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So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores ar

So, they basically treated people like low-level employees at a call center in the US? This sort of thing isn't actually new. Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft - including theft of company time spent talking to other employees. Are you a call center employee that has to go poop often that day or are 3 minutes late from break? Expect a call from HR for the bathroom breaks and an attendance issue for the tardiness. I'm guessing if this were in the US and put in place for low-level employees, it would have never been scrapped.

Loughla 7y ago
>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociopathy that did that). During this process we were asked to optimize a store in our region. This optimization process included outlining for store staff the process to remove "internal shrink" read: employees stealing. One of my stores had the highest "internal shrink" and "employee arrests" in the entire chain. My solution was to make a differential pay scale for that store. I increased all wages across the board by $3/hr up to the store manager level. "Shrink" stopped in the first month. Not just "internal shrink" but external as well. The employees were actually NOT stealing and ACTIVELY stopping people from stealing. I was told it wasn't as cost effective as installing cameras in common theft areas and outsourcing security to a third party, and it was scrapped after a year. That was when I decided to leave retail and the corporate world in general.
- sidlls 7y ago
  What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    I bet the bigger problem was that the raise went into operating costs, whereas investment in surveillance goes into capital costs. The corporation doesn't get to list any money it pays out to employees on its balance sheet, but that Orwellian surveillance system is capital and counts as an asset the corporation can leverage for a higher valuation. It's all part of how Capitalism reduces humans to a drain on the system in favor of material.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      Capital depreciates. It's an expense.
      - jschwartzi 7y ago
        But it still shows up on the balance sheet, so it doesn't look like you're bleeding money the same way an operating expense like a raise does.
  - pietrovismara 7y ago
    In the end who cares, everyone would have been way happier without resorting to big brothery solutions and solving anyway he problem. But no, we gotta chase that additional profit at the cost of any other metric!
    - megablast 7y ago
      I mean, the business cares how much profits they make. If it was cost effective, it is easier to justify moving it to other stores.
      - pietrovismara 7y ago
        That's my point. Businesses care only about profit, even when its clearly detrimental to everyone else. There's no consideration for happiness or quality of life and no ethic if you only chase profit. For how much we've been pushed to believe this is perfecly normal, to me it's insane.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  I'm not sure "Want a raise? Start stealing!" is the greatest incentive structure...
  - ska 7y ago
    Otoh "Want employee loyalty? Start treating them reasonably." probably is.
    - pietrovismara 7y ago
      You don't treat reasonably your tools. That's how some companies see their employees.
      - AceyMan 7y ago
        You believe this?—ask any tradesman, mechanic or PE—"Take care of your tools and they will take care of you" is gospel in those fields. The same, then, should apply to "living tools" if your analogy obtains.
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        There's plenty of people in the trades who consider their tools disposable like work gloves but on a longer time line. In most of the western world labor is so absurdly expensive compared to material goods that it usually makes sense for anyone paid by the job (most people in the trades) to just treat tools as a cost of doing business and treat them whichever way gets the jobs done the fastest.
        pietrovismara 7y ago
        You may care about an expensive tool as long as it works, but you'll throw it away as soon as it breaks. A tool has no rights, and you'll never care about it enjoying working for you. Yes, the analogy still work for me.
        deleted 7y ago
- everdrive 7y ago
  So you're saying retail is offensive the moral sensibilities of a sociopath?
  - Loughla 7y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your statement, I think you're missing a word in there. What I'm saying is that I was deeply depressed and therefore didn't give a shit about myself or the other people around me. And that is the personality trait that seemed to put me ahead of my co-managers.
- aphextim 7y ago
  I worked at a company during college who at the end of the year would give every employee a "Shrink" check depending how well/poor their store performed over the course of the year. If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year. I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.
  - BubRoss 7y ago
    .
    - refurb 7y ago
      Why would it be illegal? They aren't docking the employees pay for shrinkage (which is illegal), they are paying out a bonus based on company performance (the performance being level of shrinkage).
  - yohannparis 7y ago
    Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!
    - aphextim 7y ago
      I worked there for 3 years. First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus. The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so. Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay. He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops) The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police. I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees) We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of. We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot. Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around. He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets. I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away. I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....
- BubRoss 7y ago
  This makes me wonder what the numbers are for Costco, who pays their employees very well.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Kind of hard to sneak out a 20 lb rack of ribs or 50 lb bag of rice.
    - megablast 7y ago
      Not really, put it in the bin, collect outside later. And how is that any different to other stores? Does costco not sell chocolate or tampons or things that are easy to steal? Even if in big packages, break it open, it goes out the back.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        Maybe for small stuff. But the bins are well locked up for that reason. The garbage goes out in a sealed bin accessible only within the store. Returns get palletized for 3rd party resale and then forklifted into a trailer.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Could just scan out your friends and “miss” scanning some items for a cut. Or “overlook” their 20lb of ribs scanning as 20lb of rice. Can’t do it entirely because of the exit checks, but the checks aren’t 100%. Though when buying a gift card, they don’t let you pick it off the rack: you get a receipt to ask someone else.
      - scottmcf 7y ago
        This is what gets referred to as "sweethearting".
- megablast 7y ago
  There is no guarantee after a few months this wouldn't go back to the way it was. Too often people think the change will affect permanent behaviour, when change itself affects behaviour.
acomjean 7y ago
A company I talked to (Bought by National Cash Register), was using cameras software analysis to monitor employee theft. felt very big brothery but it worked well enough to get bought out. "The ScanItAll Checkout Vision Suite is a collection of StopLift’s video analytics technologies applied to inventory shrinkage at the checkout. ScanItAll automatically analyzes video from checkouts every moment to detect inventory shrinkage visually, even when it leaves no data trail. ScanItAll detects Sweethearting, Self-Checkout Loss, Basket-Based Loss, Operational Error, etc. https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ "
riazrizvi 7y ago
It does happen in the US, and in banks, and not just low-level employees. Palantir sells the service. It has been used by JP Morgan for a few years: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel In LOTR the Palantir is used by Sauron to corrupt and subdue Saruman by displaying visions of terror. Coincidentally a Palantir employee in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica were instrumental in the Republicans hard lean into fear-based messaging leading into the 2016 Presidential election.
- jgalt212 7y ago
  Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Palantir was also reading their emails and just not the drones in Sector 7G.
  - riazrizvi 7y ago
    I think it is helpful to remember that this story came to us through good journalism, so we are lucky to know this much, and surely damage-control is a natural next move for a business caught out. What I do know is the technology is on the market, and why wouldn't a business use it if they can do it privately while avoiding the mistakes of JP Morgan?
  - smoyer 7y ago
    I almost spit out my coffee because I thought you were about to say: "Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Sauron was also reading their emails and just not the orcs in Sector 7G.
- nabnob 7y ago
  Wow. How do Palantir engineers sleep at night? Later in the article, it describes how LAPD uses Palantir software - tracking almost everyone in poor neighborhoods at all times. All of this use is completely without warrants, and the police know to avoid mentioning Palantir in court documents so that its use won't be challanged.
ljm 7y ago
No, they treated them as slaves because they’re not people; they’re Human Resources. These managers or execs are outside of this scrutiny. They’re the slave masters and they don’t see that the greatest wastage is amongst themselves. This kind of capitalism is highly American and a product of its success through exploitation. America didn’t come to be without the slave trade.

Loughla 7y ago

>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociopathy that did that). During this process we were asked to optimize a store in our region. This optimization process included outlining for store staff the process to remove "internal shrink" read: employees stealing. One of my stores had the highest "internal shrink" and "employee arrests" in the entire chain. My solution was to make a differential pay scale for that store. I increased all wages across the board by $3/hr up to the store manager level. "Shrink" stopped in the first month. Not just "internal shrink" but external as well. The employees were actually NOT stealing and ACTIVELY stopping people from stealing. I was told it wasn't as cost effective as installing cameras in common theft areas and outsourcing security to a third party, and it was scrapped after a year. That was when I decided to leave retail and the corporate world in general.

sidlls 7y ago
What was the cost difference? Did the shrink reduction exceed the $3/hr raise in value but not by enough? Or was the raise not offset at all by the reduction?
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I bet the bigger problem was that the raise went into operating costs, whereas investment in surveillance goes into capital costs. The corporation doesn't get to list any money it pays out to employees on its balance sheet, but that Orwellian surveillance system is capital and counts as an asset the corporation can leverage for a higher valuation. It's all part of how Capitalism reduces humans to a drain on the system in favor of material.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Capital depreciates. It's an expense.
    - jschwartzi 7y ago
      But it still shows up on the balance sheet, so it doesn't look like you're bleeding money the same way an operating expense like a raise does.
- pietrovismara 7y ago
  In the end who cares, everyone would have been way happier without resorting to big brothery solutions and solving anyway he problem. But no, we gotta chase that additional profit at the cost of any other metric!
  - megablast 7y ago
    I mean, the business cares how much profits they make. If it was cost effective, it is easier to justify moving it to other stores.
    - pietrovismara 7y ago
      That's my point. Businesses care only about profit, even when its clearly detrimental to everyone else. There's no consideration for happiness or quality of life and no ethic if you only chase profit. For how much we've been pushed to believe this is perfecly normal, to me it's insane.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
I'm not sure "Want a raise? Start stealing!" is the greatest incentive structure...
- ska 7y ago
  Otoh "Want employee loyalty? Start treating them reasonably." probably is.
  - pietrovismara 7y ago
    You don't treat reasonably your tools. That's how some companies see their employees.
    - AceyMan 7y ago
      You believe this?—ask any tradesman, mechanic or PE—"Take care of your tools and they will take care of you" is gospel in those fields. The same, then, should apply to "living tools" if your analogy obtains.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        There's plenty of people in the trades who consider their tools disposable like work gloves but on a longer time line. In most of the western world labor is so absurdly expensive compared to material goods that it usually makes sense for anyone paid by the job (most people in the trades) to just treat tools as a cost of doing business and treat them whichever way gets the jobs done the fastest.
      - pietrovismara 7y ago
        You may care about an expensive tool as long as it works, but you'll throw it away as soon as it breaks. A tool has no rights, and you'll never care about it enjoying working for you. Yes, the analogy still work for me.
        deleted 7y ago
everdrive 7y ago
So you're saying retail is offensive the moral sensibilities of a sociopath?
- Loughla 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your statement, I think you're missing a word in there. What I'm saying is that I was deeply depressed and therefore didn't give a shit about myself or the other people around me. And that is the personality trait that seemed to put me ahead of my co-managers.
aphextim 7y ago
I worked at a company during college who at the end of the year would give every employee a "Shrink" check depending how well/poor their store performed over the course of the year. If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year. I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  .
  - refurb 7y ago
    Why would it be illegal? They aren't docking the employees pay for shrinkage (which is illegal), they are paying out a bonus based on company performance (the performance being level of shrinkage).
- yohannparis 7y ago
  Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!
  - aphextim 7y ago
    I worked there for 3 years. First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus. The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so. Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay. He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops) The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police. I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees) We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of. We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot. Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around. He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets. I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away. I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....
BubRoss 7y ago
This makes me wonder what the numbers are for Costco, who pays their employees very well.
- refurb 7y ago
  Kind of hard to sneak out a 20 lb rack of ribs or 50 lb bag of rice.
  - megablast 7y ago
    Not really, put it in the bin, collect outside later. And how is that any different to other stores? Does costco not sell chocolate or tampons or things that are easy to steal? Even if in big packages, break it open, it goes out the back.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Maybe for small stuff. But the bins are well locked up for that reason. The garbage goes out in a sealed bin accessible only within the store. Returns get palletized for 3rd party resale and then forklifted into a trailer.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Could just scan out your friends and “miss” scanning some items for a cut. Or “overlook” their 20lb of ribs scanning as 20lb of rice. Can’t do it entirely because of the exit checks, but the checks aren’t 100%. Though when buying a gift card, they don’t let you pick it off the rack: you get a receipt to ask someone else.
    - scottmcf 7y ago
      This is what gets referred to as "sweethearting".
megablast 7y ago
There is no guarantee after a few months this wouldn't go back to the way it was. Too often people think the change will affect permanent behaviour, when change itself affects behaviour.

acomjean 7y ago

A company I talked to (Bought by National Cash Register), was using cameras software analysis to monitor employee theft. felt very big brothery but it worked well enough to get bought out. "The ScanItAll Checkout Vision Suite is a collection of StopLift’s video analytics technologies applied to inventory shrinkage at the checkout. ScanItAll automatically analyzes video from checkouts every moment to detect inventory shrinkage visually, even when it leaves no data trail. ScanItAll detects Sweethearting, Self-Checkout Loss, Basket-Based Loss, Operational Error, etc. https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ https://www.stoplift.com/solutions/ "

riazrizvi 7y ago

It does happen in the US, and in banks, and not just low-level employees. Palantir sells the service. It has been used by JP Morgan for a few years: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel In LOTR the Palantir is used by Sauron to corrupt and subdue Saruman by displaying visions of terror. Coincidentally a Palantir employee in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica were instrumental in the Republicans hard lean into fear-based messaging leading into the 2016 Presidential election.

jgalt212 7y ago
Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Palantir was also reading their emails and just not the drones in Sector 7G.
- riazrizvi 7y ago
  I think it is helpful to remember that this story came to us through good journalism, so we are lucky to know this much, and surely damage-control is a natural next move for a business caught out. What I do know is the technology is on the market, and why wouldn't a business use it if they can do it privately while avoiding the mistakes of JP Morgan?
- smoyer 7y ago
  I almost spit out my coffee because I thought you were about to say: "Yes, but IIRC, the project was cancelled or greatly scaled back after Senior Management discovered that Sauron was also reading their emails and just not the orcs in Sector 7G.
nabnob 7y ago
Wow. How do Palantir engineers sleep at night? Later in the article, it describes how LAPD uses Palantir software - tracking almost everyone in poor neighborhoods at all times. All of this use is completely without warrants, and the police know to avoid mentioning Palantir in court documents so that its use won't be challanged.

ljm 7y ago

No, they treated them as slaves because they’re not people; they’re Human Resources. These managers or execs are outside of this scrutiny. They’re the slave masters and they don’t see that the greatest wastage is amongst themselves. This kind of capitalism is highly American and a product of its success through exploitation. America didn’t come to be without the slave trade.