I was buying a USB memory stick at my local PC megastore this week, when part-way through the transaction, the cashier stopped and turned to the staff member who walked past him to the door. After passing through the security tag barriers she stood their arms raised (in the position all too familiar to air travelers), at which point he produced a handheld metal detector and ran it all over her body. It beeped a lot, but he let her leave anyway.
“What’s that all about?” I asked.
“Oh” came the reply, “we have to do that to all colleagues when they leave the store”.
No, mate. If you have to do that, they’re not colleagues.
Is there an immutable law of business that states the more euphemistic the name you give to your staff, the greater the level of personal abasement you can demand? If you don’t trust them not to slip a USB stick down their pants, what makes you think you can’t trust them not to bribe their mate with the metal detector? In my experience, once you start to put limits on trust, sooner or later it becomes a game that can be worked, not an absolute moral imperative.
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