What’s next, deputizing retail workers?
Every retail worker is going to have a bodycam before the pigs do. And of course it will just be used to micromanage and surpress workers even more than they already are. Take 5 seconds to chat with a co-worker? That’s a write up. “Forget” to charge a nice customer for a small item? That’s a write up. Exceed your generous 90 second bathroom break? That’s a write up!
It’s already bad enough that almost every square inch of my workplace is covered by cameras (always used to police workers, I’ve never seen them used to ban shitty customers or otherwise benefit the employees) but at least there are a couple of blindspots if you want to take a minute. I’d like to think I wouldn’t put up with bodycams but I also need money soooo…
Also I hate that I’m constantly being recorded every second of the day. It seems every move anyone makes is being recorded and monitored for the benefit of Mammon. Privacy is a dead concept, sacrificed for all by the few that benefit.
The nursing home I used to work in had cameras everywhere and I always thought it was standard for the industry for monitoring potential elder abuse. Nope. They used it to micromanage, get a call randomly one day “the door can’t be propped open with a chair” on a day when the AC wasn’t working and it was ungodly hot inside and that was the only moving air in the place. Or the time they tracked people going into the kitchen to accuse them of stealing food and fire people that had been there over a decade. Or now from what I’ve heard from people still there, using it to monitor people on their phones and a single time you’re caught it’s termination on the spot.
Healthcare sucks but it can always be worse.
Privacy is a dead concept, sacrificed for all by the few that benefit.
I can remember back to the early 90’s when stores didn’t have cameras and instead they had big mirrors you could see people on. Guess my point is it was already starting even when I was a child.
Oh yea it wasn’t a instantaneous death or even a very quick one, it was a long drawn out process that lasted decades, if not longer.
Something silly that always stuck with me was one of the (many) “revelations” that various spy agencies were gathering all sorts of data from people’s phone calls, and how I had just assumed that was the case after reading one of the Artemis Fowl books in which he deliberately gets the attention of the fairy underground by speaking specific phrases over the phone. I guess I just figured that sounded like something the government would be doing if they were able to. It (probably) isn’t as dramatic as some computer lighting up when it hears me say “Lenin was right” over the phone, but even municipal cops here can easily get access to all sorts of data from phones including who you call and who calls you when for how long and where you are. If some city cops can get that stuff then I can only imagine what the fed agencies have access to.
I guess this is also a reminder to anyone reading this: LEAVE YOUR PHONE AT HOME IF YOU’RE ENGAGING IN ANYTHING LEGALLY DUBIOUS OR ANYTHING LIKELY TO ANGER THE PIGS
I remember when the largest stores would have a ton of the obfuscated camera mounts in the ceiling but only have the cash to put a camera in a small percentage of them.
“Forget” to charge a nice customer for a small item?
Retail worker here and I will get far more cursed than that. Forget to charge the customer $0.25 for their paper bag = fired for theft.
Mark my fuckin words before the decade is out we will have a headline along that line.
Store worker of 20 years was fired for not paying for grocery bags at the self-checkout
An employee of the UK grocery chain Sainsbury’s, who had worked there for nearly 20 years, was fired after he didn’t pay for plastic grocery bags at self-checkout, the BBC reported.
The employee reportedly purchased £30 ($37) of food, pillows, and bedding from the store after working the night shift.
When he went to pay at the self-checkout, he clicked “zero bags used” despite having used multiple bags. His employer saw the footage on CCTV and took this as grounds for his dismissal.
Okay, but if we’re being honest with ourselves this isn’t because they didn’t pay for the bags; the employer was seeking a reason to fire the employee. Probably wanted to replace them with someone who doesn’t get 20+ years of benefits or some kid who they can abuse into a tougher work schedule the fired employee wouldn’t have been able to accommodate/accept.
Well fuck.
It’s pretty bad when “think of the worst thing possible” and it’s already happening or worse than anyone can imagine. Hang on let me google it and …
jill all jrackers
When I worked at whole foods they told us to be “aggressively nice” to anybody we suspected of stealing. Like follow them around and ask if they need assistance and shit.
I never understood the co-workers that made it their top priority to stop folks from stealing. I’d notice folks steal all the time and didn’t give a shit. Hell, I used to steal all the time too.
Steal something for me too I’ll cover up the camera.
Dumb motherfuckers buy into the line that shoplifters are the reason they don’t get a raise, never realizing that they don’t get a fucking raise no matter how many shoplifters get caught
when i was a department manager the only thing i was really responsible for was making inventory every month. and theft could fail me on inventory (we only had a couple hundred dollar margin in a department easily bringing in 300k a month). so i would only get upset because i didn’t want a write up for too many inventory misses i did know my margins though and we would do “controlled theft” internally using some tricks
now im not a manager and could care less. the girl who used to work for us and now has an elaborate disguise to appear severely autistic so she can steal tons of expensive products? cool i hope it works in other stores too
Someone steals $10 worth of bread? I kill them with hammers. I have $300 worth of bread I didn’t sell? I toss it and write it off on my taxes.
I wonder if encouraging shoplifters would actually discourage them (those that aren’t stealing to live, anyway).
Like- “hey man, I’m just following you cuz you look like you wanna steal something, here’s how you can do it and get away with it… No I’m not fucking with you, go right ahead”
Seems like some folks would think they ARE being fucked with and bail
Extensive workplace surveillance is also a good way to spy on your employees under the pretense of decreasing shoplifting.
What was that subreddit with pics and videos documenting the consequences of demanding employees to do work way above their pay grade? Something like r/MinimumWageDontCare, but that only has 3k subs and I’m pretty sure that’s not it
r/maliciouscompliance?
Sort of like r/NotMyJob but with class consciousness
An $8 tube of toothpaste? What do you need a $12 tube of toothpaste for?
Toothpaste is more than 2 dollars
I thought they don’t want line employees to stop shoplifters because it costs them enormously in insurance and lawsuits if the employees get hurt? did the courts rule that it’s all on the workers if they want the job now? not that they won’t eventually, just asking if it already happened.
The goal here isn’t to get employees to stop people from stealing – you’re right that it’s a liability issue – the goal is to get better video to prosecute theft after the fact. There may be some knock-on worker surveillance effects, but with how short staffed a lot of stores are I wonder how much of this footage will be reviewed unless there’s something specific to go back and look for.
They’ll likely outsource the video check to some AI outfit providing the service.
Might have to wait for the right price point, but I don’t think it will be long.
Yeah it’s just a lawsuit waiting to happen. You’ll get wannabe rent a cop employees getting hurt trying to stop petty thieves.
It’s to stop employee theft because they pay so low theft is the only way to compensate yourself fairly.
Put a wool sock puppet over it and act like it’s a split personality like Mr. Hat. Or a nametag over it that says SMILE YOU’RE ON CAMERA while the customer also sees themselves on the 48" monitor the store camera (not the one you’re wearing) already shows. Make it obviously redunant AF.
I own major shares in CVS which is like 0.069% of my hedge fund, but I also own major shares in a security company which is around 0.000420%of my hedge fund. How do I get a synergy going between them and my REIT 0.05% and my private prison fund 0.000002%? What to do…what to do…oh I can hype bullshit up with my media holding 0.2% to make news stories and then use those headlines to justify to the board of CVS for thier employees to exclusively use camera from the security company for an extra 0.00005% synergetic increase!deputizes me, an hourly retail worker
gets with the other deputy retail workers
proceeds to lay down some deputizing on the manager that randomly shuffles our work schedules
I have a feeling if they turn their body cams off they’d actually lose their job.
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That’s just cops fucking lying.
I thought that the main way Americans coped with their declining standard of living was by taking all their frustrations out on retail employees / customer service workers. In that case, deputizing retail workers seems like a bad idea, since a lot of people will presumably get caught in the crossfire when a customer finally pushes them too far, particularly since retail is such a low paid / high stress job and the people who hold these jobs don’t necessarily have it in them to not fight back
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