As the techies of Silicon Valley rake in the profits from our inability to live without devices, they’re cutting their own children’s screen time down to zero to ensure that at least one group of privileged kids can spend quality time—with their nannies. And to make sure the nannies of Silicon Valley are off-line as well, parents are forcing them to agree not to text, call, or surf on the job.
According to the restrictive contracts nannies have to sign, a logon in the presence of their charges—even when the nanny is responding to a parent’s text—may be grounds for dismissal. Which is odd considering that nannies, like the parents who hire them and almost everyone else in the digital age, rely on texts, email, and the internet to find work, arrange their schedules, and deal with everyday details and emergencies, both personal and work-related.
There are two things wrong with Silicon Valley’s version of the nanny state. There’s the obvious irony that this particular set of parents, who can’t spend five minutes device-free, want their children to grow up in a world without pixels, a make-believe world where all communication is face to face, and board games and getting bullied in the playground are really, really fun. That’s not going to happen.
Then there’s the more serious problem of employers controlling workers’ speech. Because no matter how loud you shout, “It’s a free country, nobody can tell me what to say,” your freedom of speech stops the moment you punch in. And it doesn’t necessarily end when you punch out.
Marx described the alienation of work, but he never imagined that this alienation would extend to language. What happens is this: bosses own your work when you’re on the clock—and to protect that work product, whether in the factory, on the sales floor, in the call center, or on the chat line, bosses have wide latitude to control what you do, how you move, where you sit or stand, when you take your break, and since a lot of today’s work involves speech and writing, they also control what you say.
Constraints on workers’ speech are strongest and most-intrusive when the job involves long hours and low pay. And in order to enforce compliance, managers may monitor employee speech—what workers say face to face to a client or customer, the words they use on the phone, what they type on screen, even what they post after hours. The law allows it, and it allows employees to be punished if they misspeak. If you don’t believe that, just google “fired for a tweet.”
You know the warning you hear when you call an 800-number, “This call may be monitored or recorded for quality control and training purposes”? That’s there to satisfy state laws requiring two-party consent to a voice recording, but mostly it’s to note which employees stick blindly to company policy and which ones might benefit from a not-so-gentle re-education.
And when you’re in a shop or at a restaurant and an employee chirps, “So, what exciting occasion brings you here?” or, “How’s your day going?” or they ask, “Do you want fries with that?” but it’s a struggle for you to make eye contact, or you’re coming from a funeral, or you hate being upsold? Chances are they’re not just making small talk because they’re completely vacuous and happy with their dead-end job, or hoping to increase their sales total for the month, or angling for a bigger tip. No, they’re being forced to repeat a script their managers are convinced will raise the corporate bottom line, even though most people on the receiving end recognize and hate insincere speech, and most employees resent being forced to mouth these empty, alienating words.
What makes you think that chirpy employee hasn’t just come from a funeral (or couldn’t go because of work), or they’re in the throes of deep despond, or they hate their dead-job? But they have to do it, because you or anyone else they talk to may actually be the secret shopper whose mission is to ensure compliance with the corporate playbook. If you don’t like the words, take it out on the company, not on the employee who is forced to mouth them or face re-education or unemployment.
So, in the context of employment law, nannies can be forced by their employers not to use a device or let their charges use, see, or know of the existence of devices, even if those devices everybody is pretending don’t exist are what’s paying for their house, their private preschool, and their underpaid and heavily-monitored nanny.
In the end, banning devices only makes them more desirable—remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? And anyway the children of Silicon Valley—remember the children?—are very much aware that these devices exist in that parallel universe from which they have been temporarily excluded. It doesn’t help to have the nanny tell them, “You’ll understand when you’re older, now settle down and have your kale shake. No, you can’t have a straw.” And they know, as their silicon-dependent parents know, that these banned devices are so much more desirable than fountain pens and typewriters, or Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly, or the parent-compliant toys like the two tin cans connected by a string across the airshaft to the next apartment. They may have even heard about apartments. They’re someplace far away. You have to take two or three buses. Maybe the train, too. Google maps will tell you how to get there. They’re where the nannies of Silicon Valley have to live.
