Amazon delivery drivers tend to be friendly and likable folks. Amazon's new corporate policy, meanwhile, suggests that some drivers may, in the near future, be totally mellow and chill too:

Amazon.com Inc. has a solution for a potentially crippling shortage of delivery drivers: Recruit pot smokers.

The company is advising its delivery partners -- the mom and pops that operate the ubiquitous blue Amazon vans -- to prominently advertise that they don't screen applicants for marijuana use, according to correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg and interviews with four business owners.

Doing so can boost the number of job applicants by as much as 400%, Amazon says in one message, without explaining how it came up with the statistic. Conversely, the company says, screening for marijuana cuts the prospective worker pool by up to 30%.

Let's dispense with all the easy pot puns here and just note that this is, if nothing else, a remarkable commentary on the state of the labor market. Whether you agree with it or not, marijuana screening has been a consistent feature of many if not most major corporate employers. A desperate worker shortage may shift that practice not just temporarily but permanently. That's wild.

Bloomberg, meanwhile, notes that Amazon is not alone in searching for carrots with to lure employees:

Employers are dangling a variety of recruiting incentives amid the post-pandemic labor crunch since hiring bonuses alone no longer stand out ... Applebee's offered free appetizers to applicants in its push to recruit 10,000 workers.

Hmm. So Amazon's okay if its workers smoke weed, while Applebee's is dangling free munchies for anyone who applies. Sounds like some kind of cross-corporate collusion scheme if you ask me.

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