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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

I know not everyone has the option to rebel against this kind of totalitarianism at the workplace, but as a person without family obligations, I'd sooner become a traveling hobo than work for a company that wants to implant a chip under my skin or so much as monitor my toilet breaks. F* that. My self-respect has no price tag.

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My first bigger company experience consisted of a COO who felt the need to create seating charts every six months for no apparent reason. My smart ass blurted out, "I have not had a seating chart since kindergarten." Ya I lost that job.

We badge in/out. Which is supposed to be security, but the reality is that they wanted to see everyone had an 8 hour workday.

I think it backfired because the amount of people coming in late/leaving early hasnt gotten better. Tbh, fridays seem worse.

Now that we know we are tracked, people dont even hide it. Sub 40 hour weeks are becoming norm.(assuming you dont have a major issue)

That's interesting, in my office we badge in, but not out. I would have thought that the need to evacuate the building would prevent locking the exits? What happens if you leave your badge at your desk while visiting the bathroom or kitchen and the fire alarm goes off?

During emergencies, all exits open.

Unless they don't. Can you hop over these gates?

I imagine the doors aren't locked from the inside out, and that keying-out is a voluntary process? Otherwise, your workplace is a disaster waiting to happen. All it's going to take is the fire detection system to fail, the unlocking system to break, or the front-desk person to fall asleep on the job. Or, worse yet, there's an active shooter and no time for someone else or some thing to unlock the doors.

You badge in to give the illusion of security and so they can track that you are in the building, in part for their own liability in case of an emergency ("Yes we accounted for Jim's whereabouts during the fire, he entered the building at 9:05."). You don't need to badge out because the magnetic strip likely automatically tells them when you left the building by virtue of walking through the door.

If the badging didn't force an 8-hr workday, then how did the badging force an 8-hr workday?

Maybe the "forcing" was employee paranoia?

One of my colleagues used to be required to clock out for a toilet break, and I recall that there was a minimum time he would be docked pay for, even if his break was less than that. He worked for a supermarket.

My partner used to work for a business that had a swipe-in resolution of 15 minutes, so if you were just 30 seconds late, you would be docked 15 minutes of pay. You had to work the unpaid 14.5 minutes or you got your butt kicked out the door. That was a factory job.

The number of people who think like you is pretty low, methinks.

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