Policy before People

With huge corporate conglomerates, sometimes the closest they can get to “moral” is “doing exactly what their documentation says”.

Particularly in the case of corporations that deal with people, I see the need for Extreme consistency; if you don’t have it, (fallen) people will take advantage of loopholes and weaknesses until they drive you bankrupt. Costco’s extremely friendly return policy was designed to make happy customers who weren’t “afraid” to buy something they might not like, but humans started taking advantage of it and buying high-end electronics, and returning them just short of a year later, treating the whole thing like some sort of lease program. (which was PARTICULARLY bad in the case of wide-screen projectors, with a limited lamp life, and expensive bulbs)

Here are some other possible justifications for not starting “lunch” before the policy-stipulated time:
Assembly lines gain efficiency from repetition, which is only possible through set expectations. If the “backend” was not yet set up for lunch, jumping the gun could jam the mechanism. (put a delay in the setup process, for others trying to get their meals at 10:31) For a 1 minute difference, at McDonalds, there might not be any actual Health concerns, but I could see the possibility at other places… if the grill wasn’t yet hot enough to cook a hamburger in the set XX length of time that the chef uses as a metric. Going a little farther off track, an employee may try to satisfy a customer desire for a “medium rare burger” against corporate policy, with possible poor consequences.

Anyway, I guess I’m just saying, I don’t think corporations are (or can be) designed for mercy and grace. Another good reason for Churches to NOT be corporations.

Oh, I thought of another possible reason why she wouldn’t take your order: Her terminal may not have switched over yet, so she couldn’t ring you up.
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Please note that I haven’t ever worked for McD’s, so all I have is speculation, but there are frequently hidden reasons for things being the way they are; sometimes I just wish some of them were more transparent.
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The user interface for a terminal may be designed to handle a certain number of items without getting cluttered or having too deep of menus; carefully selecting what options were available when, could keep that managable, and obviously such changes would be controlled by the computer, not the clerk.
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Another aspect of this problem (breaking the rules) that I have been troubled by is Warning Labels. “Do not use X product in Y situation”. Why? Sometimes it is obvious, like using electrical products in water, other times… What if I don’t care about the consequences to the product? Would the result be illegal, hazardous, dangerous, or just break it? Maybe I could find a way to eliminate or mitigate the risk, if I knew what it was; but all I usually have is “Do not use”.
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Also, the customer is not ALWAYS right; and some liabilities you can’t write a strong enough disclaimer for, because some rights can’t we waived. Stupidity is infinite, and just because your customer signed a waiver doesn’t mean you get to stay out of jail. Ask Dr. Kervorkian if he thought his customers were always right.

WOW! Did that really happen?? You have got to be kidding… It is good to have rules laid out, without them existence would be chaos! How crazy is it to think that we get so caught up in what we are “supposed” to do and forget about the reason we are doing in the first place. We may not lose sight of focusing on people, yet do we get so caught up in serving/ministering/etc. that we forget the reason we serve/minister/etc. in the first place?

last year at kmi (nav conference)…max barnett told the nav staff and all the disciplemakers in the room that jesus loved people more than the process…a needed statement for a group that can get rigid about the process.