Reflections on Past Surveillance


With the evolution of surveillance technology, it is not surprising that the monitoring systems used in workplaces are altered periodically. Even though new forms of surveillance may differ dramatically from the old systems they replace, the ways that employees view them are often shaped by their experiences with their predecessors. We found this to be the case with Funtime employees . For the first ten years that Funtime was open , management deployed a somewhat primitive video surveillance system. Four black plastic balls, which management claimed contained video cameras , were suspended from the ceiling. One of these balls was located on the shipping dock; a second one hung over the cash registers; a third was located in the clothing section of the store; and the last one was positioned in the far back of the store. Along with these four black balls, there was an exposed camera located in the money-counting room where the store s basic accounting was done and the safe located. In the director s office, there was a single video monitor that was supposedly connected to all five of these video cameras.

This system, with its hidden cameras, was intended to operate panoptically in that its success relied entirely on employees believing that they could be under surveillance at any given moment. Such a strategy is designed to make power increasingly visible, while simultaneously unverifiable (Sakolosky, 1992; Staples, 2000). And yet, over time, management did little to signal to workers that they were indeed being watched. For example, minor infractions that might have been observed via the cameras were not brought to workers attention, nor were they disciplined. In essence, management failed to reveal the extent of its power and control. As a result, employees who had worked at the store for several years became fairly confident that none of the black balls in the store actually contained cameras. As one employee, Carl, put it:

Management said that a couple of [the black balls] worked, and I was in every room in that building, and they didn t have monitors . Maybe they did. There was one in the Crow s Nest, but it was always black. I mean, I turned it on before, too. Richard [the previous store director] wasn t there. I turned it on and it was black.

Likewise, Annette told us:

I still don t know if they had those silly cameras up there or not. I don t think so. You know those little black balls that are supposed to have cameras, but they didn t have any place in the store that I know of filming them on tape.

When we asked Annette if she was consciously aware of the cameras while she was working, she said, ˜Since no one was sure that we had them and I didn t think we did, I didn t really take those things into consideration.

Interestingly, the only camera that employees believed to be functional was the exposed one located in the money-counting room. It was in this room that Annette reports that she acts differently because of what she thinks is the presence of cameras. She said, ˜If you were in the counting room, you tried not to scratch anything important at the wrong time. Lisa feels similarly about being in the counting room:

I don t like it, I don t like it at all. To me that s like somebody s watching over my shoulder. I don t know, it s not that I think that they don t trust me, because it might be more for the fact that if anybody came and tried to rob us, you know it would be on camera, providing that they have a tape in the VCR [video cassette recorder].

However, employee skepticism about the presence of the other black ball cameras was finally confirmed when two storeroom workers opened the ball that was located on the loading dock. Here is how Travis described what happened :

They ripped the shit out of one of the black balls in the storeroom. I wasn t there when it happened, but when I came in it was off kilter. They said, Ooh yeah, there s a camera in there, but we don t think it works because there s no wire that goes anywhere . So it s like, the thing s battery operated? That s the only way the thing s working . . . . And that thing would be hit twenty times by the time we unloaded the truck. So if they had a real camera in there, it was destroyed .

By the time we did our interviews, this episode had become folklore within the idioculture of the store, as several of the old-timers told their versions of this story, though none of them were actually on the dock at the time it happened. While our interviewees offered some comparisons between the old and new systems, they did not seem to view the new technology, despite its enhanced capabilities, as a radical break from the past. Rather, they tended to believe that management would use these more technologically sophisticated systems in much the same ways. For example, when we asked Carl if he was consciously aware of either the black balls or the newer exposed cameras, he told us:

I knew they were there, but I didn t care. I m not going to steal anything, so what do I care? So somebody sees me wasting some time out on the floor, not working. Big deal. I see the managers doing it all the time.

While employees do recognize that some things have changed, for better or worse , they tend to report more continuity than change. Even if employees were skeptical or knew managers were using the system in its infancy, eventually they came to see it as business as usual. Linda provides just one example:

I don t think anyone pays much attention to them [the cameras] at all. It used to be that they would have to come in every morning and the manager would have to put a tape in the VCR. And I don t think they even bother to do that anymore.

Linda s example highlights another aspect of the transition that has influenced workers understandings of the new system: very few employees know exactly how it works. Linda and Evan do not believe the video feed is being recorded, and several others do not even know the cameras are hooked up to a VCR. Others are unsure of how the monitor works and believe that only one or two of the cameras can be viewed . While there are probably situations where this confusion could reinforce the panoptical aspects of the system, it has not had this effect at Funtime. Rather, because of the idiocultural processes within the store, the uncertainty of workers has led them, for the most part, to assume that nothing has changed. They create store folklore and gossip that reinforce the idea that surveillance practices have not really changed. On the other hand, gossip about managers actually using the system (which we discuss next ) is usually considered anecdotal or discounted all together, allowing their shared understanding to go unchallenged in the face of information that contradicts it.

The idiocultural understandings of surveillance can create challenges not only for employees, but also for management as they traverse the new surveillance terrain of the store. Employees may believe that store managers share their ethical sensibilities, but their shared belief that the new video surveillance is not really used is also influenced by their experiences with the old system that used the suspended black balls. This system was basically a low-tech charade aimed at controlling workers panoptically without investing the capital necessary to really sell the illusion. By the time the store made the switch to the new high-tech cameras, employees had discovered how the old system worked and had disregarded it. When the new cameras were installed, employees felt they had no reason to believe that managers would use it differently.




Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace. Controversies and Solutions
Electronic Monitoring in the Workplace: Controversies and Solutions
ISBN: 1591404568
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 161

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