January 07, 2005 | Tracking Packages

Over at the Chapell Blog, privacy consultant Alan Chapell takes a think at bosses who have the ability to keep tabs on their workers, using this AP story by Adam Geller as an example.

Alan tells the story of a UPS driver, who back in the day, would take the time to chat with his customers.

One day I asked him how he was able to spend/waste so much time with his customers each day. Joe mentioned that he really enjoyed chatting with people, and that he would usually give up all or part of his lunch hour on days where he spent too much time talking. If Joe’s movements had been tracked with GPS, he would not have been able to take the time to mingle with his customers.

The problem with all of these tracking devices is that they dehumanize the work that people do. You gain certain efficiencies, and you are more likely to catch the employees who aren’t doing the right thing, but you lose any willingness (or ability) for those employees to take ownership of their jobs. They stop thinking of new and better ways to do those jobs because there’s no incentive (i.e., ten minutes extra at lunch) for them to do so. Moreover, there’s the potential problem of abuse of these tracking powers…

This is close to right, I think.

But there's something else also lost.

The other thing you lose with surveillance technologies designed to police efficiency is inefficiency. There's much to be said for a job where you can disappear for an hour, either down to the mail room to chat with folks or to find fifteen minutes to wander a building to visit a friend or even for maintenance workers to find a place to park for an hour and smoke cigarettes. Those holes are the places stories get made. Companies may not like that, but who the hell wants to live in world without wiggle room or the ability to ditch for a day?

(If you are looking for Chapell's comments later (the blog has no permalinks), they were posted on 1/06/05).

Posted by Ryan Singel at January 7, 2005 09:46 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.secondaryscreening.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/82