MtheGM is right - my experience is a bit more recent, but when I first started having Saturday jobs almost 30 years ago, it was well known that some shops would, at the very least, have a supervisor go through your bag at the end of your shift. One place where a friend worked, a factory that made novelties, even issued their female staff with clear plastic handbags, which was the only kind of bag you were allowed to take to work with you. These bags were still subject to search on demand, and male staff had to turn out their pockets.

I always assumed that these things were a response to a problem, rather than being an attempt to persecute and de-humanise staff. If people are regularly stealing and costing a company lots of money, what are they meant to do? To be honest, if you've ever worked somewhere that someone IS stealing, but the management haven't figured out yet who it is, you'll know how awful it is: the atmosphere is very uncomfortable as everyone is under suspicion and you don't know who to trust.

I once worked in a busy pub where someone had their hand in the till over a prolonged period, and it was horrible - it made for a far worse atmosphere and environment than random searches. The owner eventually had a camera installed without the knowledge of the staff, and that's how the culprit was caught. Far from objecting to the fact that we'd been secretly filmed, we could scarcely disguise our delight when the police were called in to have the thieving git removed from the premises, because his actions had brought us all under suspicion and put all of our jobs on the line. I also don't buy the idea that the terrible practice of people working six hours without a break makes stealing justifiable. What's the big deal? Six hours straight is hardly Guantanamo Bay.

I also haven't come across this paid lunch hour culture in any place where I've worked over the past 20 years in the UK, from shops and pubs to council-run arts venues. Even in my last management job I had to fill in a timesheet - taking a daily lunch break of at least 30 mins was compulsory, but it wasn't counted within the 37.5 hours a week we were required to work. To be honest, no one really ever took a full half hour anyway, even though we wrote it down, and just eating a sandwich at your desk was quite common. Again, hardly being sent up the chimneys or down the pits...