Your Boss Isn’t Tracking You for Productivity, It’s for Control

I sincerely didn’t realize how bad workplace surveillance had gotten until I started comparing jobs with most of my friends who are employees. Almost every office now has some form of tracking even when it doesn’t make the work any better. You know those softwares that records every click, tracks how long your mouse doesn’t move and yeah even flags you if you stop typing for too long. Some jobs have cameras pointed at desks, and if you’re remote like some of my friends, they expect your webcam on the whole day.

Image was sourced

Like I said most of these jobs don’t even need that level of monitoring. Think about it, if you’re in sales, the only thing that should matter is how many deals you close. Ain't it?
If you’re doing support, shouldn't it be how many tickets you resolve?

But unfortunately that’s not what these employers care about. They’re so obsessed with measuring time because it keeps you on edge. Logic might be if you’re scared of looking "inactive," you won’t take breaks, or even pace yourself, you’d be glued to the screen just so some report doesn’t mark you as "unproductive."

Reason why I'm saying this is because I’ve worked in places where people eat lunch at their desks just so they don’t get flagged. For real, and its not because there’s more work waiting, the tracking software just doesn’t care if there’s nothing to do, it only cares that you’re sitting there looking busy, so I couldn't blame them for doing that, I'm rather pissed off at the system put in place to cause people to adapt in this manner. Well, it makes it obvious that it isn’t about productivity but about control. The more nervous you are, the more they think they can push you.

The worse of it is it's become so normal.

I hear coworkers defending it saying things like, "That’s just how companies work now," as if it’s okay to be treated like a machine just because other places are doing it too. When we settle for this mindset it makes the employers get away with it if nobody questions it.

Well, if you’re in a place like this, the only thing that makes sense is to stop acting like you’re okay with it, but you can’t do that loudly if you need the paycheck. Some people try to make it easier on themselves by doing small things that don’t risk their job, like one time my friend turned off the tracking software when it glitched and didn't report it. Yeah, he told me his other trick is he sets a second mouse to move every few minutes so the software thinks he’s active, he says it’s the only way he can eat lunch without feeling like he’s being timed.

Can you blame him for that? Nope I don't think so...

We can't fix this problem as employees if we need that paycheck and most employers don't care about us so we're making sure we are not burning outself out for a job that would replace us tomorrow if the slightest need be.

If they’re going to watch every second, give them exactly what they pay for, nothing more and spend the energy they can’t track on finding a way out.