06/26/02: Taking A Stand

[juju]

What I wanted to talk about today is upsetting your life or social situation soley on the basis of your own moral values. There was an Oprah show on last week on this very topic. I thought it was a very good show, although I don't think they gave as good examples as they could have.

So, are you willing to do it, and to what extent? I'm reminded of Jeffrey Weigand and Coleen Rowley, both of whom risked everything just to say, "No, that is not right.".

Here's an example of when i've done this.


Several years ago, I worked at a movie theater. It sucked. The store manager was a tyrant and treated the employees like crap. The theater had hired janitors to come in at night after everyone was gone and clean the theaters. They seemed to have a great job. They only worked a couple hours each night, and they were the only ones in the theater while they were there.

Well, eventually I learned that the regular employees were mad at them because they had been smoking pot on the roof at night. The day employees started to hate the janitors. There may be more to the reason why they hated them, i'm not sure.

One night, as we were closing one night a bunch of employees went into each theater, armed with huge trashbags full of popcorn, and lots of full soda cups. The bags of popcorn were strewn about the theater floor, and the cokes were thrown like footballs as far across the theater as was possible. The entire floor was covered in crap, and whenever the cokes would hit the seats they would burst open in a great display. It's amazing how much you can trash a theater given the opportunity. I wish I had pictures.

They encouraged me to join them the entire time. "It's fun!" they would say to convince me. But I just stood there and watched them.

Finally we all left, and the theater was locked up. Several hours later I came to the decision to go back and tell the janitors. This made me incredibly nervous, since it's unusual for anyone but the janitors to show up after 1am. I would have no opportunity to back out once I was there, since I had no excuse to be there.

Anyway, I told them what had been done, and who had done what. Some of the names were quite surprising to them, as some of the people who did this were seemingly very nice people.

The janitors thanked me profusely for telling them, and stated repeatedly that if I ever needed anything just to give them a call. I got the feeling they could have hooked me up with any kind of drugs I wanted. They said they had contacts with the police and that if I ever wanted out of a jam to just let them know.

They next day when I went into work it was chaos. The janitors had shown up and were yelling at the managers saying they had "proof". There were several managers involed in the act, and I don't think the store manager would even have cared. But the district manager was called on the phone to deal with the crisis, and I had to tell him what I had seen. Then I had to work with the people I had just told on. One of the guys didn't hold it against me. I guess he understood. The others continued to hate me for the rest of the time I was there.

I don't mean to say I was great for doing this. I actually felt terribly nervous throughout the whole thing. It felt sort of like bitch-slapping the Pope in front of a crowd of millions. You know it's socially forbidden, and yet you know you have the ability to do it anyway.

So, I don't think it's right to do that to a person. If you have a complaint with something they're doing, you should go through the proper channels. Don't make them clean up crap for an extra four hours. Their job is shitty enough as it is.


So, do any of you have any stories like this?