Kate Hackett
I believe the correct response to the title of this video is WHAT???
When I babysat & nannied, I loathed the thought of being watched via nanny cam. It just feels invasive and weird, even if you’re doing nothing wrong, and made me so nervous all the time. Just let me do my job without feeling stalked, you know?
Well, these stories we rounded up for you put my goofy fear to absolute shame.
1. He took videos of us in bed.
I went to college with a guy who dropped out after two quarters, and never deleted him from my Facebook friends. A few months ago, he messages me for my email address and sends over a bunch of pictures of me and my now-husband back from college, as well as some funny videos and stuff.
I was like, “oh wow! thanks! Were you just holding onto these all this time, ha ha ha”
And he tells me that he just found an old hard drive that had stuff from then on it, and since me and now-husband are married and stuff we’d probably like having the photos. Oh, and don’t worry, he deleted the videos of the two of us having sex.
I was like uh….. how did you have sex videos of us?
Apparently me and now-husband didn’t always lock his dorm room door before knocking boots, and as he was now-husband’s neighbor, he would just crack the door open and video tape us. But don’t worry, he now realizes that wasn’t cool to do and deleted the videos.
Yup. That happened.
2. Boss watching you
I found out when my screen froze and my mouse acted weird. Prior to that my boss kept dropping topics that had weird coincidences, so when I saw my screen freeze, I realized he must be viewing my computer so I started investigating. In the programs, there was an app to monitor the computer.
3. Former Homeowner
My husband and I bought our house from a pretty weird guy. We never actually met him, but his real estate agent described him as a “grand entertainer,” which I think actually meant “hosted constant orgies.” There were giant mirrors all over the house, lights that changed colors when you walked under them, and a drawer full of various brands and sizes of condoms. When we were doing the inspection before closing, we found a bunch of turned-on webcams scattered throughout the house. We unplugged them as we found them, but probably not before he saw and heard us making fun of him.
4. In The Shower
When I was 15 I was living with my dad at the time in a large house with my siblings. There were three bathrooms, but I only really ever used the one next to my room. This bathroom used to have one of those pole things going from the tub corner into the ceiling that had trays on it. I can’t really remember why we took it out, but we did, and they only patched the hole it left in the tub. The hole in the ceiling was left there.
Years go by and I suddenly start feeling weird when showering. Like an itch in the back of my brain or something. I kept disregarding the feeling, thinking it was ridiculous that a stranger would crawl into our attic and put something up there. I imagined a whole headquarters set up up there and laughed it off.
Eventually curiosity got the best of me, and I hoisted myself up and did my best to look directly into the hole but… Nothing. I couldn’t see anything, it was too dark. I wasn’t about to go into the attic myself because it was in the closet of someone else’s room and that would be weird, right?
More time goes by, and long story short, one of my siblings confessed he had set up a camera up there to film me because he felt he had become obsessed with me. I’ll spare the details because this is already pretty identifying, but it has royally screwed me up. Now whenever I feel like I’m being watched I tell someone. No matter how crazy it seems. I also refuse to use anyone else’s shower until both me and my SO have inspected it.
5. Cactus Figurine
I was regifted a plastic cactus figurine by a coworker. When I was going to bed I accidentally kicked the cactus over and found a spy cam inside.
I asked my coworker about it and she was freaked out because a guy that made her uncomfortable had gifted it to her a few weeks earlier. She apologized for giving it to me.
I tossed it.
6. Ex Husband
My ex husband and I had been separated for a few months and I was getting ready to go out to eat with my cousin. As soon as I got dressed, my phone rings and it was the ex hubby wanting to know where I was going dressed like that and my brown boots would look better. (He bought or approved all of my clothes when we were married and told me what to wear when we went out) I found cameras in almost every room of the house. He owned a security alarm business so I assumed there would be one or two but not that he would be watching me all the time.
7. Landlord
No cameras or microphones were recording me but my landlord had drilled holes in the ceiling of the bathroom in my apartment and the 3 other on the top floor and had been watching us all in the bathroom for a year.
A girl on my floor looked up one day in the shower and saw that he had been looking down on her.
He went to jail but I wasn’t able to do anything because there apparently are (were?) no laws on the books in Iowa to prosecute Peeping Tom cases when the victim and perpetrator are the same sex.
8. Former Boss
A former boss eventually told me without recognizing that it was weird and unwelcome.
Turns out he had been secretly filming the whole office for a year because he thought one of my coworkers was faking a serious injury and he was trying to catch her walking on her broken foot and when that plan failed, he kept looking for something else to use against her…. and when that failed, he came to my desk after she left one evening and pointed to this odd box in the back of the room and explained that it was actually a camera and why he had installed it and told everyone it was a temperature sensor…and then asked for dirt on said coworker. I was shocked.I stuttered something about her being the best employee there and that I needed to take my break and got out of there. Warned the coworker and then started job hunting.
9. Ice Cream Place
I worked at a local grill/ice cream place over the summer and our boss was a massive dick. We got a soft serve machine but it was kind of janky and would make weird noises when it was overworked. We knew that our boss recorded absolutely everything we did, and sat at home watching the cameras, but what we didnt know was that he was recording audio as well. We found that out when he called to ask why the softserve machine was making noise and nobody had told him. We all talked a lot of shit about this guy because again, he was a huge asshole, so our manager had to take each of us outside and very quietly explain the situation.
This might not seem all that bad, but this is illegal where I live. I actually went through all the application paperwork to make sure it wasnt in the packet and it wasnt. We couldn’t do anything about it because we didnt have proof, but if someone were to get fired for something the mic picked up they could take the owner to court. I’m reporting him for some other things so it wasnt the main concern, but still very much illegal.
10. Lifeguard
She was with some of her other friends (11-14 y/o) swimming in the lake. When they were about to leave, the lifeguard told them that they could change in the lifeguards lockers room and for some reason they didnt suspect anything wierd of it.
But when they had already changed clothes my friend noticed a phone recording them and she took it and stoped the recording and left it there.
She went to the police and reported him.
They ended up arresting him, he lost his job.
The police told her that the video was deleted from the phone but that they could find evidence that it existed.
They have to wait 2 years more to take him to court.
11. Nanny (SEE? I told you! It’s so WEIRD)
My last nanny job was in the summer of 2019. It lasted 3 weeks. The family was…well…we didn’t see eye to eye. They seemed totally normal and great during the interview, of course. Every day that I came in after starting, there were more and more red flags.
They would not allow me to close the door when I used the bathroom. Kids were 2 and 5. Their reasoning was that the door needed to be open in case the 2 year old needed me. Okay, maybe I could understand that, but the parents WORKED FROM HOME. They were in the room right off of the bathroom and could easily see me with the door open! So that was just something that was non-negotiable for me and I ended up holding my pee in for a few days because I kind of didn’t feel like being seen by the mom or the DAD when I was peeing!
One day, both parents went out and left me alone with the kids. I thought we had a pretty good day. The mom, who was watching us from undisclosed cameras all day, had a different opinion. When I was making lunch, she claimed that I put her children (who were sitting in the living room watching tv) in danger by cooking on the front burner instead of the back, and what if the 2 year old (who wasn’t tall enough to do this) ran in the room and banged the pot off the stove and spilled boiling water all over herself? Okay, unlikely, but if you wanted me to use the back burner, all you had to do was TELL ME instead of spying on me. There were a lot more weird things but you get the idea.
After that day with the cameras, we parted ways since I told them in my interview that I was uncomfortable with nanny cams. And they just straight up didn’t tell me they had them, in every room, and the one camera could definitely see into the bathroom that I wasn’t allowed to be in with a closed door. -_-
12. Neighbor is a total CREEP
When I was about 9 or 10 a police man came to our door. He told my parents that the neighbor behind us has been recording and taking pictures of us and when the man moved he left behind some and the new owners found them. The police could not find the guy and ever since them I make sure the windows are covered when I undress.
13. Family member plants cameras
Found a hidden camera hidden our bathroom pointed at the shower. Turns out it was family member (not blood related) who placed it in there. Confronted them and they said they didn’t know it was a hidden camera. I let it go because I was young. Found four more, years apart, one fairly recently. It tore my family apart. I’m moving out of state at the end of the year, when hopefully things are a little safer as I’m immunocompromised. Dealing with it is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because I was particularly very close to this family member, and I’m not doing that great a job dealing with it.
14. Coffee Shop pointed at the toilet?
Local coffee shop in my city had a camera under the sink pointed at the toilet. Some girl found it when she dropped her phone and they caught the guy because he had accidentally filmed himself installing it. It was a much bigger issue because little kids use that bathroom. Now I’m cagey in public restrooms.
15. Why in the world would you CARE?
A female co-worker got a talking to about how she was violating the “no tattoos” policy in our office. She argued she did not have any visible tattoos. The manager claimed he knew for a fact she had a tattoo.
Her only tattoo was on her left hip. Not visible with office clothing.
And that’s how we found out our manager had put cameras in the bathroom and changing room illegally.
He was dumbfounded when HE was the one who got fired and then prosecuted. 2 years probation. Company paid my female co-worker $50,000 settlement. She put it down on a house.
Turns out manager wasn’t a pervert, just a control freak. Kept logs of who used the bathroom and for how long and whether or not they were actually doing their business. Somebody found his big .XLS file with all the data in it and the notes are hilariously weird.
“10/15 – 5:17pm – Jones. Again. No phone. 9 minutes. Third time today. Speak to him about fiber.”
16. Jailed
The creep ended up in jail. Turns out a family friend had put a hidden camera in my sister’s room so he could see her naked after she got out of the shower.
Yeah it didn’t take long for her to find out which cause hell to break loose and my dad almost went to jail because he went over to the sicko’s house and beat the Christ out of him.
17. Grandparents
This is a little different. We lived next door to my dad’s parents. They had a key to our house because his dad would often come and let our dogs out. Well we started noticing weird things go missing like a box of cereal, $5, just small things like that. So my dad set up a hidden camera in our kitchen to see if it was his dad and sure enough it was. One day he came into the house, stuffed his pockets full of dog treats, and left. We eventually changed the locks and didn’t give him a key lmao
18. Relax, Mom
My girlfriend and I were visiting my home from college. My parents decided to leave the house for 3-4 hours. We started making out on the couch in the living room, when I noticed a blue light coming from my moms laptop which had been left open and conveniently pointed towards the couch. She had left the camera recording in an attempt to see what we do alone.
I confronted her about it, she said she was playing with the webcam and had to leave in a hurry. But you can clearly see on the video that she carefully placed the laptop to look right at the couch and was in no rush. She maintains that I’m the a**hole for accusing her of such an atrocious thing.
19. Former Friend with a meth habit
A (now former) good friend of mine from college got busted for putting cameras in the girl’s bathroom of the high school he taught at.
He’d been through some s**t, ended up with a nasty meth habit and decided it’d be nice to watch the teenage hotties in his class go potty. So he rigged up cameras in the bathroom and wired them to his school computer. He ended up getting caught when the whole school network bogged down due to the software he was running. Ended up doing a couple years in prison, or so the web tells me.
20. Caught smoking
When i was a senior in high school we used to ditch the last two hours which was just a study hall for us seniors. A bunch of us would go to my buddies house and play ping pong and smoke.
His parents caught on and put up a deer camera hidden behind something on the wall. We some how found it while looking for a ping pong ball and we looked at all the pictures and could not stop laughing because obviously we were under the influence. For the rest of the school year we would just delete all the pictures except for one of his dad looking into the camera to making sure it was well hidden.
