Rigid, incompetent and thoughtless systems that strangle humanity with red tape are much on my mind these days, since every 24 hour period since Grace’s sudden death has been marred by at least one and usually several confrontations with systems confronting me with a “you can’t get there from here” mentality or employees (or worse, bots) seemingly trained to make problems worse rather than providing desperately needed assistance.
China News reported on a ridiculous story from our favorite Chinese province that highlights the unethical rigidness of bureaucracies and the kind of government control by empowered morons that some would have the United States embrace:
“A man in Wuhan, who has no arms and uses his foot to tap a card to pass the gantry at the metro station, was asked to produce his disability certificate.People aged 65 and above, as well as disabled individuals, can ride the Wuhan Metro for free.
“China News Weekly reported that Mr Li was told by a station employee that “only those with a certificate are considered disabled”. Mr Li reluctantly bought a ticket and tapped the card with his foot to pass through the turnstile, according to a post on Weibo. The employee had demanded to be shown the disability certificate in order for Mr Lee to be allowed to use the barrier-free access at the station.”
“Wuhan Metro on March 22 apologised for the incident, admitting that its employee mishandled the situation. It also promised to continue providing travel services to passengers with special needs.“
The story, shared with me by Curmie seemed vaguely familiar. Sure enough, I had re-posted a story years ago from the old Ethics Scoreboard (which is now off-line permanently, I fear) discussing a similar incident. Still, China’s in worse shape than we are…so far.
Or as Helen Keller sagely observed, sort of, “I cried because I had no thumbs until I met a man who had no arms…”
The Bank of America Teller and the Thumbless Customer
You may have heard the story: a branch of the Bank of America in Tampa refused to cash a check for Hillsborough County public works employee Steve Valdez, because the bank required a thumbprint from non-account holders, and Valdez has no arms. No arms, no hands; no hands, no thumbs; no thumbs, no prints; no prints, no cash.
“Sorry sir; it’s bank policy!””
The various news accounts of this classic tale of bureaucratic idiocy concentrated on the fact that the bank was violating the American with Disabilities Act. Voila! This is how law obscures ethics. Would the bank’s actions have been any more reasonable, fair, caring, kind and responsible if there was no law? Why should anyone with a brain, a heart and a sense of humanity require a law to look at a man with no arms and decide, “Gee, I guess the thumbprint requirement doesn’’t apply in this case.” This isn’’t a legal matter. It’s an ethics question, and a really easy one, because the Golden Rule was invented for situations like this. If you were in the place of the thumbless man, Mr. Teller, what would you want someone in your position to do?
Nobody’s suggesting that the Bank of America should have suspended its policy out of pity or sympathy. This isn’t a bleeding heart argument: “Oh, the poor guy: he can’t hitch-hike or signal to a gladiator that he wants him to kill his opponent. I’ll cash his check to be a nice guy.” It has nothing to do with being nice. It has to do with recognizing when a policy is absurd in application, unjustly causing inconvenience and humiliation to another human being. Consider these dilemmas:
- An attendant at a movie theater allows a patron to leave briefly to deal with an emergency. He returns to get back into the movie theater and join his family, but has somehow misplaced his ticket. Should the attendant, who recognizes him, refuse to let him enter?
- A driver enters a parking garage, then has to leave a few seconds later because of a medical problem. Should the parking attendant insist that he still pay the full-day minimum fee? (This one got an attendant shot by Steve Buscemi in “Fargo,” you’ll recall. Served him right.)
- A woman, obviously ill, staggers into a restaurant and begs to use the rest room. The establishment has a “patrons only” policy for its use. Should it refuse her?
- A student finds a knife in the hallway of a school, and immediately hands it over to the teacher. The school has a strict “no tolerance” policy on weapons, and the student is technically in possession of the knife: policy dictated that he not touch it, but alert an administrator. The teacher is certain that the student did not own the knife. Should the student be punished?
- An adult dwarf on the Olympic riding team wants to buy a ticket on the carnival horse back ride to be with his child, but he doesn’’t come up to the height mark on the sign designed to screen out young children. Should the operator tell him he can’t ride?
Answers to the above: “No way,” “Certainly not,” “Never”, “No,” and “ Don’t be silly!” Policies can’t be perfect. Human beings have an ethical obligation not to stick to them when they result in outrageous consequences to others, and there is no counterbalancing benefit to be gained by doing so, other than not varying from the policy.
The teller should have asked for sufficient identification to satisfy himself that Valdez has a valid check. Valdez had it: he had his driver’s license with an address matching his wife’s on the check. That’s what the would have wanted, reasonably, if he was the one with no arms. And there was absolutely no reason not to bend the rules. The ADA wasn’t necessary to solve this. People need to know when to consider the impact of their conduct on others when there are no laws involved. Any individual, and any bank, that needs a law to remind them not to insist on a thumbprint from a man with no thumbs is ethically impaired, and has no common sense. And having no common sense is a much greater handicap than having no thumbs.
Ethics Alarms 
That thumbprint entry was one of the first ones I read on EA. It came to mind immediately when reading the story of Mr. Li.
There have always been people more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit of it, but – as more and more people insist upon being the exception to the rule for the flimsiest of excuses – it creates complications for those who need the rules bent.
There’s a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon that has stuck with me since I read it in my youth: “It’s not a slam at you when people are rude — it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.”
“A woman, obviously ill, staggers into a restaurant and begs to use the rest room. The establishment has a “patrons only” policy for its use. Should it refuse her?”
I had pretty much this exact thing happen to me many years ago. I was working the front desk at a small hotel. A middle aged couple came in with their mother, who was wearing an ill-fitting wig but looked to be in her mid – 70’s. She was clearly not feeling well. They inquired about a room, and asked if their mother could perhaps use the bathroom while they thought about it. Since it was a small hotel, there weren’t any public bathrooms in the very small lobby, so I did the ethical thing and let her into the staff bathroom off the hallway behind the desk.
A few minutes later, she came out, looking like she felt a bit better. At that point the couple said they had decided not to stay with us, and the three of them went out the door to their car and drove off. I went back to the bathroom a few minutes later and was given a harsh lesson in ethics and hotel management: the woman had diarrhea. She had crapped all over the bathroom, the floor of which was covered in about 1/2 inch of liquid poo, which I had to clean up. She did manage to miss the toilet, so at least I didn’t have to clean that.
Despite my kindness, this old b–ch didn’t even bother to try getting her crap in the toilet. She just let it all out all over the floor, leaving a massive, disgusting mess for me. If she had at least gotten some of it in the toilet I might have thought she tried and felt bad for her. But by not even trying to hit the toilet she demonstrated that it was clearly an act of meanness directed at someone who was just trying to help her out.
I didn’t work more than a couple of weeks at the hotel. It wasn’t a regular job. I was just there helping out a family member who was the proprietor. But I’m pretty sure if the same situation had occured a second time I would have been much more reluctant to let anyone who wasn’t a paying guest of the hotel use the restroom, whatever the ethics of the situation might be.
Sorry to hear about this incident. I thought your story was going to head in a different direction, given what happened to a friend a few years back. The situation wasn’t quite the same, but similar. My friend acted like a reasonable, compassionate, human being… and was promptly fired for breaking policy. There have been similar incidents reported both here and on my blog–off the top of my head, there was the supermarket employee who intervened to stop a man from hitting and kicking his pregnant girlfriend, and the lifeguard who saved a man’s life but ventured a few yards away from his assigned post to do so. The former, iirc, was suspended without pay; the latter was fired outright.
At some level, we need to create a culture in which employees are granted the right to make decisions in cases where the benefit to going against “policy” is obvious. This is what Jack has called the ethics incompleteness principle, what I call Confucian thinking. Granting access to the staff bathroom is a judgment call. A lifeguard saving a drowning man shouldn’t be. Nor should looking at an armless man and coming to the conclusion that he is indeed impaired.
Companies love using the word “empowerment” but it’s just a buzzword to them. Employees aren’t empowered to do anything. I wasn’t empowered to give a refund to a customer when I worked in fast food all those years ago. I wasn’t empowered to remove the contract fee for those account holders who got their free CDs and never bought their full-price selection when I worked for the CD club. I’m not empowered to skip our legal department’s mandated processes for the company for which I work now.
Some of it is because there are employees who would abuse the ability to make these decisions to benefit themselves or people they know. Some of of it is because there are people out there with really bad judgment. Some of it is to prevent customers from bullying employees into giving them the farm.
It certainly is hard to do the right thing anymore when your company doesn’t want to have to the deal with the flawed people that come out of the woodwork when you do.
I had a similar incident when I was around 20 years old. I was working in a convenience store (a Tom Thumb, in case you were curious). An elderly couple came in. The man asked to use the bathroom. I informed him that we had no public restrooms.
He looked at me and said, “I am in a really bad way.”
So, I pointed him to the back corner where the bathroom is. They were grateful and left no mess behind.
-Jut
I don’t recall these kinds of things happening 20 years ago, though they’ve surely been around as long as humanity.
They appear to be happening with more frequency in the “modern age” and by people who would appear to have the capacity to apply wisdom.
My example is work related. A purchase order was let to a small company, who performed the work satisfactorily. They submitted for final payment, the largest portion of their billing. At the Christmas holiday.
Someone determined that internal processes had not been followed in letting the PO initially, and it was cancelled, meaning the vendor’s final payment would not be made. The issue made it to an associate of mine, and as the topic came up in our conversation, I asked where in the process/schedule had the work progressed to – was the vendor’s job just starting, in the middle, or at the end? If the beginning and no real work was done, easy, hold the remainder of the PO pending other details.
She said the job was done. I asked all work completed according to spec? Yep. You need to open the PO and get them final paid. She Said no, processes were not followed, the PO should be cancelled, and anyway, not her problem.
As I argued on, on behalf of the vendor, making all the logical and contractual arguments (just common sense, for godssakes), she declared the rules were not followed, the PO should be cancelled, and the vendor not getting paid for work they completed was not her problem.
As we broke for plant shutdown the week between Christmas and New Year, I was floored. Not only would I not expect that generally, I would not have expected it from this young woman, who was quite smart and capable.
I don’t know if it’s a moral failing on her part, the education system she was trained under, personal bitterness she took out on the vendor, or what.
As we returned for the new year, she informed me that she did open the PO and the vendor got paid. I told her she did the right thing.
She became the manager of our department, and things got so bad, to the point she accused me of doing things I demonstratively proved I didn’t, and declared a cost analysis I did for a sole source PO being within 4% of quoted was NOT reasonable, I wound up quitting. At my age, a very uncomfortable thing to do.
I’m afraid it’s a very ingrained mindset these days, at all levels. Wisdom, common sense, and facts make no difference to these people. Ethics don’t even enter in.
So, Jack, thanks for being our John The Baptist, the lone voice in the wilderness. I can come here and realize I’m not as crazy as the outside world has me thinking I might be.
An adult dwarf on the Olympic riding team wants to buy a ticket on the carnival horse back ride to be with his child, but he doesn’’t come up to the height mark on the sign designed to screen out young children. Should the operator tell him he can’t ride?
This one isn’t quite straight forwardly absurd, as there may be a legitimate reason for the height requirement. Perhaps his feet wouldn’t reach the stirrups on the saddle; thus he couldn’t securely ride the horse, for instance.
He may have specially adapted equipment that let’s him ride professionally, but the carnival would not necessarily have that equipment, nor necessarily be expected verify that he is, in fact, an elite equestrian rider.
If there is an accident, and the carnival is found to have violated safety regulations, the owners could be fined. Or the dwarf could sue and argue they shouldn’t have violated the rules.