American here. I have a job where they have a perk where you submit receipts through their app or website and you earn points you can cash out at some point if you shop with clients of our company. Sounds like a nice little promotional incentive, right?
Well, they say it’s optional but it’s not. You can apparently get in trouble for not using this and we’ve been pulled aside about it and warned we must use this stupid thing.
The idea is the app you install must be given permission to see your location at all times. It then checks the area to ensure you are favoring clients of our company as opposed to our competitors when you shop. When you shop at one of our clients, you must report your receipt to the company showing everything you bought while there. Even if you are buying gas, you need to report it.
I don’t participate in this invasion of privacy. I actually want to put less of my data out there in general, not more. I don’t even have a grocery store discount card. We were told in a meeting this week that promotions in this company are influenced by how much/if you participate in the program. We were told people have been denied promotions because they did not participate in this program.
If I’m off the clock they don’t get to decide what I do. They can fuck themselves. And I am surely not giving them a little report of what I buy. But saying we are ineligible for career advancement within the company unless we buy groceries, gas, etc from preferred vendors seems sketchy. Is this legal?
Assuming this is real, you can potentially get quite a bit of money off this. Talk to an employment lawyer for free consultation and see if you can get terminated for not following this procedure. You’ll need to document evidence of the company pressuring you to use the app.
It doesn’t even have to be illegal for this to work. It only has to be unreasonably outside your job responsibilities.
Also worth noting that even just keeping a notebook with the date, time, and conversation details will be sufficient. That is admissible as evidence, and in a he-said-she-said scenario (which this would turn into, with you saying the employer denied your raise because of this and the employer saying it was for something different), the side with the notes will win 99% of the time.
Like go buy a cheap pocket notebook, and fill it in with as many details as you remember. Dates, times, specific instances of the company/management saying they’ll use the app to determine promotions, which specific manager said it, etc… Then just update the notebook every time it comes up again.