I think what Balthisar is pissed off about is that the abuser here had no authority, this was not an expriment, and thus does not really replicate Milgram. In Milgram, you have a person identified as the experimenter by the person or persons running the experiment, right? It isn’t someone who just walked in off the street, he’s specifically identified as an authority figure.
The abuser in this case isn’t a cop, or even a person who shows up in a phony cop uniform with a badge, it’s just some dude on the phone. What level of authority do you give to someone who calls you up out of the blue? The level of pliability and gullibility that these people show is so bizarre as to make me think (or hope?) that there is more going on than meets the eye. I could see holding on to someone until the police show up, but a strip search, kissing, oral sex, WTF?
What someone will do under controlled experimental conditions when directed by a trusted authority figure should have little to do with what that same person will do in the real world when directed by an unknown person over the phone.
Even granting the strip search made sense, and even granting the kissing made sense (the caller apparently told Nix that it would reveal if she had something hidden in her mouth), I have to say that the oral copulation is completely mysterious. What do you possibly say over the phone to justify that act??
A mailing or a newspaper ad for one hour and around five bucks(roughly $18.71 in 2005 dollars) in compensation. Exactly how seriously should someone take this “experiment”? Should someone deliver what they had been told could be a lethal dose of electric shock to a screaming “subject” when they had only signed up for an hour of time and twenty bucks of cash? What level of authority do you give someone who junk-mailed you an offer to participate in an hour-long “study” for $20? Is the authority established by so tenuous a connection so much greater than an established boss-employee relationship? I’d like to think I’d tell an experimenter to fuck themselves and keep their twenty bucks. An hour and 20 bucks holds no power over me. My boss, on the other hand, has authority over the job I need to feed and clothe my family. That is by far a more prominent authority figure in my life than some random survey-taker who has offered me $20. Even though they are a much larger authority figure in my life than some random experimenter would be I’d like to think I’d tell my boss to go to hell before I’d fry someone for them.
It should be noted that Milgram also controlled for “the prestige of Yale” by setting up experiments in some random storefront with a made-up research group’s name. The results were not significantly different. Even if someone trusts “an experimenter at Yale” they apparently trusted “random experimenter from company I’ve never heard of” just as much.
Police have a lot of authority. If one accepts the caller as a legitimate officer then the socially conditioned deference to authority kicks in. Obviously the employee recognizes the boss as an authority figure. So the important part is to get the manager to buy you as an officer, the rest of the chain is already established.
My Hubby thinks what it really proves is at least a third of us are sadists who’d love to inflict pain and humiliation on random strangers, given the chance.
That part has me mystified, too. The article says the caller had a reasonable explanation for every step along the way, but doesn’t say what he came up with for that one, and I can’t imagine what he could have. Bizarre.
Ok, then…The manager and the assistant managers (if they were informed by the manager) are to blame. Anybody in a supervisory role MUST look out for the safety and welfare of their subordinates.
But keep in mind- the person was not called out of the blue. The “cop” included in his conversation things such as the names of fellow officers (who were, in fact, local cops familiar to the restaurant), the names of management, etc. … in other words, he laid a groundwork of trust.
I don’t know where you work or what you do, but let’s assume you’re an office drone in BigCompany, your boss is Dave Jenkins, and the MidQuarter Review is coming up so everyone’s in a frazzle. Someone calls your desk and says, “Hey, Cheesesteak, this is Tom down in Accounting. Dave promised my boss John those Q3 reports so we can have them ready for the MQ Review. Can you e-mail me a copy? Oh, and our main server is down, so you’ll have to send it to TJones@BigCompany2.com instead of the regular BigCompany.com address.”
Is that something that raises your hackles and you immediately start interrogating him, your boss, or the Accounting Department to confirm? Or, given that he knows your boss, a meeting your boss was at, the big review coming up, the name of a manager in Accounting, etc., do you assume he’s on the up-and-up and just send him the damned report so you can get back to your real job?
Well if he adds “Meet my assistant whom you have never seen at my temporary office in the bathroom behind the bus station and blow him before you turn in those TPS reports” I would be a little suspiscious.
The key to every successful con is to keep things moving fast enough so that the mark never really has time to stop and think about what’s happening. But the more off-kilter the request, the more likely you’ll trigger the “Wait, this ain’t right,” response.
How that never happened here with that particular request is… well, it is amazing.
Honestly, it would. I work with sensitive data from time to time, nothing earth shattering, but it could be useful for the competition to get their hands on. If someone I don’t know asks me for information, I make damn sure that someone I DO know vouches for them, and their need to know, or I look them up on our internal directory and verify their identity that way. I do occasionally get requests from people I’ve never worked with before, they don’t get jack until I know they are in a job position that needs the information.
And forget a non-corporate email, though that could just be my company, the email is very reliable. I’ve been here 8 years, and haven’t gone outside the company’s email even once.
This is with stupid corporate information… screw detaining a young girl, strip searching her and sticking my cock in her mouth. Over a stolen purse? I am never going to understand how a store manager and an adult man can be fooled into doing these horrible things. At some point somebody needed to tell the caller to get bent and that the girl will be waiting for them to show up in a squad car.
Do these people even have an iota of common sense? Do they not watch crime dramas on TV? Who has ever heard of the cops asking regular folks to do searches of criminals?
Maybe this is just a matter of 1,000 stores hanging up on you and 1 going along with it, but it still boggles the mind.
Not to mention, that even if it was a cop, he wouldn’t be able to strip search her without a warrant, let alone the rest of what was done. Don’t these people watch Law and Order?
No. The article said that the ass manager told her she didn’t have to come in tomorow and that she could take off as much time as needed. The girl didn’t go back to work there. I doubt that her mother let her.
Let’s see, a lawyer says, “They didn’t read the manual” which is so close to “they didn’t read the fine print” it virtually makes no difference, and you are defending him. I guess you’re a sucker for Lost Causes or something, so I’m officially notifying you that Haven’t Got a Leg to Stand On. Further defense will result in comparison to the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Grail - and I know you don’t want that.
The manager on the spot had a duty to protect their employees from things of this sort. He or she didn’t. Why is no one ever able to blame authority figures for blatant failures? I notice that the people who gave the orders to Lynndie England and her cohorts in crime were sanctioned in any way. It’s only the lower level people who ever deserve sanctions, as far as some people are concerned. I’m not one of them.
How could anyone want a $6.35 an hour job when there are so many great government training programs that will have them working for Big Bucks in no time, ask our conservative posters …
