Toward an Idiocultural Understanding of Surveillance

Within the negotiated-order framework, surveillance can be viewed as having both an objective and a subjective reality. The subjective aspect of surveillance is the way that workers experience surveillance as they go through their workday . These experiences, in turn , become embedded in the idioculture of the store. The objective aspect, then, is the particularities of how the corporation designs the system and how store management implements it. The video surveillance system currently used at Funtime, which was installed in 1998, is composed of four enhanced-capability cameras. The cameras are located in the money counting room, above the cash registers, in the clothing section, and on the loading dock. In our interview with the store director, John, he described the capabilities of the system this way:

You can actually rotate the cameras so you can scan around. It goes almost 360, not quite, so you can almost see everything. The screen on my office up there is split into four screens so I can watch each of the four sections, and if I want to focus on a certain section, I click a button and it gives me the whole screen in just that area. Then there s a little joystick controller that you use once you re on the one screen, push a couple of buttons and you control that camera and you can zoom all around. If we happen to suspect someone s stealing, we ll zoom that camera right on her register, and I can read the qual code [a number that identifies a product] and what she s ringing in on the register. So it s very detailed. I can see her fingernails. I could read this piece of paper if it s just sitting there laying on the register so you can zoom in very big.

A VCR is kept next to the monitor in the director s office. Two sets of tapes are used to record video data, allowing the data to be kept for two weeks before being taped over.

The surveillance system was designed to meet the expectations of corporate headquarters, and to this extent is similar to the surveillance systems currently used in all Funtime stores in the United States. However, store management is responsible for how the cameras are actually used in the store. John, the current director of the store, sees the cameras as a deterrent to employee theft and misconduct .

The whole point of the surveillance system is to be a deterrent, to deter . As the saying goes, there are people who normally wouldn t steal, but put in a situation where it s easy to do it, they might think about doing it. Well, we don t want to put anybody in a situation where it s easy for them to think about stealing, and the surveillance cameras are one method of preventing that. They ve done several surveys in the past, and they ve said that most people that steal, not most but a lot of people that steal, stole due to the availability, that it was easy to, that they re not thieves by nature but the fact that, Wow, four video games are sitting right there.

The purposeful strategies adopted by store management are aimed at accomplishing such goals. As described by John:

I watch the monitors , usually once a week. I don t do it the same day, obviously, so that way everybody doesn t see me in the office on Tuesday and Wednesday. It just kind of varies depending on how much I have to do and what all we have. But I try to find some time on a day where I can sit up there and watch. It varies week to week, pretty much dictated by my schedule. But I also don t want to do it where if somebody wants to steal, they know they don t want to do it on Fridays.

Based on employee testimony, however, the video surveillance system rarely acts as a deterrent to them. Employees are apparently not internalizing the gaze, at least not as the result of the video surveillance system. David, an employee who works both in the storeroom and on the sales floor, provides an example that is consistent with the experiences of most of the employees interviewed:

They don t watch the cameras, I believe. They re there. There s one in the storeroom that can t hardly see. It s really not a big deal because they cover it with bikes. It s not important that when we hang bikes, we hang them right in front of the camera and nobody realizes that it s there. Nobody looks at it, and if they do, the only thing they can see is the dock doors, so you can hide right under the camera.

Almost all employees we spoke with seemed convinced that the cameras were never used, or at least only used in situations where there was reason to believe someone was stealing from the store. During our interviews, few firsthand accounts were given of workers being approached by management about something viewed using the cameras. One storeroom worker, Travis, describes the only incident he has experienced where a manager approached him about something he saw on video:

Me and this other guy were working really hard. There were a lot of boxes on the dock and pretty much everything was done. So we decided to sit down and chill out for five minutes, and so that was fine. Then later on Max [a manager] calls me in and says, We caught you slacking off back on the dock. Yeah, [I replied], we were working pretty hard and were pretty exhausted. He said, If you need to do that, you could tell me and then go back in the break room for five minutes. I walked off. I mean, what am I going to do?

Two other employees had been approached by managers about something other employees had done. In our interview with David, he told us of one of his experiences:

What the managers said was, Have you noticed anything suspicious going on? I knew what they were talking about because a guy that I had worked with, he was a black guy. Some girl came up that knew him from high school and was talking to him. Well, her and her friend ended up stealing two PlayStation systems and he came up and said, Man I am pissed off. I asked why and he said, That girl came up and started talking to me, and I found out later on that they had stole some PlayStations, management s going to think I m in on this.

When a panoptical system is operating effectively, relatively rare occurrences like these would reinforce the belief that employees could be under surveillance at any given moment. Instead, these instances are quickly dismissed by employees (those who experienced them and those that heard about them) as exceptions. Such logic highlights just one of the contradictions in the beliefs of employees.

Employees shared beliefs and responses to surveillance are often enmeshed in other contradictions. Our discussion with Randy illustrates the contradictory aspects found in Funtime s idioculture. When asked if he was ever aware of the cameras while he was working, he responded:

Only if somebody brings it to my attention, like if I had a new storeroom person that I was training and we decided to sit down back in the storeroom and he happened to notice it, he made me think about it. Ok, we re slacking off right in front of the camera, and then I ll get up and move somewhere else. But other than that, I hardly ever think there s cameras, because nobody s watching them. Now if somebody was watching them, I would keep it in mind all the time.

There is a certain amount of confusion in this statement. Randy is open about his indifference to the cameras while he works, and he attributes this to his belief that they are not used. However, when brought to his attention, he will take measures to insure that his unproductive behavior does not occur within the visual range of the cameras.

The incongruence between how management uses surveillance and how employees perceive its use cannot be explained away superficially. John admits that he uses the cameras, and there are instances (albeit few) where employees have been confronted with its use. When employees try explaining their indifference and dismissal of awareness-raising events, they typically state their beliefs that the surveillance system is not used. Such denials may be sufficient for employees as they deal with the realities of their work, but are analytically problematic due to the logical contradictions they introduce. We argue that such beliefs are the result of idiocultural processes, which are only indirectly associated with the existing surveillance system. In particular, we will focus on how employees perceptions of the current video-surveillance system are shaped by their notions of the ethical use of surveillance in the workplace and their reflections of how the previous surveillance system at Funtime worked.