There was a provocative headline in the July 28, 2009 edition of the Austin TX paper recently: “Randalls employee fired for chasing theft suspect.”
It seems that a young brute grabbed a woman’s purse while she was shopping in a Randalls grocery store. Troy Schafer, the store’s produce manager, ran out of the store after him. After a fifteen-minute chase, Schafer nabbed him and the cops took him off to jail.
A few days later, Schafer was called into the boss’s office where he was told that he was fired for chasing and catching the thug. Randalls, it seems, has a policy that store employees are not allowed to pursue shoplifting suspects. They are only supposed to “collect information” to be passed on to the police. Instead of getting a commendation for his valor, Schafer was handed his walking papers and told to leave immediately.
I asked Jerry, my retired cop brother-in-law, for his take on the story and the dozens of comments that poured in from readers condemning Randalls action. His viewpoint is worth considering:
“ This is a classic example of what happens when lawyers write company policy. The store’s reaction was entirely appropriate from the viewpoint of “you only get in trouble when you actually do something”, which is an honored legal tradition, though I forget the Latin term, probably snorus caninem non suem or something similar. I find it offensive from the point of view that it fosters the attitude of ‘Well, gee, if you just don’t fight back, the criminals won’t hurt you.’
Splitting legal hairs, there is no such offense as shoplifting – just larceny. The only difference is the victim – a store or an individual. The store would have been better off not to fire the guy, just discipline him somehow to make their point, and avoid coming across as what they actually are: a company that doesn’t care about anyone’s interest except their own liability.
The greater cost (thank you, lawyers) is that the liability situation works against the social good. Is it a good thing for society as a whole for citizens to respond to a “hue and cry” against a criminal and insure his apprehension? Well, duh. But instead we have a legal system that allows for the persecution of people who do that.”
I think Jerry’s reaction is spot on. (But I also like the comment of one reader who said, “I propose the purse snatcher, the victim, Mr. Schafer, and Randall’s CEO all meet, have a beer together, and come to some kind of understanding.”)
About the Author
Dick Grote is a management consultant in Dallas, Texas and the author of several books. His most recent book, How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals, was published by the Harvard Business Review Press in July 2011.
