One New York woman’s new chill job turned out to be not as laid-back as she had hoped when her manager installed a surveillance camera right above her. Going by the username Whatawynn, the worker shared a photo of the dystopian-esque camera looming over her on r/mildlyinfuriating. “It does kinda take the chill vibe out of my chill office job to get a camera pointed right at me all day,” she sighed. And thousands of Redditors are right there with her.
“Yeah, that’s rough. Even if you expect to be potentially on camera all day, it’s tough when you know there’s one right over your shoulder at all times,” sympathetically remarked a Redditor. Whatawynn responded, saying that she used to work in retail, so cameras aren’t new to her, but this one sitting over her is uncomfortable on a more personal level. “I think I’m generally a good employee but now I’m like so aware about it,” she groaned.
For those curious, Whatawynn says she works as clerical support in the medical department of an insurance company. She claims the “weirdest part” about the sudden camera installation is that her manager provided no prior notice besides mentioning that the office was getting “renovations.” “I’m a temp, and I’ve only been here two weeks. How could they be onto me that fast?” she moaned. “I just wanna play the NYT connections on the clock.”
The New York Worker Claims She Was In Love With Her Job a Week Before the Camera Installation
This big disappointment comes just a little over a week after Whatawynn was praising her role at her new job. In a separate post on r/BenignExistence, she wrote that she was “lowkey having so much fun.” The work isn’t too hard, the cubicle is comfortable, and she’s allegedly allowed to decorate her space. But now, things might not be as consistently upbeat as she had hoped.
As one commenter aptly puts it, cameras definitely aren’t good for employee mental health in an office environment at all. “Time to start looking for a new job. Any company that micromanages to the point of putting overhead cameras on individual cubicles has zero trust in its employees,” said another Redditor.
Unfortunately, there’s little Whatawynn can do since it’s her boss’s decision with the cameras, though she hasn’t said anything about quitting because of it. Despite this disappointment, she’s still trying to keep a sense of humor by saying she’ll get back at her boss with some surveillance of her own. “Installing my own camera in my manager’s cube as we speak,” she joked.
