Though the goal of the program appears to be safety, the cameras leave a sour taste with James Turk — the director of Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. He argued the program exposes an underlying issue where Loblaw no longer employs enough actual people to handle conflict efficiently by defending one another in numbers.

“They’re trying to do everything they can to eliminate the number of staff by having these automated checkouts and so forth,” he said. “In the days when there were more staff, if one member was having a problem and loud voices were raised, having other staff around was an important protection.”

If I’m frustrated by a lack of service in a corporate store, I know it’s the fault of a business decision to not have adequate staffing. I avoid these stores. In stores “we don’t accept any rudeness to our colleagues” or on phones “we’re experiencing a surge in call volume” are just codes for “we’re deliberately understaffing, we expect this will frustrate customers, and rather than staff adequately we’ve decided to lie to and police customers”