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One
of the reasons I like the cartoon Dilbert is because Scott Adams,
the creator takes great pains to show up the absurdity of the corporate
world. Anyone who has ever worked inside of a corporate type of
organization can easily identify with the point Dilbert is trying
to make. Stupidly exists at all levels of the spectrum. There is
no exception.
I recall a
situation some years ago where I was contracted to eliminate theft
for a chain of retail stores. I preferred to do the audits on an
ad-hoc basis, whenever and wherever we felt they were needed the
most. The client on the other hand, wanted a schedule showing when
and where we were going to show up. It didn’t take us too long to
discover that a large number of the store managers were related
to each other in some form or another and as such would call ahead
to warn the store that we were coming. Then they would bring in
stock from other stores to cover the losses which would show the
auditors that everything was shipshape and no losses had occurred.
Needless to say, we didn’t win any friends when we figured this
out and changed our audit schedule without advance notice. We also
didn’t keep the account. It made me wonder why they had hired us
in the first place. Must have been window dressing.
In
another situation, we were looking into a large manufacturing plant
where several of the company supervisors were buying so called’
seconds’ and selling them out of shops they had set up in their
home towns. Obviously the ‘seconds’ were not inferior goods at all,
but prime materials bought and sold at a discount against the corporate
price. For this assignment, I agreed to send two undercover agents
into the plant to document these thefts. After I had placed the
agents inside of the plant, the president wanted to know who they
were. I refused to tell him the names and he then told me he needed
to know what day they had been hired. I gave him an incorrect day
of the week. He thought he had it figured out and fired the only
two people hired on the date I submitted. Of course these were the
wrong people. We ended up completing the investigation and found
the supervisors in cahoots with the president. All ended up getting
fired and filed on with the authorities.
So,
where does this lead me? Well, last week I was reading about the
drug screening for the NFL. The article described how the screeners
who had been hired to perform random drug screens for the NFL players
have to give their testing schedule in advance so they can get parking
permits and be admitted to the stadiums to perform the tests. This
seems to me a little like the first situation I described and renders
the element of surprise to be rather ineffective.
I mean, if you tell a team that the drug folks are going to be here
on Friday, doesn’t it make sense that any player taking drugs might
be inclined to stop so they won’t get caught? How dumb is this to
figure out?
On the other hand, maybe the owners really want to play a little
game and give the appearance of testing but really don’t want the
testing. I hardly think you will find anyone failing a drug screen
when they have a week or ten days notice in advance, do you?
Of course if you have the advance notice and you still fail, then
you must be super stupid.
Corporate responsibility starts with putting your money where your
mouth is. It’s doing the right thing to insure that you establish
and maintain the trust of the people you are serving. In professional
sports that means the fans who pay big bucks to go see some guy
play the game.
There is no excuse for cutting corners and establishing a wink-wink
nudge-nudge type of drug program. You either have one or you don’t.
It’s that simple.
Kids of all ages look up to the people in the professional sports
industry as heroes. That image needs to be polished and maintained
to eliminate the tarnish that has collected upon it over the past
several years. Do it right or don’t do it at all. We don’t think
it’s funny.
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