Questioning Authority in Today’s Organization: Naked Jumping Jacks Says It’s Not Easy
By: Kris Dunn
Catch-22 in today’s organization—you want people to follow the rules, but you want people thinking for themselves as well—with customers, other employees, etc. But it’s not easy. Let’s say one of things you value is people having the autonomy to make quick decisions without seeking approval up the food chain. A dirty little secret in today’s organizational world is a large percentage of employees don’t want the responsibility that goes along with thinking for themselves. After all, if you think for yourself and you’re wrong, there might be a coaching conversation coming your way, etc. As a result, a lot of people just want to be told what to do. “High-Rules” if you will.
Consider the following story that impacted a McDonald’s assistant manager and her family when she took following rules and authority to an extreme—as told recently at Business Week:
“On a busy Friday evening in 2004, a man posing as a police officer called a McDonald’s in Mt. Washington, Kentucky and claimed to “have corporate” on the line. Identifying himself as “Officer Scott,” he told Donna Jean Summers, the assistant manager, that a young cashier was suspected of stealing from a customer. The girl would be spared a night in jail, and it would be simpler for everyone, he said, if the employee was searched on the premises. Summers took the 18-year-old who fit the description to the back office, and over the next three hours followed the man’s increasingly troubled instructions. Officer Scott wasn’t satisfied even after the girl was doing naked jumping jacks.
When Summers said she was needed out front to run the restaurant, the caller instructed her to ask her then-fiancée, Walter Nix Jr., a burly 42-year-old exterminator, to come by and watch over the employee. By the time the hoax was discovered, Nix had assaulted the employee under the caller’s guidance. Nix got five years, the wedding was off and McDonald’s settled with the employee for $1.1 million.”