“The week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday into Christmas is the worst time of the year to work at Walmart, especially for cashiers and self-checkout hosts because of the sheer volume of customers who flood into the stores and become volatile and angry over issues not within our control, such as merchandise they want is out of stock,” said Peter Naughton, a Walmart cashier and self-checkout host in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “We all deserve better and more respect, appreciation, better compensation, and understanding that we are not robots but human beings.”

An Amazon worker, who requested to remain anonymous, described Amazon’s peak season, where workers are scheduled to work extra shifts to meet the surge in demand from holiday shopping as “hell”.

“Peak is hell,” the worker said. “Sometimes you don’t know your schedule until the day before and when you need HR for something you wait in line during your break. Most of the HR staff seems to have as high of a turnover rate as the rest of the building so you’re constantly getting wrong information from HR.”