Behind a counter, that assumption fails completely
A retail associate, a barista, a pharmacy technician, a fast food worker. Uniform, name tag, fixed post, published opening hours, a location on a map. Anyone who records them knows exactly who they are, where they will be on Thursday, and who employs them.
The wearer, meanwhile, is a customer nobody can identify. The information runs in one direction and only one. Reporting by Mia Sato at The Verge has documented what this looks like for public-facing workers, and it is worth reading rather than paraphrased, because the specifics are the point.
The harm here is publication, not collection
Every framework we have discussed in this series regulates collection. What is captured, on what basis, retained how long, processed where. That machinery has almost nothing to say about the thing that actually damages someone in this situation, which is a video reaching an audience of millions with a face, a name and a workplace attached.
Collection is a moment. Distribution is a permanent condition. A worker who becomes a recurring character in somebody's content has no takedown right that works at that speed, no realistic path to a court, and a job that requires them to keep standing in the same spot.
The employer is the only party with standing
Our position is that in these settings the obligation falls on the business, because it is the only actor with any leverage. It controls the premises, it can post a rule, and it can back a worker who invokes it. A named individual on minimum wage cannot enforce anything against a customer, and telling them to try is not a policy.
The obstacle is that the incentives point the other way, and we would rather name it than end on an exhortation. A business that bans recording loses the exposure that creators bring, and exposure is free marketing. Which means the rule most likely to protect these workers is one their employer has a commercial reason not to write, and that is exactly the situation where a norm has to come from somewhere other than the market.