14 ms·

How Surveillance Changes Behavior: A Restaurant Workers Case Study

74 points by srivast 13y ago

silencio 13y ago
Some anecdotal evidence: I took over a restaurant a few months ago. Half the surveillance cameras don't work. I don't have video for every incident I know occurs there. But just having the cameras look like they're kind of working is enough. I had an employee that stole a bunch of cheese and pastrami (I know, right, what's the point of stealing $50 worth of cheese and a block of pastrami?) inside empty pickle buckets he was "taking to the garbage bin" but really took to his car's trunk until said cameras were installed. A couple weeks after camera installation and a couple weeks of my eyeing him suspiciously, he quit saying that all the changes were annoying him and that the cameras were the last straw. Currently the employees don't even dare to shift the blame for things that go wrong - not to mention I try to cultivate a culture of just being honest with me and giving people a pass for most offenses. They really seem to believe that I'm watching them when I'm really just occasionally checking the cameras for activity at night when the restaurant is closed. I think it also helps that I'll occasionally use the camera and the footage being recorded when a customer is being an asshole - to support my employees. While I hate the idea of surveillance especially en masse, it seems like certain groups of people are willing to be a lot more honest and hard working when they think someone is watching and when it helps them too.
- nodata 13y ago
  What about the people who like their job less because you don't trust them?
  - hga 13y ago
    They might decide it's not quite so simple the moment they see him resolve a "he said/she said" dispute in favor of the employee after reviewing the footage.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Trust, but verify. Same reason contracts are written down.
    - gngeal 13y ago
      I have yet to sign a contract that would mandate that I be watched by cameras at all times.
      - icegreentea 13y ago
        I don't believe that that was his point. I think that his point was that a healthy attitude to take on in life is to generally take other people's words as true (thus trust), but to have mechanisms to ensure that (thus verify). The key point is that unless you have specific reasons not to trust them, then you do not set up an antagonistic relationship. For this to work, both parties must believe that 'trust, but verify' is a valid norm. His example about contracts is exactly that. Typically, for most 'small things', you could probably just take someone's word for it. But just in case, we're going to sign on it. As I said before, this really only works when both parties accept this as a norm. Examine trying to sign a contract with someone from a culture which places far higher value on personal honor (or however you want to put it). They might get completely insulted that you would not just 'take their word for it'. That's something of a similar situation with employers vs employees and video surveillance at work. Clearly, most employees -don't- warrant video surveillance, and simply imposing it on them could lead to serious issues (like the culture clash above).
        petsos 13y ago
        How is that different from "don't trust, verify"?
        saraid216 13y ago
        It's not. It mostly depends on how pedantic you are.
        gngeal 13y ago
- lmakeppleave 13y ago
  Nothing ever comes for free. $2,982 x .15 = 447.3 (best case) I don't have any good numbers but its safe to say that the amount of theft prevented (the amount the their income has decreased since this was implemented) is greater than the extra $20-$70 ish dollars that their income has increased from increased sales. In other words, their net income is down. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the net increase in sales isn't just a temporary scramble to keep income up / items actually being rung up. The truth is this benefit will almost certainly decrease as more knowledgeable and productive servers find jobs elsewhere or find new methods around the system while the remaining lower skilled / productive settle in at the amount their effort is actually worth. I have doubts this action would produce a net benefit in the long run. (As quality of service decreases.) Its easy to think that the only people stealing are the "lazy and incompetent". In my experience the most skilled "thieves" are also the hardest workers with the most in depth knowledge of the controls the restaurant has in place. They also tend to desire/need/feel they deserve the cash more than the average employee. (and to most extents all three are true) Of course, all of this applies to the tipped employees, non-tipped employees will feel this doubly so though their forms of theft tend to be easier to track / reduce. Theft in a restaurant setting is a complex issue, there is no magic bullet to stopping it.
  - jtheory 13y ago
    I don't follow your math here -- their revenue increased by $2982/week after installing the monitoring software, not decreased, due to the effects of employees who felt observed being more conscientious.
    - lmakeppleave 13y ago
      2982 (increase in sales) x .15 (assumed tip amount) = + $447 divided by all tipped employees. But you have to remember even many small chain restaurants have 15-25 tipped employees this nets to very little increase in income per tipped employee and zero increased income for non-tipped employees. Next, subtract from that small increase all the money they used to make from theft and overall they are likely coming out of the deal with less income.
    - 13y ago
- sp332 13y ago
  Since law enforcement can demand your footage after the fact, your cameras are actually contributing to surveillance en masse.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Depends on what you consider to be "surveillance en masse" and what the laws are like where you operate. I would equate "surveillance en masse" to be cameras that are constantly watched by the government, tracking me in my daily life even though I have done nothing wrong. In a legal environment where police need a warrant to compel private shop owners to turn over surveillance footage, an owner who installs cameras and requires warrants (this is key, plenty of people will just bow to any request) is not contributing to what I would consider to be the problem.
    - malandrew 13y ago
      Makes me wonder if in the future there will be establishments that advertise that they are "surveillance free" as a benefit just like organic labeling on food.
jka 13y ago
I think the article in question spins a very positive light on surveillance - in the given context, theft has been occurring and is curtailed by the change in behaviour of staff, regardless of whether or not action is taken based on the surveillance being present. The larger problem with surveillance is that there is no global notion of what is 'right' and 'wrong' - theft is assumed wrong to almost everyone, but few readers here will have been at the poverty line, where it might appear a little more ambiguous whether taking a small cut from a very successful business which pays minimum wage is so clearly immoral. These changes in behaviour push us to comply and work 'in-line' with whatever the watching power signals as being appropriate; and at least in the U.S., that largely appears to be increased revenue margins and employee efficiency - which has a very dull and power-imbalanced end game. There is more to life than work and producing value for someone else.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  I don't agree with the notion that someone is entitled to steal just because they make minimum wage.
  - lmakeppleave 13y ago
    You don't have to agree with it for it to be happening. Though, understanding that side of the argument can help solve the problem for both sides of the equation.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      I understand it happens. I was disagreeing with the attempt at justifying it as acceptable behavior. The moral way to improve your pay is to find a way to make your labor worth more to the employer. For a restaurant worker, that could be things like finding ways to boost sales, reduce wastage, find less expensive vendors, improve efficiency, etc. It's highly unlikely that any restaurant has successfully optimized all aspects of their operations.
      - saraid216 13y ago
dnautics 13y ago
there is a difference when a private entity, whom you patronize (or are employed by) at your own choice, engages in surveillance and when a public entity does so. If you find the private entity abusing its surveillance, you can leave, or in egregious cases, take legal action. When the state does so, you cannot easily leave, and more fundamentally you have a problem: Quis ipsos custodiet custodies?
eCa 13y ago
> In the new study, the tracking software was NCR’s Restaurant Guard product, and NCR provided the data. > Not surprisingly, NCR is delighted by the results. I really hope they had a neutral third party going over the data.
thex86 13y ago
As a person who generally prefers to be private wherever possible, I am still divided on a related topic: security cameras. I don't want them to be recorded everywhere I go, but then on the other hand, I do realize that the world does have a few bad people and in many cases, they are caught with the help of cameras/CCTV footage. I had always wondered if someone can shed some light on this debate from the other side perhaps and this article comes close. I have still not figured out where I stand on the CCTV cameras in public places though.
TausAmmer 13y ago
Yes, you can beat man to submission, true that.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
xpressyoo 13y ago
Our current society really tends to mix up dangerously the notions of "trust" and "surveillance"... at all the possible levels.
malandrew 13y ago
I don't dispute these findings, but the entire spin on this article made me feel like I was reading a PR piece. Who were these researchers funded by? It sounds like it was funded by a company selling a product that benefits from these findings.. Besides referring to specific software products by brand name, there was a conspicuous absent of any downsides from surveillance.
chaostheory 13y ago
I wonder how surveillance changes creativity?
LloydPickering 13y ago
If they went back and looked at business theory from the 20s and 30s they might have come across a famous phenomenon called the Hawthorne/Observer effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect Basically, when employees are being observed (which you could read as under surveillance) their productivity improves. Rather than suggest we turn into a panopticon loving society, it speaks to me that restaurant owners should in fact be paying more attention to their staff, and creating a workplace where they feel valued. This should improve productivity, and reduce turnover - but maybe my perspective is skewed because of the differences in being a restaurant waiter/ress vs a software dev. In any case, if you want better profitability then why not incentivise staff? If they have a share of profits, then you can be sure they will be trying to maximise profits - including reducing wastage, up-selling and reporting other members of staff not pulling their weight/stealing.

74 points by srivast 13y ago

Some anecdotal evidence: I took over a restaurant a few months ago. Half the surveillance cameras don't work. I don't have video for every incident I know occurs there. But just having the cameras look like they're kind of working is enough. I had an employee that stole a bunch of cheese and pastrami (I know, right, what's the point of stealing $50 worth of cheese and a block of pastrami?) inside empty pickle buckets he was "taking to the garbage bin" but really took to his car's trunk until said cameras were installed. A couple weeks after camera installation and a couple weeks of my eyeing him suspiciously, he quit saying that all the changes were annoying him and that the cameras were the last straw. Currently the employees don't even dare to shift the blame for things that go wrong - not to mention I try to cultivate a culture of just being honest with me and giving people a pass for most offenses. They really seem to believe that I'm watching them when I'm really just occasionally checking the cameras for activity at night when the restaurant is closed. I think it also helps that I'll occasionally use the camera and the footage being recorded when a customer is being an asshole - to support my employees. While I hate the idea of surveillance especially en masse, it seems like certain groups of people are willing to be a lot more honest and hard working when they think someone is watching and when it helps them too.

nodata 13y ago
What about the people who like their job less because you don't trust them?
- hga 13y ago
  They might decide it's not quite so simple the moment they see him resolve a "he said/she said" dispute in favor of the employee after reviewing the footage.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Trust, but verify. Same reason contracts are written down.
  - gngeal 13y ago
    I have yet to sign a contract that would mandate that I be watched by cameras at all times.
    - icegreentea 13y ago
      I don't believe that that was his point. I think that his point was that a healthy attitude to take on in life is to generally take other people's words as true (thus trust), but to have mechanisms to ensure that (thus verify). The key point is that unless you have specific reasons not to trust them, then you do not set up an antagonistic relationship. For this to work, both parties must believe that 'trust, but verify' is a valid norm. His example about contracts is exactly that. Typically, for most 'small things', you could probably just take someone's word for it. But just in case, we're going to sign on it. As I said before, this really only works when both parties accept this as a norm. Examine trying to sign a contract with someone from a culture which places far higher value on personal honor (or however you want to put it). They might get completely insulted that you would not just 'take their word for it'. That's something of a similar situation with employers vs employees and video surveillance at work. Clearly, most employees -don't- warrant video surveillance, and simply imposing it on them could lead to serious issues (like the culture clash above).
      - petsos 13y ago
        How is that different from "don't trust, verify"?
        saraid216 13y ago
        It's not. It mostly depends on how pedantic you are.
      - gngeal 13y ago
lmakeppleave 13y ago
Nothing ever comes for free. $2,982 x .15 = 447.3 (best case) I don't have any good numbers but its safe to say that the amount of theft prevented (the amount the their income has decreased since this was implemented) is greater than the extra $20-$70 ish dollars that their income has increased from increased sales. In other words, their net income is down. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the net increase in sales isn't just a temporary scramble to keep income up / items actually being rung up. The truth is this benefit will almost certainly decrease as more knowledgeable and productive servers find jobs elsewhere or find new methods around the system while the remaining lower skilled / productive settle in at the amount their effort is actually worth. I have doubts this action would produce a net benefit in the long run. (As quality of service decreases.) Its easy to think that the only people stealing are the "lazy and incompetent". In my experience the most skilled "thieves" are also the hardest workers with the most in depth knowledge of the controls the restaurant has in place. They also tend to desire/need/feel they deserve the cash more than the average employee. (and to most extents all three are true) Of course, all of this applies to the tipped employees, non-tipped employees will feel this doubly so though their forms of theft tend to be easier to track / reduce. Theft in a restaurant setting is a complex issue, there is no magic bullet to stopping it.
- jtheory 13y ago
  I don't follow your math here -- their revenue increased by $2982/week after installing the monitoring software, not decreased, due to the effects of employees who felt observed being more conscientious.
  - lmakeppleave 13y ago
    2982 (increase in sales) x .15 (assumed tip amount) = + $447 divided by all tipped employees. But you have to remember even many small chain restaurants have 15-25 tipped employees this nets to very little increase in income per tipped employee and zero increased income for non-tipped employees. Next, subtract from that small increase all the money they used to make from theft and overall they are likely coming out of the deal with less income.
  - 13y ago
sp332 13y ago
Since law enforcement can demand your footage after the fact, your cameras are actually contributing to surveillance en masse.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Depends on what you consider to be "surveillance en masse" and what the laws are like where you operate. I would equate "surveillance en masse" to be cameras that are constantly watched by the government, tracking me in my daily life even though I have done nothing wrong. In a legal environment where police need a warrant to compel private shop owners to turn over surveillance footage, an owner who installs cameras and requires warrants (this is key, plenty of people will just bow to any request) is not contributing to what I would consider to be the problem.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Makes me wonder if in the future there will be establishments that advertise that they are "surveillance free" as a benefit just like organic labeling on food.

jka 13y ago

I think the article in question spins a very positive light on surveillance - in the given context, theft has been occurring and is curtailed by the change in behaviour of staff, regardless of whether or not action is taken based on the surveillance being present. The larger problem with surveillance is that there is no global notion of what is 'right' and 'wrong' - theft is assumed wrong to almost everyone, but few readers here will have been at the poverty line, where it might appear a little more ambiguous whether taking a small cut from a very successful business which pays minimum wage is so clearly immoral. These changes in behaviour push us to comply and work 'in-line' with whatever the watching power signals as being appropriate; and at least in the U.S., that largely appears to be increased revenue margins and employee efficiency - which has a very dull and power-imbalanced end game. There is more to life than work and producing value for someone else.

WalterBright 13y ago
I don't agree with the notion that someone is entitled to steal just because they make minimum wage.
- lmakeppleave 13y ago
  You don't have to agree with it for it to be happening. Though, understanding that side of the argument can help solve the problem for both sides of the equation.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    I understand it happens. I was disagreeing with the attempt at justifying it as acceptable behavior. The moral way to improve your pay is to find a way to make your labor worth more to the employer. For a restaurant worker, that could be things like finding ways to boost sales, reduce wastage, find less expensive vendors, improve efficiency, etc. It's highly unlikely that any restaurant has successfully optimized all aspects of their operations.
    - saraid216 13y ago

dnautics 13y ago

there is a difference when a private entity, whom you patronize (or are employed by) at your own choice, engages in surveillance and when a public entity does so. If you find the private entity abusing its surveillance, you can leave, or in egregious cases, take legal action. When the state does so, you cannot easily leave, and more fundamentally you have a problem: Quis ipsos custodiet custodies?

eCa 13y ago

> In the new study, the tracking software was NCR’s Restaurant Guard product, and NCR provided the data. > Not surprisingly, NCR is delighted by the results. I really hope they had a neutral third party going over the data.

thex86 13y ago

As a person who generally prefers to be private wherever possible, I am still divided on a related topic: security cameras. I don't want them to be recorded everywhere I go, but then on the other hand, I do realize that the world does have a few bad people and in many cases, they are caught with the help of cameras/CCTV footage. I had always wondered if someone can shed some light on this debate from the other side perhaps and this article comes close. I have still not figured out where I stand on the CCTV cameras in public places though.

TausAmmer 13y ago

Yes, you can beat man to submission, true that.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

xpressyoo 13y ago

Our current society really tends to mix up dangerously the notions of "trust" and "surveillance"... at all the possible levels.

malandrew 13y ago

I don't dispute these findings, but the entire spin on this article made me feel like I was reading a PR piece. Who were these researchers funded by? It sounds like it was funded by a company selling a product that benefits from these findings.. Besides referring to specific software products by brand name, there was a conspicuous absent of any downsides from surveillance.

chaostheory 13y ago

I wonder how surveillance changes creativity?

LloydPickering 13y ago

If they went back and looked at business theory from the 20s and 30s they might have come across a famous phenomenon called the Hawthorne/Observer effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect Basically, when employees are being observed (which you could read as under surveillance) their productivity improves. Rather than suggest we turn into a panopticon loving society, it speaks to me that restaurant owners should in fact be paying more attention to their staff, and creating a workplace where they feel valued. This should improve productivity, and reduce turnover - but maybe my perspective is skewed because of the differences in being a restaurant waiter/ress vs a software dev. In any case, if you want better profitability then why not incentivise staff? If they have a share of profits, then you can be sure they will be trying to maximise profits - including reducing wastage, up-selling and reporting other members of staff not pulling their weight/stealing.