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The fact that cameras are just about everywhere these days has all but guaranteed that you’ll get caught doing anything even remotely socially unacceptable unless you do it in the privacy of your own home (and even then you better make sure you close the curtains).

Gone are the days of anonymously ringing the crazy cat lady’s doorbell and running away, or sneaking in to your local Masonic Temple to uncover their nefarious, cult-ish deeds (true story!). You can pretty much forget about doing anything in an elevator.

Oh, and, better be sure to tell your supervisor before you take that smoke break, or the ever watchful, judging gaze of the Google Street View car might out you to your employer, as a Japanese Netizen apparently found out recently.

Here’s a Tweet from Japanese user @boku_jet, explaining how he came across an image of himself through a quick Google search:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/585671850501480449

“I did a Google search for my office’s address and found a Google Street View image of me sneaking a smoke break out back.”

The image has been retweeted a bajillion times (well, about 17,000 at time of writing), indicating a lot of Japanese Netizens sympathize with the guy, although it’s worth pointing out that just sneaking a smoke out back isn’t exactly grounds for firing at Japanese companies. The odds are pretty good your boss is doing the same thing, after all, given how many men still smoke in Japan.

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point out that word of this incident comes from Japanese Internet message board 2chan, not exactly a bastion of honesty and integrity, so there’s a chance the original poster of the Tweet just found a random guy smoking on Street View and made up a story to go along with it.

Still, we’d feel awful for the guy in the photo if he was, say, hiding his smoking habit from his girlfriend or co-workers or something. We think the moral of the story here is: You never know when the Google Street View car is right around the corner, so be sure to refrain from sneaky smoking, vandalism and dissolving bodies by the roadside. And make sure you’ve always got your pigeon mask handy.

Source: Kininaru Sokuhou
Photo: @boku_jet via Twitter