Why do you feel you should be able to spy on them in their private place of work?
I would personally always unplug it if it was me working.
I suppose you would be okay to have a camera pointed at you wherever you work right? After all, if you have nothing to hide...
I don’t care to watch hours of footage of a car being worked on though I’m sure many would due to the poor attitudes many mechanics have towards their customers. I do, however, want to see footage of my car being driven over 60 miles on the road. Given that this dealer fits dash cams in their cars, which record customers, I fail to see any excuse for preventing me from doing the same.
I also don’t appreciate them giving me the car back with the cable left unplugged and out of sight.
As a side note, I’m observed at work all the time, anyone can walk in on me and make judgements and it doesn’t bother me one bit, so you’re exactly right, nothing to hide = no problem.
You don’t see people complaining about cctv at work, people simply ignore it and do their job, unless they’re trying to clock out early or steal something. I’m sure 99% of people with dash cams also ignore any captured footage from a visit to a garage. Mechanics seem to think that people take their car home, download the footage and whip out the popcorn like it’s some sort of soap opera. At best they look to see if it was disconnected or if they ragged it on a test drive. Anything else is simply going to be boring footage.