I work at a gas station – notoriously not the safest place to work at. Management has made it clear since I started that only a few of the cameras are real. Only three, to be exact. I’d definitely prefer more, but the fact that they had fake cameras didn’t perturb me since plenty of places use fake cameras for theft prevention.
That brings us to the past few weeks. After a customer verbally and physically assaulted one of my coworkers (berating them and throwing a drink at them), one of our assistant managers reviewed the footage. Of the cameras that worked, the one behind the counter was not angled in a way where we could actually see the customers, just the employee from the neck down and the area behind the counter. Clearly, angled only for employee theft (we do not control the angle of the cameras).
The AM emailed corporate telling them we needed the angle of the security camera changed and more real cameras so that we can have these incidents on tape in the future. Corporate’s first response was not one of compassion for the incident, but instead, “How do you know the angle of the cameras?”
As it turns out, only general managers are supposed to be able to review footage, much less know that any of the cameras are fake. Meaning 1. they do not want us to know they monitor us more than the customers, and 2. they want us to be equally as intimidated by the fake cameras as the customers are.
Employee safety is a joke. They don’t give a shit about us.