I'm NOT Lovin' It...

Over the years, I've commented now and then on some of the legal issues facing McDonalds. I guess, in many ways, they're no better and no worse than many other large corporations.

Except a lot of them -- perhaps most -- support their local emergency services.

Not McDonalds.

A McDonalds franchisee in upstate New York fired an employee for paying for firefighters' meals out of her own pocket.

She didn't steal the food, she (and a couple of other workers) paid out of their own pockets.

 

 

Food's better at Burger King, anyway.

 

McDonalds management is claiming that the firing had nothing to do with the firefighters; they're claiming Levia swore at supervisors and was otherwise insubordinate... possibly by pointing out that management often gave free meals to police officers.

 

So now, MickyD's has lost an 8-year veteran employee, pissed off the firefighters in the area, pissed off the cops (cause now they're not gonna get freebies, either), the franchisee has been exposed as a hypocrite, and McDonalds has yet another black eye.

 

I will not patronize McDonalds until this mess is straightened out, and I would ask you to do the same.

 



Initial Thoughts on Boston

First and foremost, prayers and best wishes for the runners, volunteers, police, fire, EMS, and other emergency personnel who responded to today's horrific events. I hope Obama sticks by his word (for once), and doesn't wimp out on prosecuting -- or killing -- whoever did this.

A few things that the investigators are almost certainly working on:

• April 15: Tax Day, hated by many far-right-wing anti-government extremists
• Patriot's Day: another potential "inspiration" if this were, in fact, a right-wing "Patriot" whackjob
• Boston: where the Tea Partiers got their inspiration, from the "patriots" who took part in the Boston Tea Party
• Massachusettes has fairly tough gun registration laws
• The race was dedicated to the victims of the Newtown shootings, which instigated nation-wide calls for effective gun control
• Massachusettes has a black governor
• The US has a black President

Am I saying that some right-wing McVeigh wannabe did this? Nope, I'm not saying anything of the sort. Just mentioning these points that may have played into some Patriot/Teabagging/Tax Protesting/anti-gummint/black-FEMA-helicopter racist gun nut small-penis-compensating loser deciding this was a way to strike a blow against the New World Order, Moozlums, and other scary people or whatever loser belief system this mutt or mutts might have.

I also noticed that during the second, prime-time special on NBC, anchor Bryan Williams said, "For all the wrong reasons, we've been fighting two wars for the past ten years," referring to the fact that many returning combat medics have seen these horrific injuries before.

My personal bet is some far-right-wing whacko like Eric Rudolph, Jared Loughner, McVeigh...  One of those losers.

Data Breaches

We've all heard horror stories about commercial entities not taking sufficient steps to safeguard their customers' information. TJX (parent company of TJ Maxx), Hannaford Brothers Supermarkets, TD Bank, all sorts of people have been experiencing data breaches (even the Social Security Administration and -- not surprisingly -- the TSA). Many folks in the security field are trying to figure out better ways to protect this information. Believe it or not, this may be one place where the private sector really might be the solution.

Think about this:

Your company, XYZ Bank and Trust, holds confidential information on hundreds of thousands of customers. We're talking names, addresses, bank account numbers and Social Security numbers. You keep all this information on unencrypted tapes because (a) you're lazy, and (b) you don't want to spend a couple of thousand bucks on encryption software. Then, one day, you discover that the tape has vanished between Office A and Office B. Investigation indicates that the manager at Office A asked her teen-age son to drop the tape at Office B en route to pick up his girlfriend. Your customers have their information at risk.

As Karl Malden used to ask, "What will you do? What will you do?"

Here's a nice, easy solution. Fine the business a mere $100.00 for each customer potentially affected. This fine, by law, must come out of owner's or shareholder's equity, not general operating expense (which promptly gets passed right back to the consumers affected by your laziness). The cost of any credit monitoring comes out of owner's or shareholder's equity. Prohibit the bank from raising interest rates charged and from reducing interest paid, for a period of two years. For particularly egregious offenses, double the fines.

Not all that bad, right?

TD Bank managed to expose the information of 267,000 customers. That would be a fine of $26,700,000. Out of the shareholders' pockets. You think the shareholders would make sure that never happened again?  Damn straight they would.

You want to really drive the point home? Fines and costs come out of executive compensation. Start with the highest paid official of the corporation, deduct all but $50,000*, and put the withheld funds towards the fines. Do that until all fines and costs have been covered. Maybe hold an extra 50% in escrow, just in case. The execs will make goddamned sure those tapes are constantly monitored.

One more twist, if you're feeling REALLY evil: if any customer's information is misused, post the same information from the executives, including Social Security, and prohibit them from changing Social Security or bank account numbers for six months.

Hit the lazy thieving bastards in the pocketbook, and they'll start paying attention.

* Some of the executives may complain that they can't live on $50,000. Point out that that's a LOT more than many of us make, and welcome them to the 99%. They'll have to sell the BMW, the Rolls, the yacht, and the Montana ranch? Cry me an effin' river, dude.

Update on Kwame Kilpatrick

I just watched a speech by embattled Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick, if you're new to these precincts, has had what could charitably be described as a "speckled" career as mayor. There have been allegations of strippers and wild parties at the mayor's official residence, charges that he attempted to have a virtually bankrupt city pay for a Lincoln Navigator for his wife, and the latest allegations: that he committed perjury in an effort to conceal an extra-marital affair (and forced the city into a $9 million dollar settlement in a whistle-blower trial in the process).

Kilaptrick just appeared on WDIV-TV, Channel 4, the Detroit NBC affiliate. He spoke, not surprisingly, from his church.

As is the case with every other politician caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or his pants down (or both), he took the expected route: "I have sinned, I have found sweet baby Jeebus, I have repented, I must be forgiven, you must forget this thing ever happened."

Listening to the speech, Kilpatrick kept referring to the incidents of "the past week"... in other words, since the story broke that he may have committed perjury. Not a single comment about the affair, not a single comment about his alleged perjury, not a single comment about his ripping the city for 9 mil to cover his infidelity (although to be fair, he did mention that there were legal ramifications he couldn't discuss at present, namely his desperate attempts to evade indictment). In other words, he was apologizing for getting caught, not for boffing his Chief of Staff, not for ripping off the city to conceal the fact he has the morals of an alley cat, not for being a sleazy, rotten person. He only apologized for getting caught.

His wife, Carlita, who was in the church with him, stood by her man, although she looked as if she was ready to braid his testicles into those plastic key chains we made in summer camp.

I can sympathize with the mayor for having his personal peccadilloes spread across the front page, but my sympathy is tempered by the fact that every politician should know that he, she or (in dubya's case) it, does not have the same expectation of privacy as we ordinary mortals. One of the drawbacks to public service is that your every move will be (and should be) under a microscope, especially if those moves adversely affect the public you have theoretically sworn to serve. If you're going to enjoy the perks of public life (like having a posse made up of sworn law enforcement officers), you also have to accept the drawbacks.

Kilpatrick made it abundantly clear that he was not going to resign as mayor of Detroit. Personally, I think he should resign. He shamed his city, and made it a laughing stock. And it's not as if Detroit didn't have all sorts of problems already. His former chief of staff, Beatty, did the honorable thing; Kwame should do the same. He has forfeited any trust the citizens of Detroit may have had. The city needs to move on, and the best way to do that is for Kwame to go away.

The city of Detroit is in a crisis. While a crisis has been described as "danger + opportunity," there is very little opportunity in this situation. Kwame put off the speech for a week after the story broke, and -- as any crisis manager could tell you -- a delay that long allows the "other side" to frame the story any way they want. In this case, the media framed the story as yet another moral lapse by the mayor. In delaying as long as he did, Kilpatrick was forced into even more of a defensive posture than he might have been in earlier.

Of course, having text messages pop up that conclusively prove you had an affair after you and your paramour testified, under oath, that you hadn't, is not exactly the easiest thing to deal with. But Kilpatrick's usual ham-handed handling of this scandal allowed it to balloon into even more of a disaster. This is the kind of situation that has almost no chance of positive spin.

Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy is investigating this case. Worthy must acknowledge the fact that her constituency extends across the entire county, and while the citizens of Detroit may shrug this off as "a man being a man," her constituency may not be so forgiving. Even though people outside of Detroit or even Wayne County may not care about the mayor's indiscretions, they are painfully aware of the political and social ramifications. The state of Michigan is already suffering from what has been described as a "one-state recession;" a situation like this is not going to attract new business, industry, or investment to Detroit, or even the state as a whole. A reputation of corruption in local officials can taint the reputation of an entire state; just ask anyone who lived in New Jersey during the 60's and 70's.

Furthermore, Kilpatrick's law license should be suspended immediately, pending final disposition of the case by Wayne County or state officials. Kilpatrick has certainly exhibited conduct of an immoral nature; such conduct is grounds for disbarment.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the personal ramifications for the Kilpatricks, allegations of sexual impropriety are a death knell for any politician's future prospects. Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Bill Clinton and others all learned this the hard way. Kilpatrick apparently thought it couldn't happen to him.

It can happen, and it did happen.

Book Review: Keeping Cool on the Hot Seat

Since it is apparently illegal, or at least immoral and/or fattening, to review a book without awarding it a certain number of stars, I give this one:

*****

five out of five

You may have noticed the link to "Judy Hoffman: Crisis Communications" in the left sidebar. I was first introduced to Judy through a guest column she did for Jonathan Bernstein's Crisis Manager newsletter (which is also linked over there). Judy is a media training consultant, and spent 16 years in the chemical industry as a media relations specialist. She also has a newsletter, Keeping Cool, which should be mandatory reading for everyone.

Judy's book, Keeping Cool on the Hot Seat, should also be required. It covers how, when, and what to communicate to the media during a crisis. In a superbly-written volume, Judy describes how Lee Iacocca and Rudy Giuliani handled crises that might well have had calamitous consequences, had both men not been such gifted communicators. Of course, there are dozens of other examples too, but these are the ones where you'll recognize the players.

As is the case with almost every volume I've ever seen on crisis management, Judy points out that the Chinese character for "crisis" -- wei ji -- is a combination of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." While some may argue the point, there is no denying that a "crisis" does, indeed, have elements of both danger and opportunity.

Looking at the dictionary definition of "crisis" -- "a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, esp. for better or for worse, is determined; turning point" -- we see that the situation can get better or worse. In the business world, one of the critical factors in deciding which way the crisis will go is how it is communicated to the affected stakeholders.

For examples of how effective communications can reduce the impact of a crisis, Judy cites the 1987 case in which Chrysler was implicated in selling pre-driven vehicles as new cars: Lee Iacocca accepted responsibility, made amends and rectified the situation to the satisfaction of the consumers affected. She also discusses how Rudy Giuliani (1), faced with the incredible carnage of 9-11, used effective communication skills (among other skills, of course) to reassure a shattered city and a shell-shocked nation.

Ineffective communications can vastly increase the impact of a crisis: Judy cites the Firestone/Bridgestone/Ford tire fiasco as a prime example of piss-poor communicating. The poor skills showed by the owners and operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant did absolutely nothing to reassure those potentially affected by the TMI disaster. One could also argue that, had the administration been more open in its communications regarding the "war on terror," "signing statements," and the like, the bush administration might not have such abysmal approval ratings.

Judy continually drives home the concept that there must be a crisis communications plan in place before you need it, and it must be practiced.

Judy also presents a concept she calls "The Ten "C's" of Good Crisis Communications." This list, all by itself, is worth the complete purchase price of the book.

"But Mr 618, I don't expect to ever have to communicate with the media in a crisis," I hear you say. Okay, maybe you're not the CEO of your company. Maybe you're not the senior elected official in your community.

But when Little Johnny smacks a line drive through the Widow Jones' plate glass window, do you think that would be a crisis? Especially if the Widow Jones isn't the nicest, coziest, neighborhood granny you wish she were? And while the Widow Jones may not be the New York Times, the points Judy makes in her book can save your bacon there too.

If you think you may ever have to deal with a crisis -- whether at work or at home -- stop by her website, read what she has posted there, and sign up for her free newsletter. I can guarantee you won't regret it.




The book is available through her website, and also through Amazon.

(1) If you haven't done so, you should also read Giuliani's book Leadership.