As video surveillance becomes more common in smaller businesses and as it gets easier to share video surveillance feeds, new opportunities and problems arise.
One positive is the ability to share those feeds with customers who have left items or loved ones with the business (e.g., schools, pet boarding), allowing the customers to check in.
However, some businesses are increasingly seeing this as a burden.
This is an interesting article about the frustrations of pet boarding providers. Key quotes include:
With CCTV, I’m getting constant messages, demanding I go over quickly because the dog upset his water bowl or because he’s dropped his toy behind the sofa. Some people send me half a dozen summonses a day. It’s completely insane.
I got scolded because I didn’t answer WhatsApp messages within the hour. They were sending them at 3am.
I had a client who shared their pet feed with their relatives,” a boarding house owner said. “Instead of having just one person sending WhatsApp and FB messages, I had four of them at me!
To the extent that schools offer such feeds to parent (and we recently covered one such case here), I imagine the issues could even be more intense as parents probe and critique what their children are doing in school.
So what do you think? Legitimate concern? Any solutions?