McDonald's stiffs hero employee

McD's rubbisn; how they treat employees? (Wiki photo)

 McDonald’s is acting like, well, a major, heartless, self-serving, legalistic corporation. That having been said, this is how they get away with it:

“YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO CALL COPS. You are NOT SUPPOSED to be involved. (sic) and follow COMPANY POLICY !!”

That was a comment on a recent story about the young man, Nigel Haskett, almost fatally injured saving a woman from abuse at a McDonald’s where he worked. McDonald’s is denying his worker’s compensation claim based on the company’s policy of non-involvement.  The young man has, as well, something like $300,000 in medical bills.

Was it stupid for him to risk his life? Maybe. But it was also heroic. Might others have been injured, as some have suggested?  Possibly. But then, we don’t come into or get out of this life without being in the line of fire, figuratively or literally. And if we are injured trying to help someone else—or while someone else is trying to help someone else—well, that’s just life. And better to live life than stand idly by. Consider that poor lady who was savaged by the chimp; her life changed probably more irrevocably than Nigel Haskett's and yet, she is not being torn down on blogs for her attempt to help a fellow human.

So how can anyone berate this poor young man with a good heart and the courage to follow through?  Answer: Because we have become, in part, a nation of neo-Nazis.

“YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO CALL COPS. You are NOT SUPPOSED to be involved.(sic) and follow COMPANY POLICY !!”

Do what you are supposed to do (says who?) all the time. Follow orders. Don’t think. Do as they say.

There are often reprehensible comments posted on blogs, especially blogs that are not monitored. And thank goodness that’s so; if all blog comments were always sanitized, we might never know of this infantile, legalistic response to a young man’s heroism. We might never know that we will have to be chary of conditioned responses—conditioned by corporations, moreover, and not some benign force like Mother Theresa—among the population. We would never know that something has gone badly amiss when one human can suggest another human should be penalized for a heroic act because it didn’t meet with corporate guidelines.

That’s how Nazi Germany happened, or at least, that sort of behavior makes up part of that horrific story. “Turn in your neighbors who are Jewish. Don’t get involved in hiding them. It’s national policy.”  You might have read that in Nazi Germany if blogs had been around at the time. We had the same thing here, in the South: “Pretend you don’t know who those guys in the hoods are. Don’t risk your life saving a freeman. Follow society’s policy.”

It is inhumane to turn the other cheek at times, and yet, how many of us really would have had the courage to do what the young McDonald’s worker did?  How many of us would have had the courage to hide Jews in Germany?  Or to “out” Ku Klux Klansmen?  The least we can do, when danger visits others among us, is applaud and reward those with the courage to take action, especially if we can’t take action for reasons of our own—and we all have those reasons, some valid, some bogus.  Any of us might take action over some dangers, and not over others, because our experience and sensitivities and sensibilities and physical and emotional conditions are all unique. But assuredly, when one person takes action—however foolhardy it might be—against evil in any form, we must applaud and reward that person, and not write ignorant things, things that make us less than American, less than human, such as:

“YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO CALL COPS. You are NOT SUPPOSED to be involved. (sic) and follow COMPANY POLICY !!”

Maybe the blog reader who wrote that line was worried that if McDonalds covered Haskett's medical bills plus a little to live on during his recuperation it would somehow cost the reader money. Higher prices for a Big Mac, maybe. If that’s the case, how craven. Or maybe the person is just a neo-Nazi of one stripe or another. How despicable. How unethical. How unworthy of us as a nation of humans. Or maybe that person needs to be educated; human life and dignity are more valuable than corporate profits or corporate image. Heroism is more valuable than cowardice. A well-raised young man aiding a woman in distress is a good thing, not a stupid thing. His parents ought also to be praised.

Fortunately, others know the truth, that heroism is a rare thing and mightily to be praised, and money-grubbing tightwad corporations are pitiful in the extreme:

"And if the victim had been killed while he just chose to stand there and watch? Or was his job to go back to mopping the floor and wait until it was over and then clean up the blood so it wouldn't give Mickey D’s a bad reputation? How pathetic."

McDonald’s is pathetic, morally and ethically. They hired Nigel Haskett to help customers, and that is exactly what he heroically did.

Pay up, McDonald's.

Sir Paul McCartney has urged Brits to boycott McDonald’s because it used a photo of him in its advertising; he has been a strict vegetarian for 30 years.  Gays have boycotted the chain, and in return, conservative so-called family groups have boycotted it.  Perhaps someone will take up Nigel Haskett’s case, and boycott the franchise until it  recognizes something more important than its bottom line, honest-to-goodness heroism.