I haven't figured out the exact algebra yet, but I'm pretty sure an extra slice of cheese--with the employee-discount and all--plus the euro conversion--comes out to even less than seventeen Canadian cents in 2008."A McDonald's outlet in the Netherlands was wrong to sack an employee for giving a colleague a piece of cheese on a hamburger, a court has ruled. [...] The fast-food chain argued this turned the hamburger into a cheeseburger, and so she should have charged more."
Now, I know the recession's a pain. Corporate morals need to be upheld, regardless of circumstance; without order there is chaos, and all that.
I worked this summer under a number of different retail outlets, all the same company; one of my managers, to summarize, would be the kind of guy who would fire me over giving away a Timbit. He performed obsessively, keeping price tags up to date and managing to push product despite his genuinely awkward personality. The one time I can remember our closing the store together, I asked if we ought to sort the receipts in a certain way. He said no. I asked why. "Because it's not expected of me," he replied.
This is not a profound thought, but when the powers that be value protocol over circumstantial ethics, we should first ask if cultivating the attitude that "yes" never means "it depends" is maybe not the best way to run a business.
Maybe next time that bitch at Sears won't deny me my purchase if I'm short a nickel.
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The second-most hard-done-by person in this story (after the waitress, of course) is the poor sonofabitch lawyer who had to put on a suit and try to get indignant about the difference between a hamburger and a cheeseburger (i.e., cheese). I'll bet he makes six figures, but I doubt he sleeps very well.
The business principle to which McDonalds' local management seems to have here deferred is called moral hazard: if you don't de-incentivize free cheese, as every MBA grad knows, you maybe find yourself in a position where all of your employees (there were 400,000 worldwide in 2008) are giving cheese to all their friends, and you're looking at a substantial loss in cheese-related revenue. But this concern must be balanced, of course, against the need to protect your $23-billion global brand, perhaps by not extorting many thousands of pounds per errant cheese slice from your guileless employees. I think in the long run, moral hazard is outweighed by the fact that at least some people don't need cheeseburgers very badly and would prefer to go to Burger King than support a firm obviously run by tyrannical dunderheads.
There are not as many cases as we would like where we find that moral repugnance and business incompetence coincide at the margin of pettiness, thoughtlessness, and short-term greed. Usually the incentives are such that good management is bad ethics. But here Tim's and McD's weren't being prudent; they were just being mean and stupid. I protest!
I'm always a little bit wary of these stories. There's a good possibility that this dutch Mcdonalds girl was a habitually bad employee, and sprucing up her homie's burger was the last straw. Not definitely the case, but definitely possible. furthermore, if I, and I'm sure both of you would agree with me here if you were in the same position, ran a business were my employees were giving their friends more than they paid for, I wouldn't be happy either. That's the risk of working at McDonald's: Don't fuck up, cause you are very replaceable.
About the timbit: the one thing I never understood about that story was why the employee didn't reach into her pocket or her tip jar and pony up the 15 cents herself? yeah, her manager probably shouldn't have blown up on her like he did, but i wonder why she didn't do the easiest thing and pay for it herself when he got so mad?
I'm not a big-evil-corporate apologist necessarily, but I just have a feeling there's more to these stories. Conflict is never one way - it takes two to tango.
Even though I was nowhere near your retail outlet this summer (I was probably working or drunk) I see your Manager's story differently. Do either of you agree that "Because it's not expected of me" isn't the best way to view your job? your career? I know entirely nothing about your work or this man, but it seems that he's holding himself back by sticking to protocol more than doing his part to make working for him fun. As you said, he pushes product, and maybe that's all that matters to him. I wouldn't say that "repugnance" is the right word, it's more moral "subjectivity". That's a place where "Yes" does mean "It depends". It's not like these people are afraid of, disgusted by, or avoiding morals, as you seem to suggest. It just seems to me that these managers care more about their monthlies than anything else. Would your Camera-store-schmo bend over backwards (within reason of course, i'm talking like 75% of the way over) to make a sale, make sure the person buying the camera enjoyed themselves and wanted to return to his establishment? I'm guessing yes, and good for you for knowing his horrible secret, that to him they're a dollar sign. But because you know that doesn't mean that someone should be displeased with their shopping experience.
sorry for sounding so bitchy - i just have trouble distinguishing between the morally empty manager and the employee who actually stole something.
Yeah, managers can be jerks, but they're just making sure that to both the customers and their bosses, the image of the well-oiled happy place of a retail outlet is hummin' along, even if that isn't the case.
B:
1. Re: the Dutch girl's potential incompetence before the cheese incident. Agreed. News is news; we could easily be jumping to conclusions. But imagine she wasn't because it's possible and it's a more interesting question that way.
2. Re: the best way to view your career. I have no doubt that both McDonald's and Tim Horton's brass are furious at these managers, and at the guys who write the rule-books the managers are asked to follow. By acting according to the letter of the law without thinking about the cost of the bad press, these managers made mistakes. Whether or not there is an expectation in either company that a store manager should think beyond his own store's bottom line I don't know, but there probably should be. In short I agree. Underpromise and overdeliver, isn't that what you always say? Expectation isn't necessarily the right benchmark at all.
Having said that, in the broader sense of organizational efficiency, if there's a way that every Black's manager in the country sorts his damn receipts at the end of the day, it costs more, and not less, to do it the Funnyman's way instead, even if his way makes more sense. Sometimes, in other words, we do what's expected of us because it's the way the system works, and the value of having everything done the same way exceeds the value of having it done better in only one store. Which is why company policy is important. If management had handed down a memo on cheese-slice theft that codified a three-strikes system, then we wouldn't have this problem. What happened at McD's and TH's is that the managers had no expectation to follow, and in making their own calls they overreacted.
3. Re: the managers' "moral repugnance". This is my phrase so I'll try to defend it, although I admit I was being melodramatic. I agree completely with your instinct to try to find the other side of the issue, and I think there is something to be said about the innocent shareholders who, ultimately, depend on the managers to prevent cheese and Timbit theft. If you're skimming the cash register, even a little, you're fired. Skimming the fridge shouldn't be altogether different. In general, people should not steal, period. But at the same time, punishments should fit crimes. I wish I knew some legal philosophy or something to explain why I think these cases are so outrageous, but I do.
Remember, fellas: this case went to court. That means the employee found the decision unjust, filed suit against McDonald's, and the entirety of the Netherlands corporate division agreed to fight back. If it was really just the manager's call, and the company was angered at the fact that the manager pulled them into this, then would would have rectified the situation, apologized and settled. I think that justifies its newsworthiness, Loverman; it also makes the "she was a shitty employee" argument a bit weaker (or maybe just the BBC journalist less thorough) because she won, proving to the court her decency, and the McDonald's prosecution makes no mention of her employee history.
A word on managers: this manager of which I spoke is an exception to managers. So perhaps I didn't illustrate this stiff-backed, drone-voiced, two-dollar-haircut 20-year-old (yes, he was younger than me, and lies to people regularly to make himself seem older than he really is) clearly enough. Allow me to briefly do so: he opted for ascending corporate status straight out of high school over attending college or university, not for lack of money or life direction, but just because he wanted to.
There's a few more caveats to his story, but my point is to set him up as an exception and not the way most managers are. Most managers are lenient and, by extension, good at their jobs. This kid was awkward, following protocol, and made the environment sterile, though admittedly profitable. This is why he's been manager for over a year, while no single employee under his reign has lasted more than three months.
In reference to your bend-over-backwards statement, Bernie, I think the ends do not justify the means. I can only speak from years of retail experience under vastly different management styles--from the overly lax to the overly stiff--but I believe in compromise, because everyone is happier that way.
In short: I do not believe that firing a Dutch chick for accidentally mucking up a cheeseburger order is a good idea. I think for a manager to say, "I saw what you did, I'm aware that you did it, even if it was a mistake" is more effective. And, as the article points out, "Leeuwarden district court ruled a written warning would have been more appropriate."
The fact is that the court agreed with the Dutchess, so Mickey D's argument can't have been more compelling, whatever the facts we don't know may be.
By the way, does anyone else have a major craving for a Big Mac all of a sudden?
"Dutchess" is clever.
I understand that the case went to court. But that doesn't prove that Corporate wasn't pissed off at the manager; it just proves Legal thought they might be able to win and that the legal fees were less than the settlement was going to have to be.
To sum up: obviously the McDutchnald's manager should have given this lady some Leeuway, because they maybe they wouldn't have been Holl'd off to court. She'd Nether have been fired if I'd been the manager.
I can't give you anything but love, I Can't Give You Anything But Love.
i think we're all being a little hague here. HAR
my real question, though, is what difference does it make to the customer what you think of your manager? if you think he's a jackass and therefore do a crappy job for him, then you're just harming him, yourself, and the customers. and that's on you, not him. (i don't mean you, i just mean joe retail employee)
but, who exactly is happier that way?
The "everybody wins" scenario is if the manager is a decent person, i.e., none of the ones we've been mentioning. Then he inspires employees to enjoy being at work, which is a novel concept not often realized, and the employees do a good job. In my experience this requires a human element to the manager that cheese grillings don't fall into.
Toyota famously invented an internal management system that is said to make employees both more motivated and less likely to burn out, resulting in higher quality cars and lower rates of costly employee turnover. At the outside, if management is snippy or soulless enough, you begin to incur more costs than you save, in the form of poor results (pissed-off, bored employees don't sell cameras or cheeseburgers) and frequent retraining. This manager of yours is (potentially) wasting money by scaring away all the kids he hires every three months, because new kids need help and they make mistakes.
Which is what I was saying in the first place. Being interested only in the bottom line doesn't always mean you have to be a jerk; on the contrary, sometimes it requires it.
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