- Some Tesla employees work such long hours they develop a zombie-like "Tesla stare," Bloomberg reports.
- Current and former employees told the publication they drank large amounts of Red Bull, some of which the company gave them for free, to fight off the fatigue caused by 12-16 hour shifts.
- "They come in vibrant, energized," one employee told Bloomberg. "And then a couple weeks go by, and you’ll see them walking out of the building just staring out into space like zombies."
Some Tesla employees work such long hours they develop a zombie-like "Tesla stare," Bloomberg reports.
Current and former employees told the publication they drank large amounts of Red Bull, some of which the company gave them for free, to fight off the fatigue caused by 12-16 hour shifts. Soon after starting at Tesla, some employees develop a zombie-like, "Tesla stare," Tesla production associate Mikey Catura told Bloomberg.
"They come in vibrant, energized," he said. "And then a couple weeks go by, and you’ll see them walking out of the building just staring out into space like zombies."
Employees also told Bloomberg they were ordered to walk through raw sewage to keep production moving.
A Tesla representative told Business Insider the company was not aware of any instances where managers told employees they had to walk through sewage to avoid production delays.
"Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our employees," the representative said.
"This is not to say that there aren’t real issues that need to be dealt with at Tesla or that we’ve made no mistakes with any of the 40,000 people who work at our company. However, there should be absolutely no question that we care deeply about the well-being of our employees and that we try our absolute hardest to do the right thing and to fail less often. With each passing month, we improve safety further and will keep doing so until we have the safest factory in the world by far."
According to a July 3 report from Reuters, Tesla employees faced long hours and a high-pressure environment as the company sought to hit its production goal for the Model 3 sedan at the end of June. Some employees were required to work mandatory weekend shifts, according to Reuters.
The publication reported that CEO Elon Musk yelled at engineers when the pace of Model 3 production was disrupted leading up to the July 1 deadline he set for the company to make 5,000 Model 3s in one week. The company said it hit its goal, producing 5,031 Model 3s during the final week of June.
You can read Bloomberg's full story here.
If you've worked for Tesla and have a story to share, you can contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com.
