Comment by silencio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by silencio | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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.

lmakeppleave is saying that the amount that used to be stolen was "income" the employees were making (albeit illegitimately). like, I as a waiter make $100 per shift and steal $20 per shift; my net is $120 per shift.

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.

Since law enforcement can demand your footage after the fact, your cameras are actually contributing to surveillance en masse.

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.

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.

What about the people who like their job less because you don't trust them?

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.

Trust, but verify.

Same reason contracts are written down.

Ah yes, the old "I want it both ways" statement.

Trust is the belief that you don't need to verify.

Actually, there's a fairly sensible way to view the statement "trust, but verify" -- think of it as a policy of entering agreements without doing the necessary vetting / clearing / what have you in advance. You still do that, but afterwards. As long as the people you're working with are trustworthy, things will run much more smoothly, but if they're not, you'll still find out. That "verify" step is important to maintaining trustworthiness all around.

That's a reasonable interpretation. "Trust now, verify later" would be a bit clearer.

No, without trust there is nothing to verify since that means you don't take those risks.

"Trust but verify" means that people will be able to do bad things, but will be found out afterwards.

If you don't trust someone, there's no point in verifying. Verification is for when you're wrong about being trusting.

Interesting, I think we mean something different when we say trust.

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).

The phrase is a Russian saying popularized by Reagan for diplomatic purposes. He wasn't talking about cryptography.

I have yet to sign a contract that would mandate that I be watched by cameras at all times.

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).

but to have mechanisms to ensure that (thus verify)

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.

How is that different from "don't trust, verify"?

It's not. It mostly depends on how pedantic you are.

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