The rental car I got into this week had a Wall Street Journal sitting in the front seat. While Patrik drove us from Sea-Tac to Microsoft, I read through the paper. By far and away the most bizarre article was about the problem that fast-food restaurants are having with hoaxes that compel the manager of a restaurant to strip-search an employee or customer (read here).
The way it works is evidently something like this: someone calls the manager of the store and claims to be a police officer. He describes someone, and tells the manager that the person is suspected of stealing, and so the manager needs to strip-search this person. If the manager doesn't, the caller explains, the person will be arrested. It's happened to men and women.
The sherriff in the county where this most recently happened, when the manager of a Taco Bell strip-searched a 17-year-old customer, was quoted explaining his absolute astonishment that anyone would think that a a real police officer would call a private citizen and order that person to conduct a strip-search.
I'm with him on that. What the hell? These people are just stupid. Certainly they are far too stupid to be running a restaurant.
And what's up with the people submitting to this? When I was a teen, no fast-food manager on this planet could have convinced me that he had any kind of right to strip-search me.
We need to stop raising a nation of sheep.