Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 170 posts

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#161

Post by yohannparis »

aphextim wrote: post #85
Loughla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those cameras in retail stores are, first and foremost, used to track employee theft In my history, before finding my terminal career, I worked retail management. I worked for a chain that is no longer open, so I'm fairly certain I can say whatever I want about it now. I was fast-tracked for upper-level corporate management (I think it was the combination of not-giving-a-fuck based on depression and low-grade sociop…

I worked at a company during college who at the end of the year would give every employee a "Shrink" check depending how well/poor their store performed over the course of the year. If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year. I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.

Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#162

Post by aweiland »

sixothree wrote: post #90
kbutler wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the corporations, you can go elsewhere. With the socialists, you can't leave.

Americans never feel trapped in their jobs and enjoy the highest mobility.

Is this sarcasm?

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#163

Post by fennecfoxen »

speedgoose wrote: post #77
fennecfoxen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You can't fire these people" is also the standard in France. Also standard: a stagnant economy (~0.25% GDP growth on 0.18% population growth) and sky-high youth unemployment (20-25%).

You can definitely fire people in France. I don't know how you got the idea you can't. Also quality of life is perhaps more important than these numbers. People don't care about the GDP growth, don't want to have artifical employment with terrible and badly paid jobs (looking at you Germany), and prefer to eat good food for 2 hours.

People care when they can't be hired for a good job, they care when their paycheck is stuck at the same level forever, and they care whether their government services are any good. If GDP isn't going to pay for those things, what is? Debt? Plunder?

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#164

Post by aphextim »

yohannparis wrote: post #161
aphextim wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a company during college who at the end of the year would give every employee a "Shrink" check depending how well/poor their store performed over the course of the year. If you came in mid year they just pro rated the amount you would have gotten if you stayed the whole year. I remember this helped employees keep an eye on each other as you were essentially stealing from everyone else's shrink check.

Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!

I worked there for 3 years.

First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus.

The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so.

Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local craigslist/pawn shops and finally e-bay.

He found one account on e-bay that coincidentally was selling all the same items our store kept missing! (Some of these were brand new laptops)

The account name of the seller was firstinitial+lastname+numbers

He took that account name, and cross referenced it with our employees and found a match. He then forwarded all this information to the police.

I remember one day going to our monthly manager's meeting (once a month had a store wide meeting where managers went over everything with all employees)

We did the entire meeting, free pizza and donuts, talked numbers shrink etc, and the best part was that on the last page of the presentation they had the guy running the Lost Prevention department come up to talk shrink. He explained everything above and then flipped the presentation paper to the last page which had the e-bay account giant sized on the paper. He said this is the person who has been caught selling everything and they will be taken care of.

We all turned around from our meeting and there were police offers waiting to arrest the perpetrator on the spot.

Said person was a 20 year old who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. He drove a $40,000 car his parents paid for type of thing where most of us had rusted beaters to drive around.

He was doing it only for the thrill, worked in the electronics department so he was able to steal things from the cages when trucks came in and you are supposed to unload all the pallets.

I just remember that meeting so vividly because they let the kid go through everything, thinking everything is normal and I wish I was able to see his face when his username was shown right away.

I won't forget his face and cries as he was being arrested saying, "You cannot prove that is me!" even though it was his first initial + last name and year he was born in.....

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#165

Post by nitwit005 »

loriverkutya wrote: post #154

This reminds me of one of the big telco company I was working for: Big announcement came one day that youtube and other "non work releated" websites were blocked to "encourage" people to work "harder". After two days, blocking is gone without futher announcement since some C-level started to complain to IT, that they use it.

I was briefly at Dell (acquired company I worked for), and they sent out an email to some of the management that mentioned they were spending several million a year on internet services, but half of it was being consumed by YouTube. I'm sure they'd have blocked it if they could, but the CEO was busy posting videos there and sharing using Salesforce's social network feature (Chatter).

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#166

Post by [deleted] »

aphextim wrote: post #164
yohannparis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes, delation... Nothing like not trusting anyone, especially your peers. Lovely!

I worked there for 3 years. First year we received close to $1200 and in 2004 being a poor college kid this was an amazing bonus. The 2nd year there was a series of high value thefts so we only ended up getting like $250 or so. Our Lost Prevention employee who was just some guy who looked at security cameras all day, went out of his way on his own time to research all the same stolen items looking for them in local c…

[deleted]

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#167

Post by jschwartzi »

lonelappde wrote: post #146
jschwartzi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the bigger problem was that the raise went into operating costs, whereas investment in surveillance goes into capital costs. The corporation doesn't get to list any money it pays out to employees on its balance sheet, but that Orwellian surveillance system is capital and counts as an asset the corporation can leverage for a higher valuation. It's all part of how Capitalism reduces humans to a drain on the syste…

Capital depreciates. It's an expense.

But it still shows up on the balance sheet, so it doesn't look like you're bleeding money the same way an operating expense like a raise does.

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#168

Post by wanderer2323 »

geddy wrote: post #3

> unprecedented transparency I think where they can go a step further here is to install Spy cams in all of the bathroom toilets so we know how much bathroom time is actually spent going to the bathroom, and how much is spent on cell phones. It may sound invasive but I'll bet the efficiency will go up and that's all that matters at the end of the day, right? Since efficiency can be broken down into money earned/lost,…

you have an aptitude for a CTO position, but T does not stand for `tech`

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#169

Post by dang »

crystaldev wrote: post #68
factsaresacred wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'2 hours lunch break and 1hr for prayer breaks' and the work is low quality. You don't need to track those people, you need to replace them.

Found the American.

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system within one week

#170

Post by kbutler »

kbutler wrote: post #141
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is: you guys are talking about two different things but using the same word. One is talking about Scandinavia and one is talking about The Khmer Rouge.

Well, Bernie was also endorsing Castro's Cuba, the USSR, and the Sandinistas' Nicaragua. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhpVAkBDg5o (He visited each of these countries in the mid-to late 80s, when the atrocities were already well-known). Not quite the Nordic model. He praises socialist governments, ignoring their murders and killings of people trying to escape, and when their economies inevitably tank, he shifts to…

When I wrote this comment, I certainly wasn't expecting Bernie would start a new round of endorsing Castro as the front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination.

If you have questions about Castro's contributions, you may consider https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-comme... "Pre-Castro, Cuba was already better off than most Latin American countries on such indicators. Also, Mr. Castro's rule knocked Cubans to the near-economic bottom of all Latin American countries"

Post reply on HN