milkshake

April 7, 2004 7:24 PM

Restaurant Industry Warns Members to Beware Strip-Search Hoax. "If anyone requests a manager or other employee to order someone to disrobe, ignore their request because it is a privacy invasion." Anyone want to supersize their sexual assault?
posted by squirrel (10 comments total)

From the second link:

"It is hard to believe this happened, but it is a real case," her attorney, Robert H. Wilde, told The Tribune. "This was literally the first job she had ever had and the two managers were the authority figures in her life at that moment."

The May 29 incident began when a man identifying himself as a McDonald's district manager called the franchise in the eastern Utah town of Roosevelt to report that a little girl's coin purse had been stolen and that the plaintiff was a suspect, according to court documents.

Over the next two hours, the two on-duty managers--a man and a woman--allegedly followed the caller's instructions to "pat search" the woman, to search her car and then strip-search her.
posted by squirrel at 7:30 PM on April 7, 2004

<snickers><guffaws>
ARE YOU *SURE* YOU DON'T WANT THOSE SUPER-SIZED, MAAM?
</snickers></guffaws>
posted by quonsar at 8:51 PM on April 7, 2004

What kind of idiot does this based on a phone call from someone they don't know? Perhaps it is the McDonalds approach to training management staff that insists on total obedience at fault, but still, surely the two managers were reasonably intelligent adults and alarm bells should have been ringing all over the place.
posted by dg at 9:10 PM on April 7, 2004

surely the two managers were reasonably intelligent adults

Apparently not.

Makes me wonder if I could call a McD manager and have them deposit the daily earnings in a paper bag on my front porch. ...because, y'know, I'm the regional manager and I need the money because I'm doing a recount of their daily totals. Really, I swear.
posted by aramaic at 9:22 PM on April 7, 2004

After reading this, it became clear to me why most Americans reportedly still support the occupation of Iraq.

And, to be clear, by my use of "supersize" I didn't mean to make light of the sexual assault aspect of these incidents, but rather to draw attention to the McDonald's corporation which hosted some of the crime scenes. In hindsight, it was a poor choice.
posted by squirrel at 9:31 PM on April 7, 2004

(just created a login for the first link, posted to bugme not, but until it is added it's user: [e-mail] pass: bogus1)

From the first article:

Wendy's also reminded its managers that any searches of employees must not be physical and that employees cannot be asked to take off their clothes, except coats, shoes or a hat, according to Bob Bertini, a spokesman for Wendy's.

"Strip searches are not to be conducted under no circumstances," Bertini told The Post and Courier

Since it's not to be conducted under no circumstances, the obvious implication is that under the opposite of "no circumstances" (which would be some circumstances I suppose) it is permissible. Yay! Mr. Bertini says Wendy's supports strip searches!
posted by ehintz at 9:59 PM on April 7, 2004

What kind of idiot does this based on a phone call from someone they don't know?

Hmm... what was the name of that researcher in the '60s who phoned up nurses and found that they would inject patients with overdoses of drugs, just because he said he was a doctor -- and not even a doctor they actually knew? (Don't worry, another nurse stopped them before they actually did it).

This sounds to me rather like that.
posted by reklaw at 10:02 PM on April 7, 2004

The Milgram experiment isn't what you're referring to, reklaw, but it's something similar.
posted by PrinceValium at 10:23 PM on April 7, 2004

This is actually a decently common occurrence (not everyday, mind you, but a familiar enough formula on Obscure Store).

As for Milgram, it's interesting as heck (and certainly tangentially related to what reklaw said) but I'm not sure I'd say it applies here. It's not so much a matter of obedience we're looking at so much as a matter of gullibility.
posted by rafter at 11:10 PM on April 7, 2004

On the contrary, it's absolutely a matter of obedience. The man on the phone seems to know what he's talking about, and it's safer to obey than to risk the unexpected costs of independent action.
posted by PrinceValium at 1:31 AM on April 8, 2004