11/10/04: Clocked

One night about nine years ago, I was chilling at home, watching Seinfeld or whatever people did in 1995, when I got a call from the office.  It was around 9pm. As the most inexperienced, non-confrontational, disinterested young gun in our new little company, I had quickly been selected for the management track. And in my role as ineffectual pseudo-manager on duty, I often received phone calls when things went wrong.  On this particular night, the call came in from my co-worker N.Sita, I believe. Sita and cW and a few other people were there, working the night shift. Apparently another employee, a guy we'll call Bill, was paging through a spy catalog* when he noticed that one of the camera/clocks in the catalog looked suspiciously like the clock that was hanging right outside our work area. Sita and cW and A. Pappas (this was when he still had both his legs) did a little investigating and determined that indeed this seemingly harmless clock was really a spy camera, pointed directly at our cubicles. They found a video cable hanging out the back of the clock and traced it to the office of an ignoramus VP from Boston, who was apparently one of the masterminds of Operation Spy on Your Employees.

I wasn't there, so I don't have an exact transcript of what happened next, but it went something like this.  Sita and cW and A. Pappas went ballistic.  We were all just young kids in our first real jobs, and all of a sudden we discover the true nature of the boss-employee relationship in such an ugly way.  cW went up and clipped the video cable (footage that is now valued at $300,000).  Boston VP dude scurried out of the office like a coward, mumbling something over his shoulder like, "You're going to regret this."  I am proud to say we stood together the next day and took our beef right to the top of the company.  We weren't sure if videotaping your employees was even legal, but we were all positive it wasn't ethical, and we told the president that in a meeting the next day.  He apologized and explained that there had been a rash of thefts, and the video camera was just an attempt to catch the thief. We wondered why it had to be pointed at our work area; our natural instinct was to feel like suspects. It was just a horrible invasion and we felt only slightly encouraged by the president's apology and guarantee that it would never happen again.

Nine years have passed, that president is gone, I'm off the management track, and now, rather suddenly, the hidden cameras are back up. These aren't quite as covert -- they're encased in little black bubbles that sort of stand out as being not quite right.  But they're there. All over the place. And nobody in management has come forward to say, "There are cameras all over the place." I think they are part of some building-wide security system, but our company can tap into the feed and watch it. It's pretty revolting.  It would be one thing if they were only trying to prevent theft**, but I have heard through the grapevine that they are actually watching the feed and monitoring our comings and goings. An employee was supposedly reprimanded for leaving her night shift early*** -- even though her work was presumably done -- because the camera failed to capture any movement after a certain hour.  And this new surveillance system seems much more corporate, like it's more than a hare-brained scheme from a couple of management goons.

Fuck. What a place.  Get me out. What should I do, outside of just spreading the word to everybody who works there? Quit? And do what? I do have the additional income from the verbungle store to fall back on.  That's $4 so far.  Just not quite enough, I don't think.

OK, before I get to the next installment of the admittedly retarded google image search game, I implore you to do a google image search with the word "idiot," and take a look at the first result (NSFW). OK, give yourself a few moments to recover, and then move on to today's edition of the image game. HERE IS YOUR IMAGE. No answers until noon.

* This guy, "Bill," was the type of guy who always had all sorts of gadgets, and loved reading about them as well.
** Of course, if you are trying to prevent theft, don't you position the video cameras right out in the open so nobody even tries anything?
*** This could all be bullshit.