I worked at a grocery store in the 90's, with very draconian policies.
This was before everyone had cell phones, although many of us had pagers. They were cheap, and you could get in touch with someone that way. Just call the pager, enter your number, and the person can call you back. I had a pager.
Anyway, there was a rolodex behind the video rental counter at the front of the store, with all of the employees' phone numbers, so that managers could call us any time of the day or night, for any reason. This rolodex had my home landline number, which was NOT MY phone, it was my parents' phone. So you can imagine how that could potentially cause a big problem!
First of all, I did NOT want my parents' home phone number sitting unsecured in a public place where literally anybody could access it. Yes, it was behind the counter, but come on, customers can go behind a damn counter and read a rolodex.
Second of all, there were employees at the store who didn't like me, so they were prank calling my house late at night and pissing off my parents. At first they told me to “Tell your friends to stop calling here in the middle of the night.” Thankfully, they believed me when I said that none of my friends are calling me at that time, and that there are coworkers at work who are a**h***s and don't like me, and I'm sure it's them.
Third of all, since I DID have a pager, I removed my parent's number from the rolodex and replaced it with my pager number. But I was told that I HAD TO have my parents' landline phone number there too because it was policy because they had to be able to get in touch with me. Not listening to reason, that I HAVE A PAGER and you can call me on that. No, they wrote my parent's number on another card and put it in there and told me if I removed it again I'd be written up.
So at the next employee meeting, I raised my hand and said that it was a HUGE problem to have my parents' landline phone number unsecured in that rolodex behind the counter, because my parents were getting prank calls late at night and they were getting very pissed off. The store manager said “Huh? nobody goes behind that counter, so it's not anybody from here.” I said “yes it is.”
Then they VERY QUICKLY changed the subject, said “well you look at the manager's chart and you're not supposed to be looking at that, so… ” in order to deflect, because they knew they were in the wrong.
They stopped prank calling my house, but a few times they DID call my house in the middle of the night looking for me, and they got cussed out by my stepfather who threatened to press charges for harassment. After a couple of times they finally got the hint.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that was not legal, to have our personal phone numbers written down in an unsecured location. Was it?
Even though “nobody goes behind the counter”, that's bullshit — it was NOT a locked area, and the rolodex was in easy reach.