiting unpaid is the whole job. Kate Conger's reporting frames the rig as master devices broadcasting routes to multiple nearby drivers in on the plot — organized crews, not lone scammers.
First-order effects
- Drivers without a tree phone lose the best routes to crews running them, converting Amazon's dispatch queue from a lottery into an arms race among the people it pays least.
- Amazon's routing system, which assumes each driver sees only what the app sends them, is now being gamed at the station curb — including outside a Whole Foods pickup point — undermining the fairness premise of Flex assignments.
Second-order effects
- Expect a cottage market in dispatch-gaming tools to mirror what emerged around grocery pickers, where tech tools that make fulfillment faster became their own industry — and expect Amazon to respond with detection and station-side controls rather than higher per-route pay.
- The scheme puts pressure on Amazon to justify its algorithmic allocation publicly; rivals in on-demand delivery, already under scrutiny for fluctuating pay and time pressure in NYC, face the same question about who gets the work.
Third-order effects
- If work allocation stays opaque and scarce, gig platforms will keep breeding gray markets for access — the same dynamic that turned scooter charging into a competitive hunt among Bird's 'hunters' — pushing regulators toward rules on how algorithmic dispatch assigns income.
- Structurally, this points to platforms managing not just labor supply but competition for labor itself, where anti-gaming enforcement becomes as core to operations as pricing.
The trend: Gig platforms are turning work allocation into a contested algorithmic resource, spawning worker-side gaming tools and platform-side enforcement in place of wage increases.