My workplace installed desk presence sensors and has a stupid little robot roomba thing that drives up and down the rows documenting who’s in their seats.
Edit: this is the damn robot that we have to be seen by: https://www.globaldws.com/virbrix
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Man, what sort of ~~sweatshop~~ industry is this so I can avoid it?
IT
I don't know if this is a joke or not...
I am genuinely not joking. We on-boarded this bullshit:
fuck with the sensor
So obviously people at my work did this. They sent out an email warning us that abuse of organization property would be met with progressive discipline (like LWOP and dismissal)
Pretty sure IR lasers fry cameras - set one up in the robots path
having worked in a call center my response would be lol
these jobs can’t keep enough people as is, you ‘d have to kill someone or fuck the ceos wife to get fired
I don’t know about that. Where I’m at, the job market is not great so people stay where I work (me included) because the option is here or find another industry. The colleague of mine who taped a piece of paper over the robots sensors got suspended 2 weeks without pay for it.
I would kick that shit like a soccer ball idc if i get fired
This shit should count as abuse and be illegal
Right but at the end of the day: you kick it, you feel like you took a stand, your employer either outright fires you or gives you a week LWOP and then you have less money (either temporarily or permanently). Cost outweighs the benefit for most at my work.
I have the privlage of having a few months to look for a new job.
Evwry day we passively accept these changes we become indistinguishable from slaves.
Where I live there are no such protections. You find a job or way to make money or you fall behind on your bills which go into collections. The choice is between feeding your cat/dog/child, or standing up for what you know should be right.
No i mean my savings will last a few months
Best manager ever. Doesn’t chit chat and cleans the floor.
More like makes false negatives and marked me 3 times this year (so far) as absent which required a total of 15 minutes in useless frantic Teams calls to verify my location to my manager across the country -_-
If they only spent this time and money on training the managers to...well, manage their employees.
Stop thinking "time at your desk" is a kpi and start measuring results instead. It cuts the crap employees that are worthless and that in and of itself is a reward to good employees and team morale.
I would rather have a productive employee get results in 4 hours and then leave than a crap employee who needs the full day to get the same job done. Then the good employee will learn to streamline it so they can get the job done in 3 hours and I win because my efficiency went up. They win because they get another hour of their life back daily...or dare I say, they want more work and I give it to them along with a pay increase.
there will be a $4.5 billion employee-monitoring-technology market, mostly in North America
Toxic workplaces being toxic. That said, workplace monitoring is mostly not allowed here.
Cancer tech.
Just another reason to keep away from shitty offices then!
'time theft'
Right. Treating human beings like robots where any ineffeciancy or time taken to not focus on corporate overlords is bad.
Fuck 'em.
Wage theft is the largest property crime in the US but the state don't care and parasite will do it if you let them.
Never give a parasite more than what was paid for
And current wages, it ain't much and hence I shit on company time
"Nearly half of US employees admit to time theft!"
Nah, it's the other way around. Company profits of any kind are wage theft.
I mean a company does need to make profit. Excessive profits is another thing.
Username checks out.
Yeah the "great work guys, we doubled the EBITDA this year. Congratulations!...Here's your 3% raise" kind of sucks
Yup, I agree. But you know, if I don't have that trillion dollars in my bank account yet, I can't afford to give you more.
/s
Nope, any profits not reinvested in the company itself, or the employees is wage theft. Full stop. Capitalism is a scam we've been fed so rich assholes can get richer.
I think it's a bit unfair to blanket statement that capitalism is a scam. There need to be checks in place. Like, I agree it's not fair that me as a business owner can simply say "this year we are skipping raises, and I am paying myself 2 billion". There's no reason any one person needs a trillion dollars. That's an insane amount of money. Even 100 million is a shit ton of money. There definitely need to be checks in place, but I don't think communism is the answer either.
Nope, any profits not reinvested in the company itself
This isn't clear to me what you're saying "nope" to. How I said companies need to make profit? If so, they do. If they do not make profit they lose money, if they lose money they can't reinvest into themselves or pay wages. Or maybe I misunderstand what you meant by "nope".
capitalism is not only a scam to prop up our owners and make us slave away for them but its also destroying the literal planet we live in to keep them in power.
the only way capitalism can be good is when it dies.
What's the solution then?
i like socialism. you can pick your poison from any leftist ideology that speaks to you.
@umbrella @cyberpunk007 Some big UK brands don't run on an "all money is for one guy" model. John Lewis (dept store) and Waitrose (supermarket) are a partnership: the staff own it. Then we have lots of Co-operatives but the main one is mostly known for being a supermarket: member/ownership is £1 and you can vote at the AGM, get discounts and choose charities. It's not perfect - they all exist in a capitalist system - but there are other ways of running businesses that aren't for pure profit.
even if some people have the blessing of having comfortable well paid work. we want good work for all, not just a few blessed people. and you can do that by simply eliminating profit and turning it into fair compensation/free time. you listed an example of how yourself.
problem is, history shows capitalism always tends to monopoly. im not familiar with these brands you mention, but my country also had a lot of coops. still governed by a heinous system, with heinous shit happening because of it. as it ended up, the rules are very unforgiving to them and its hard to have one scrape by nowadays because the burgeoise demanded more profit.
same how they demanded we go back to work because the system cant fathom that we stop for a little bit to avoid the fucking plague. or how they demand some people to be homeless for a few to have hundreds of homes to rent.
we depose those who rule us then we can decide for ourselves.
No they do not. They need to break even only. Profit is the result of charging customers too much, paying employees too little, or enshitification.
It results in a lot of performance theater. If being at your desk, key presses, mouse clicks and eye movements are the most important then you can expect a lot of long winded lists, reports and mails. There'll be people doing thousands of things manually instead of thinking about it and automate things. So much productivity measured and nothing gets done.
That was dystopian as hell to read.
Late stage capitalism is now turning inward. What a time to be alive.
People just need to befriend the IT dept. Who do you think is having to run this shit? Easy to bypass with a beer.
Short simple scripts can handle key presses, you can even add a little logic to ensure it doesn't follow the same pattern and give you a workday countdown to boot.
So, in other words... Big Brother is watching