How Surveillance Changes Behavior: A Restaurant Workers Case Study
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
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.
Same reason contracts are written down.
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).
Actually, that's not a mechanism to ensure anything, that's a mechanism to remediate the consequences of failure. Actually ensuring the compliance would, again, require for you to be under close observation.
Trust is the belief that you don't need to verify.
In cryptography, you're trusting an entity when you don't verify that it's doing the right thing. Typically, the goal is to minimize or eliminate trust (otherwise attackers can exploit the system).
"Trust but verify" means that people will be able to do bad things, but will be found out afterwards.
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.
When they put in cameras and I start upselling instead of stealing, I need to upsell 20 / .15 (15%, the traditional tip amount) to have my net remain at $120. That means I need to increase the restaurant's gross by $133 to maintain my extra $20 of income. lmakeppleave is arguing that it's easier to steal $20 than to increase the restaurant's gross by the amount needed to make $20 legitimately.
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.
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.
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.
What, for free? He isn't being paid to do that.
If you choose to do as little as possible, it does make for a tough negotiating position when asking for more pay.
When I've gone into my boss's office and negotiated for more pay, I'd come in prepared to show how I'd already demonstrated higher value to the company. Sometimes I walked out with a raise, and other times I failed and started looking for another boss who did value what I could do for him.
On the other hand, I knew coworkers who were thieves and justified it with their notions of entitlement. I didn't exactly feel inclined to trust them, either, and trust is a basic element of friendship.
So I guess we all get to make our choices and accept the consequences.
I.e., the old crabs in a bucket story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
From a static point of view where the job situtation will never change it doesn't make sense to put in an effort that exceeds the compensation but that 'solution' is certainly non-optimal from dynamic point of view where the employment contract gets continually revised over time resulting in raises, promotions or perhaps shifting to a new employer where your experience and skills result in a better employment situation.
I agree, but it is hard for me to find sympathy for businessmen who hold wages so low. This behavior is widespread in the restaurant business, and it isn't limited to the staff stealing from the restaurant.
If you feel your wages are too low, negotiate for higher ones. If that doesn't work, accept it or quit. If you've been wronged, you have access to redress from the courts, and the courts are very sympathetic towards workers in disputes with employers.
>If you feel your wages are too low, negotiate for higher ones. If that doesn't work, accept it or quit.
I wish more people would do just that. It's what I did, after about a month of working as a barback.
>If you've been wronged, you have access to redress from the courts, and the courts are very sympathetic towards workers in disputes with employers.
No, you really don't, and the courts aren't. Where did you get that idea?
Details of cases I am familiar with, and talking with lawyer friends who tell me that, although it is not supposed to be that way, jurors and judges often give the benefit of any doubt to the perceived underdog.
There's a reason why lawyers carefully dress their clients in certain ways, select jurors based on socioeconomic status, etc.
States all have their mechanisms where a worker can file a complaint without needing a lawyer.
Since unpaid wage complaints involving minimum wage or overtime issues may affect other current/former employees who are not listed in the complaint, the department may request the employer conduct a self-audit of its place of employment if the complaint before the department proves to be valid.
Yes that sounds like a fantastically powerful tool for workers to wield against their employers. I bet it keeps everything above board. /sarcasm
Labor rights in this country are so laughable that this isn't a realistic an option. Any attempt towards that end such as simply unionizing has been eroded away by the law written to favor the owners of capital.
First off, you were being paid more than minimum wage, and could be replaced at an hour's notice with someone willing to work at minimum wage.
So at some point you successfully demonstrated a higher value than those others, thereby getting a higher wage.
Secondly, you are no longer there at that wage. So you did something to demonstrate even higher value and a higher paying job.
My advice: do more of that, since it was working for you!
I was simply shocked as to how many people came in every day looking for an application. Every single day. It was amazing. These weren't teenagers either.
Yeah, I'm not working in the restaurant business anymore because I'm a software engineer now. However, not everyone can become software engineers, and there is still a market for restaurants. I know I enjoy them myself. There is also a latency between age of employment and age that one usually acquires skills to be hired as a software engineer and not everyone has rich [read: middle class] parents to support them through that time.
I also don't need your career advice.
I would like to also point out I would never steal from my employer, or anyone else, it still goes against my morals.
That's cool, but you asked and I answered, and I correctly inferred that you didn't need the advice.
Glad to see you doing well, and Peace, dude!
(I started out at min wage jobs, too.)
My somewhat snarky comment was due being felt as if I was being talked down to.
>Peace, dude!
I'm a woman. Please don't presume the gender of an unknown speaker. It's rude and excluding.
WalterBright's comment indicates some confusion with this, so I'll help explain.
There's a basic notion of fairness that what you've contracted to do (your job) in return for money (your wages) is fair. But a lot of people don't see minimum wage as a fair wage: it's simply better than no wage. As such, in the context of a business whose payroll policy is perceived as unfair, then the notion of "what's fair" begins to tolerate theft: what you're being paid for isn't fair, so you're making it fair by stealing.
I don't agree with this, but I do understand it.
Here's another twist - by refusing to pay fair wages, the employer is stealing from the employee. "Hark in thine ear: change places and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?" - King Lear
Presumably, you volunteer because you aren't interested in getting money from them. In that case, you wouldn't feel that the wages you're getting are unfair and thus wouldn't feel motivated to steal.
Positive for whom? Do you suppose NCR offers a product that helps waitstaff recoup tips stolen from staff by restaurant owners/managers?
"The software is intentionally set so that a restaurant manager gets only an electronic theft alert in cases that seem to clearly be misconduct. Otherwise, a manager might be mired in time-consuming detective work instead of running the restaurant."
Equals: "managers: persuade your boss to buy our product and you will have more free time"
"The impact, the researchers say, came not from firing workers engaged in theft, but mostly from their changed behavior. Knowing they were being monitored, the servers not only pulled back on any unethical practices, but also channeled their efforts into, say, prompting customers to have that dessert or a second beer, raising revenue for the restaurant and tips for themselves."
Equals: "restaurant owners: we will improve your bottom line, and nebulously your staff may end up working harder for tips, so it's all good, here's an argument you can use if anyone complains"
Interesting that customers are arguably pressured into consuming more by the new configuration as well.
Could be wrong - either way, this kind of stuff does happen unfortunately (a huge network of incentives which generally have negative impacts on the uninformed/powerless).
> Not surprisingly, NCR is delighted by the results.
I really hope they had a neutral third party going over the data.
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.
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.