There is no question in my mind there are a lot of charlatans out there, people willing to squeeze every penny from unsuspecting victims. But not everyone has an ulterior motive, and injecting a little common sense into a situation could save a lot of time, money and embarrassment.
The latest incident comes to us from a Safeway grocery store in Honolulu. A pregnant mom, along with her husband and 2-year-old daughter still settling in after a recent move from California, were shopping at the store. Hungry, they grabbed a couple sandwiches and ate them as they shopped, intending to pay for the meal when they checked out.
The couple purchased about $50 worth of groceries and walked out of the store, forgetting to pay for the sandwiches, which amounted to about $5. Security guards detained the couple and had them arrested.
The couple was handcuffed, driven to police headquarters, charged with a fourth-degree misdemeanor, given a court day and released on $50 bail. Police were forced to call child welfare services to have the 2-year-old girl taken away (for about 18 hours). The couple tried to make amends, offering to pay for the sandwiches, but a store policy won’t allow someone to pay for merchandise once it’s left the store.
Policy. That’s where the common sense was cast aside. It’s the same with zero-tolerance policies that require a school superintendent to suspend a junior high school student for lending a friend an aspirin.
Hiding behind policy is another way of saying, “I don’t have the guts or the brains to make a decision based on the facts in front of me. I’m too afraid of what someone might say or think.”
Policies are fine. But they should be used as guidelines, not absolute rules.
I remember a teacher once telling me (in the days before political correctness corrupted our thought) that “fair is not always equal.” Should the repeat offender get the same punishment as the kid who makes his first mistake?
So what has this policy cost? For a family, it caused some embarrassment, frustration and anguish over the temporary separation from their daughter. For Safeway, it cost embarrassment on a national scale — and possibly some sort of legal action. Without question, it costs far more in ill will than the profit the company would have earned from the $5 worth of sandwiches the couple forgot to pay for. Really, who spends $50 on food to steal $5 worth?
If that manager had simply allowed the couple to pay for the food (if he didn’t believe their story about forgetting to pay being an honest mistake) and banned them from the store, this would never have made the news, and you wouldn’t be reading about it here. Instead, this becomes a political nightmare for Safeway.
I guess that’s the problem with common sense. It’s not so common. And to be honest, I have no idea about how to teach it to someone who doesn’t have it. All I can suggest is if you find folks with it, hire them and hang onto them for dear life.
