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..........I would be interested in hearing from readers who believe that it should be stated company policy that employees actually interfere in physical confrontationss between customers, and upon what legal basis you are basing your opinion on.
Silly presumption. I've not seen anyone in this thread suggest that any company's policy should be one of intervention.
However, for a company to punish an employee for trying to keep a pregnant woman and the baby she was carrying from coming to additional harm is beyond ridiculous. To have a policy that apecifically states you must stand by and watch another person be physically harmed borders on sociopathy, IMO.
This isn't a unique occurance either. There have been a number of such newspaper articles in recent years addressing similar situations where employees were fired for attempting to stop crimes or physical assaults upon customers.
One of the problems with having too many lawyers in this country is they try to write a legal policy for every human action. Everything is left to attorneys to define rather than the practice of common sense and free will which violates no laws. IMO, we could close every law school in this country for 15 years and still have too many attorneys.
Silly presumption. I've not seen anyone in this thread suggest that any company's policy should be one of intervention.
However, for a company to punish an employee for trying to keep a pregnant woman and the baby she was carrying from coming to additional harm is beyond ridiculous. To have a policy that apecifically states you must stand by and watch another person be physically harmed borders on sociopathy, IMO.
This isn't a unique occurance either. There have been a number of such newspaper articles in recent years addressing similar situations where employees were fired for attempting to stop crimes or physical assaults upon customers.
I don't think I was making a 'presumption' like you seem to think. I was asking for points of view.
Your point of view appears to be: if you owned a company, you would not have a policy stating that employees may not interfere in potentially dangerous situations. In other words, you would be ok with opening your corporation to potential liability. Is that correct?
Mind, I am not stating (which would be silly) that a company should HAVE a policy of intervention (which is what you think I 'presumed'). I mean, how would such a policy even work?
I realize that I am asking readers like you to do something a bit difficult, namely: asking yourself "Why would Safeway have such a policy prohibiting employee interference". It is called 'looking at a situation as a whole'.
I am also asking you and others this: if you owned Safeway (for instance) and you were responsible for policy, would you have a policy prohibiting employee interference or not?
I get my news out of Portland and there was a story within the last week of a TriMet bus driver who stopped his bus and got out to help a woman who was being thumped on by a man. A spokesperson for the transit company was asked if they had a policy against that kind of action and they said their policy is to let their drivers use their own judgement.
This driver was huge and probably scared the crap out of the guy beating up the woman but he came across in an interview as kind of a "gentle giant" - said he has six sisters and he was raised to never raise his hand to a woman.
He's being hailed as a hero.
I'm not sure where the line should be drawn as far as company policies on this kind of thing. I can see where it's probably not a good idea for companies to give their employees free rein to intervene every time there's a problem - someone could get killed and it might be the employee - and you might end up with a bunch of armed courtesy clerks at your local Safeway, itching for that opportunity to go Rambo.
It might be best that they continue with the company policy of no intervention but to treat each case on its own merit and not be so quick with the suspensions/firings.
I agree with some of the others: It appears that you utterly misunderstood the article, although now you claim that you were pointing out how the union was 'awesome' for having this young man's back.
Anyway, let us discuss this: why would a corporate employer have rules mandating that employees not physically become involved in situations concerning customers?
Mind, I am not saying that I 'agree' with Safeway's policy. It may be true that if this young man had not intervened, the young lady may have been seriously injured: however, that is speculation.
Regardless, the policy apparenly is: call 911 or store security. Do not physically intervene.
Why?
One possible reason: liability. If the young hero had been injured, he may have sued Safeway (it costs little to file a suit); at the least he would have filed for worker's compensation.
Of course, Safeway would have argued that the young employee was acting outside of the scope of his employment (which I imagine he was). Yet, individuals have been awarded worker's compensation for strange things.
Second: what if the young employee had injured the aggressive man? I doubt the man would have sued the young employee, since he has next to nothing. Rather, he would sue Safeway. Maybe not win, but who knows?
And what if the young employee had misinterpreted what he had seen? What if the store security cameras had shown that the aggressive man was not truly being 'aggressive' towards the pregnant lady? (again, I AM MAKING SUPPOSITIONS, NOT STATING FACT). Said aggressive gentleman could surely sue Safeway for millions of dollars if he were injured.
Third: what if the young lady decided to sue Safeway? What if she claimed that the young hero's actions actually made her situation worse for her (like, at home). Or, again, that said employee misunderstood the situation? Sue for loss of companionship, etc?
In short: I guess if I owned a large corporation (like Safeway, Walmart, etc) I would probably desire that my employees not confront aggressive customers, but let trained law enforcement do so.
As for the argument that if the young employee had done nothing then the damage could have escalated: possibly true, but perhaps if he called the police they may have arrived within a very few minutes (I read an article the other day about a toddler who called 911 when her mother was choking; police arrived four minutes later and managed to save the woman). We must not assume that the police response would be an hour later.
I would be interested in hearing from readers who believe that it should be stated company policy that employees actually interfere in physical confrontationss between customers, and upon what legal basis you are basing your opinion on.
While I do understand that the employee was just trying to help I have to side with the store on this one for all of the reasons stated above. There is never a reason to not follow the rules of the store. The employee is well aware of the rules of his store, and therefore what he did while commendable still broke store policy, and the store acted accordingly. Bottom line if we did not have the type of society where people were so quick to bring legal action against a company (right or wrong) then companies would not have such strict rules in place.
Not a union issue but this story shows how the country has gone completely insane.
The insanity is the direct result of the corporate takeover of the United States.
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Your supposed to just stand around while some guy beats his pregnant girlfriend and wait for the authorities to arrive. Police rarely stop a crime they clean up the mess most of the time. I was taught you never hit a woman no matter what. I'm in the employees shoes I do the same damn thing. They want to suspend me or fire me then **** on them and **** on the cops too if they want to try and press charges on me. There is right and wrong and you have to choose a side.
Hell nowdays most just stand around watching somebody get beaten filming it with their stupid Iphones or whatever then race home to try and be the first to get it up on youtube or whatever so they can bellow to their friends about all the hits they received on the site.
Corporations like Safeway and many others put loony policies like this into effect for one reason: the bottom line. It's so much easier and cheaper to dismiss an employee than to defend against "good Samaritan" lawsuits. This insane corporate obsession with the bottom line as THE only consideration in corporate policy truly is insane. It runs counter to not just common sense but to common decency in far too many cases.
And as long as these corporate entities can keep the rest of us squabblling over idiotic nonissues like creationism, contraception, and "family values" then they'll continue their assault on America's citizenry and democratic core.
Any individual doing something stupid gets called a "liberal" regardless of whether it had anything to do with politics. Conservatives actually think God is up there planning to foist a natural disaster on America if gay people are allowed to married. Stupid people never know they're stupid
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Conservatives actually think God is up there planning to foist a natural disaster on America if gay people are allowed to married. Stupid people never know they're stupid
