SOMETHING CHANGED

In a precedent-setting case, administrative trial judge Tynia Richard recommended the firing of John Halpin, a veteran supervisor of carpenters, for cutting out before the end of his shift on as many as 83 occasions between March 2 and Aug. 9, 2006.

The evidence against Halpin, whose base pay is $300 a day, included time cards that suspiciously appeared stamped on the same machine, even though his duties placed him in different locations each day.

But there was a clincher: data gathered through the GPS system on Halpin’s cellphone, which he accepted in 2005 without being told it might be used to trace his every move. |link|

My first response to this article was that it is yet more proof of how our technology outpaces our ethics. Our technology is rigid; our ethics have some slack around the edges. It might be a minor failing to leave work 5 or 10 minutes early, but its the kind of thing that most people are willing to over look and let slide, especially when such behavior goes so easily under the radar. And people have been exploiting this minor loophole since we first had punch cards keeping track of our hours. The economy didn’t crumble, and businesses didn’t suffer. Unless it is a particularly egregious case (this particular case might count), most people don’t think that leaving work a bit early is a sign of laziness or any other ethical failing. No one wants to be at work, and everyone understands that.

Our technology, on the other hand, only knows rigid deadlines. Technology is ruthless in its petty attention to detail and its utter lack of flexibility. Our machines have no sympathy for our minor human concerns, and pays no attention to the flexibility of our intuitive ethical code.

It would be one thing if the company had already suspected this person of underperforming on the job, and then employed this cell phone as definitive proof. Its another thing entirely to use the cell phone as the primary means for suspecting underperformance. Moreover, the technology allows the the company to set hardnosed, digital benchmarks for judging underperformance. By keeping those benchmarks, the company demonstrates its dedication to squeezing every workable bit of energy from its employees in an attempt to maximize efficiency and profits. Of course, explaining to the company that the last 5 minutes of work are rarely productive anyway is hardly convincing when you have the instruments to hold people accountable to the fraction of a second.

I know that some of you may object that it is well within the rights of the company to exploit it’s human resources for everything it can, humanitarian interests be damned. My response is simply that men are not machines, and the technological bubble we equip them with does absolutely nothing to make them more like machines. If you want someone to work from punch in to punch out with dedicated efficiency, you are better off hiring machines to do the job, but don’t be surprised when humans can’t live up to the task.

I was going to let this post just fester in D&D; I wasn’t particularly interested in the topic, and my response wasn’t anything special. And then I got a message from Zoolooman, and I felt compelled to make the post.

Recently, I spent a summer working at a tech support phone center.

I learned three things at that company:

1. Technology is currently incapable of fairly judging your attendance or behavior, and every “improvement” to the logging system simply heaped misery on already unhappy employees.

2. The company was using the computer-based logging system to squeeze productivity and profit out of employees. Every second was counted, and you weren’t paid if your phone wasn’t capable of receiving a call from a customer. Also, if you worked enough hours in the previous week to earn overtime during the pay period, the computers would automatically schedule you with less hours during the next week.

3. I was constantly exhausted in a very deep, significant manner. I was less intelligent, less alert, less motivated than ever before. Eventually, I stumbled across a study that explained the problem–humans are not effective workers. By and large, they are only productive for a few hours. The rest of their time is spent frivolously–talking, eating, preening in the bathrooms, sitting around, browsing webpages, etc. Unlike the average office worker, constant surveillance kept me working every second of every hour. It burdened me twice over.

In the end, I felt that technological surveillance was detrimental to the employee and ultimately to the company. I was constantly harassed, constantly squeezed, and constantly overworked.

In the end, we need employers to recognize that people work best and work happiest within loose guidelines. We also need technology that can comfortably recognize and apply them.

In the end, in the end, in the end–I don’t really have a good solution. But after tasting the future of electronic surveillance, I forsee nothing but stress and unhappiness.