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Workers at TJ Maxx and Marshalls are wearing police-like body cameras
- tw04 2y agoOn the one hand I don't love it, on the other hand I can't blame them and have 0 issues with it. As long as they're only recording inside their store, what's the problem? Literally every large store/chain has overhead camera's recording you throughout the store. Putting a camera on an associate isn't really changing the math much. Furthermore, I'm guessing they've got issues with high rates of theft at the stores in question. Your options are either more monitoring to stop/slow down theft, or having the stores close entirely in what I would imagine are lower income areas that don't have a lot of options in the first place. I'm guessing the folks not out to steal stuff that live near these stores would far prefer an associate with a camera to having to drive or ride a bus for an hour+ to go shopping.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago> Your options are either more monitoring to stop/slow down theft, or having the stores close entirely in what I would imagine are lower income areas that don't have a lot of options in the first place. I gotta say, I'm getting pretty annoyed how there are people that shoplift and encourage others to shoplift, and then get a Surprised Pikachu face when the stores either close or put in more draconian measures to prevent shoplifting. People brag about using self-checkout to steal or get something at a significantly reduced price (like ringing up your steak as bananas), and then get pissed when stores demand to check receipts or shut down their self-checkouts entirely. It's not corporate simping to point out that businesses exist to make money, and if theft is so rampant that they're not making money, they're going to close those locations.
- InitialLastName 2y agoAre those the same people? I usually see people saying one thing or the other without much overlap (they may be in the same feed though so maybe the Overton window currently includes both opinions).
- lupusreal 2y agoI really wish grocery stores near me would either shut down self checkout (implied: hire more human cashiers!) or at least give me a modest discount for doing that labor myself. Even if it was just 10 cents per checkout, at least that token discount would be an acknowledgement of the labor I'm doing myself that a person used to get paid for. That would take the sting out of it.
- EnergyAmy 2y agoI've never really understood this view. Fewer people have to work soul-sucking crappy retail jobs and I don't have to make pointless small talk with someone just to get some groceries? Sign me up!
- mozman 2y agoI’m already paying sky high prices, don’t make me check out and bag my own stuff too
- lupusreal 2y agoBizarre take. The only reason anybody would ever "have to" work as a grocery store cashier is if no better option was available to them. The elimination of those jobs hasn't created better jobs for people that previously might have been in that kind of position.
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoThere are people like me that actually prefer the self-checkout over dealing with a cashier who has to pretend they actually give a shit about how my day is going. I'm not really interested in fake and vapid smalltalk.
- lupusreal 2y agoYou know you can just not engage and they will reciprocate, right? Don't make eye contact and just mumble something in response if they try to talk (and you aren't comfortable staying completely silent, because that's also an option you have.) They don't take it personally, they deal with the general public and know some people aren't up for chat.
- mcphage 2y agoI don’t really support shoplifting, but if it would get stores to remove the self checkout lanes, I’d happily rethink my views…
- ryandrake 2y agoMy first thought was: Security Theatrics, and the article discusses exactly that: > Although retailers say they’re looking to cut down on costly merchandise loss and keep stores safe, outfitting workers with body cameras may do little to stop shoplifting, some criminologists say. Worker advocates say improved training, better staffing levels in stores and other safety investments will go further to protect frontline workers and reduce shoplifting. > The job of these security workers “was to just stand there with the tactical vest labeled ‘security,’ and the camera mounted on the vest,” said the employee, who spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. > “It feels like the implementation of this program with the cameras isn’t meant to achieve anything, but rather just something the company can point to” to say it is improving security.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoIt's not security theater. It's protecting the security personnel from lawsuits, and gives them evidence if someone assaults them.
- tombert 2y agoCall me cynical, but I don't know that this is really to increase employee safety so much as to try and reduce employee shoplifting. I have no evidence of this, just a gut feeling.
- noodlesUK 2y agoThat would require the device to be constantly recording (or even streaming). Most body cams don't work on that principle - they write to a buffer and don't save the recording until you've hit the button. Once you hit the button, it records.
- autoexec 2y agoAs long as the cameras are for security and loss prevention, I think it's probably a good thing. Once they make random the person stocking shelves or working at the register wear cameras throughout their shift I'm sure the footage will be used against employees for not working hard enough, or for complaining about their job/management or for whispering the word "union" too loudly.
- Defenestresque 2y agoDisagreed, given that the bodtcams require you to press a button down for 5 seconds before they start recording. Given that fact, it clearly seems like a deterrent (what customer will know this detail? They'll assume they're always on)
- gizajob 2y agoThis has been going on for a couple of years now in the UK.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoA lot of security guards in my city use body cameras. If anything, it's crazy that they don't all wear them.
- starik36 2y agoI've seen this with restaurant wait staff as well. The issue in that particular case was that someone orders a steak and a bunch of other things. Then claims to have never ordered a steak, therefore refusing to pay for it.
- noodlesUK 2y agoI'm shocked by this comment. Where is expensive enough that it will have steaks that it can't just write off, but isn't so nice that waiters with bodycams don't mess up the ambiance?
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoContrary to popular belief, a tax write-off doesn't make it free for the business. Since the steak was already purchased as a business expense, it was probably written off already anyways.
- noodlesUK 2y agoI didn't mean write-off from a tax perspective, I meant it in the colloquial sense of eating the cost. Most restaurants are able to absorb the cost of a few mistakes without it impacting their bottom line horribly. I've only ever seen someone dine and dash once or twice ever in my life, but I've seen restaurants fix mistaken orders plenty of times. It seems like body cams on servers is a huge overreaction.
- verteu 2y agoAre you referring to this staged skit? http://youtube.com/shorts/fkrtbDJTGGs http://youtube.com/shorts/fkrtbDJTGGs
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoWhile that's obviously staged as an ad for body cameras, it's something that absolutely happens. There are some scummy people out there, and clout-chasing on social media essentially encourages it.
- noodlesUK 2y agoIn the UK this is extremely common. Bouncers and store security generally wear body cams. I don't think this is a huge issue, as the cameras are only usually writing to a ringbuffer. Most of the time, the camera isn't actually recording as such. In some ways, this is less invasive than store CCTV, which is usually actually recording at all times. I think that one issue with private security guards using body cams is that there's even less guarantee that you'll get exculpatory evidence from them, as they will just delete stuff that paints them in a bad light. The police at least have procedures in place to reduce the likelihood of that happening, though how well it works in practice, I don't know.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThe solution would be to wear your own body cam, similar to how you want your own dash cam for your side of the story. The same problem exists with police too, since their body cams can be "turned off", or go missing, or the data get "corrupted". Although, you might want yours to be capable of live-streaming to the cloud so it can be saved there. I'm surprised schools don't have cameras yet, as that is where some of the most vulnerable populations are. Especially to deal with bullying. Once everyone is recording their point of view, and it can be referenced to later, then disputes should be more easily resolved. But then the problem moves up to how does one know the video has not been altered.
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- mingus88 2y agoI’d think that an on-device body cam TPM to cryptographically sign all videos is something that we will need to validate that it hasn’t been tampered with Otherwise it will be very hard to convict anybody beyond a reasonable doubt with any kind of digital evidence
- lupusreal 2y agoWith the number of antisocial idiots retail staff have to deal with, I'm surprised this took so long.
- VancouverMan 2y agoIn my experience in Canada, there's usually more to those situations. Customers can certainly get frustrated or upset, but time and time again I've seen that happening because the front-line staff either directly or indirectly provoked a hostile response to begin with. The most common direct cause I've seen is simply a staff member providing objectively poor service. This can include ineptitude, a lack of care, making mistakes, a bad attitude (such as disinterest), slowness, language barriers, lying, and taking personal phone calls while in the middle of assisting customers, among others. Indirect causes would be company policies that harm the customer, equipment/facility/utility outages that prevent services from being delivered, long waits, and so on. The vast majority of customers I've ever been around or dealt with have had much better things to do with their time than hassle retail or other front-line staff. The customers get upset because the retail staff, or the businesses the staff represent, are impeding the fast and successful completion of the transaction at hand.
- lupusreal 2y agoI've seen a few customer freakouts, and in every case it was started by tired staff maybe making a mistake and some psycho making a mountain out of that molehill. Like even if we presume the guy really did ask for no lettuce and the burger assembler or order taker fucked up, that's not a rational reason to start throwing chairs.
- recursive 2y agoIt's at least not bad. And maybe even good. It might prevent some people from claiming things happened differently from how it was recorded.
- Wistar 2y agoA couple of weeks ago I noticed that the cashier at the local gas station convenience store was wearing a body camera. I asked him if he was required to wear it. He replied that he bought the camera himself to back up his side of the story when customer complaints are made about him to management.
- Zee2 2y agoWhat a sad, broken society.
- techjamie 2y agoI once made that exact threat in my food service days, but it was to protect me from my manager. I was the assistant manager of the store, and for some reason my boss decided that she was going to pit the new employee against me. So she would tell the new employee I was talking bad about her, then get on me for things I allegedly said to/about her. It was obvious to me because the things she was claiming I said were things I'd never tell an employee. I finally got tired of it and said "Okay, if you're going to keep accusing me of saying things that I'm not, I'm going to buy a bodycam and will gladly let you show me where this is allegedly happening in my footage." After that, all of the accusations stopped. The new employee realized that we were being played, and we ended up being pretty good friends.
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- steveBK123 2y agoThis sort of stuff to me reads as a side effect of some of the de-policing movement. Vigilantism and privatized enforcement creeps in around the edges. Not great. Of course if shoplifting isn't being prosecuted either, then what purpose is the video? Probably next step at some of these places is AI facial recognition and bouncers at the door to block entry to "undesirables"..
- stvltvs 2y agoPolice budgets continue to rise despite movements calling for reductions. This wouldn't be an effect of police abolition that hasn't actually happened.
- steveBK123 2y agode-policing does not neccessarily mean abolition or even cutting the budget. It can mean, as we've seen, to effectively stop enforcing certain laws either because they were ordered to, because the DA stops prosecuting those they arrest, or as a quiet quitting type response by police to having their feelings hurt. Pick your cause, but clearly it has happened for non-violent offenses in a lot of cities. Some will argue its not happened, others will happen its good that it's happened, and still others will argue it should happen even further...
- johnny99k 2y agoThis is a great idea. In the US, it pretty much stopped the idea overnight that cops were beating people for no reason. Many activist groups now want to get rid of body cameras.
- autoexec 2y agoThis is sarcasm right? There are a ton of examples of police beating/murdering people, lying, and even planting evidence caught on their own body cams. I've never seen an activist group that didn't want body cameras. I have seen pushes for disabling the ability for the cameras to be disabled/muted and calls for penalties for "lost" or "missing" footage if not criminal charges (destruction of evidence).
- loandbehold 2y agoAmerican urban environments really need more cameras to reduce crime. If we want to have walkable cities we need to solve urban crime issue. Many here on hacker news are against pervasive video recording due to privacy concerns but I think with right data access and data retention policies privacy issue can be mitigated. It's a balancing act. Video recording along with stronger enforcement would go a long way making American urban environments more desirable places to live and hang out vs suburbs.
- mingus88 2y agoWe are already recorded pretty much everywhere you go and there is no expectation of privacy in a public place. In fact, I can’t think of a single place in any major city where I would be able to escape surveillance. Even parks these days have cameras on light posts. Even when I walk my dog in the suburbs, I am passing doorbell cameras on nearly every home, and I have no right to that footage and cannot compel the homeowner to delete it. And to your point about crime, violent crime has been trending down since the 90s. I don’t actually think surveillance helps reduce crime, as is evident in the rise of shoplifting in retail lately.
- karmakaze 2y agoThere's nothing police-like about this. The point is to make them highly visible as a deterrent. The police OTOH can turn them off before going off on a different path. If anything the point is more like civilians wearing cameras to watch the police.
- xnx 2y agoThe camera, battery, storage, and AI technology are there. The trend is clear. It's only a matter of years before we all wear devices (glasses or clips) that record our entire lives. This will be a big change, but have a lot of benefits (safety, recall, etc.)