And, of course, if you’re looking for something “suspicious” in a Wal Mart store, than what good are police officers in noting anything “out of the ordinary”? Wouldn’t a store employee know if that Big Black Box in aisle 4 isn’t supposed to be there more readily than a just-arrived police officer?
That’s arguable. Did the manager point a gun at the employees? No. Did the manager “require” the employees to perform the search, upon pain of losing their job? Possibly. Does that constitute “forcing” them to do it? By some definitions, yes.
But I’m not particularly interested in arguing over those semantics.
You asked if Wal-Mart had issued a statement. I provided an answer - their PR flack said that the company approved of the manager’s actions. Ergo, duffer was incorrect in asserting that the actions of the manager were not “corporate policy.”
It is not one of those squishy cases of the chain-of-command responsibility of the institution for the actions of the individual employees. According to their own Communications Director, it is the policy of Wal-Mart, Inc. that hourly peons assist the police in sweeping the store for explosive devices.
However, according to stories in this very thread, having employees search for bombs is apparently standard practice in both Canada and the US, at private companies and public libraries.
The outrage should be directed at the practice, rather than one specific practitioner following custom and law.
Former US Army EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) tech here. I have to qualify this by saying that my time in the army was well before 9/11, actually just prior to Gulf War I. I have no doubt that many policies have changed and that bomb threats are now taken much more seriously in the post-9/11 era. At that time our unit didn’t do searches in response to bomb threats. We only responded if something suspicious was found by local police or MPs on base.
The only time that we actually did do searches was for VIP’s (the President, the VP, the Pope, etc.). I would like to say that a team of us could spend a day carefully searching each room before the VIP arrived. I would like to say that we x-rayed everything, moved things remotely, and never put ourselves in harm’s way. I would be lying though.
The truth is that unless physical security could be maintained on an area, we would be an hour or two ahead of the VIP, basically doing whatever we could to trigger any device that might be present. Oh sure, we would have safely found something that was sloppy or done by an amatuer, but something done by an expert? Well, the best outcome I can say is that we would have protected the VIP. What we were doing wasn’t text book and it certainly wasn’t safe. When we did find something suspicious, the first thing we would do was talk to a local who would possibly know what the item was doing there. (When the Pope visited the US in the late 80’s, I personally helped destroy some guy’s lunch.)
This takes us back to the Walmart story in the OP. It may seem wrong or counter-intuitive, but really, who knows the store better than the employees? My guess is that the employees’ familiarity with the store is far more useful than what little bomb training an average police officer might have. Walmart stores are huge. It’s just not expedient for a few police officers to search the whole thing. It would be nice to think that they ran a K-9 unit through though. (That police departments actually use that call sign really bugs me for some reason.) However, there is no guarantee that one would even be available. The fact that their local laws say that an evacuation only needs to take place after an item is found backs this up. It would be too easy for people to render businesses and government offices non-functional with just a phone call or two.
I know this whole situation doesn’t seem right. I know Walmart bashing is a favorite pastime, but it seems misplaced here. The villains in this story are the assholes who call in the bomb threats or the nutcases who actually build them.
However, if we are blaming Walmart as it is there company policy (which is fair) then we have to use the ENTIRE company policy which includes "*Deschenes insisted nobody was forced to search the store about 60 kilometres east of Montreal.
“We will never put in jeopardy the security of our employees,” he said in a telephone interview.
“Never, never, never (will) we force them to do such kinds of investigations. If this associate had said or all the associates had said `We don’t want to participate’, there would be no problem. They would have been able to leave the building without hesitation.”*
Thereby *WalMart * did NOT force employyes to search.
I know everyone thinks WalMart is really SatanCo, but here it appears its “just another big company”- it’s policy is the same as other companies in that regions, and dudes are allowed to demur if they think it’s too dangerous.
This is a rather sad and pitiful PITing. Sorry, dudes, you’re coming to have to come up with something a lot better for evidence that WalMart is really EvilIncarnate Inc. . (Hint, there’s lots out there, but this ain’t it.)
Then why did an employee quit in order to avoid it?
Rollback, blowback… same thing.
Maybe someone hated their job/manager enough that they hoped to sue for a nice fat check. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, at least.
I just checked the bomb threat policy for my workplace, a medical center/hospital complex. If you’re the one who takes the call, you should note everything you can about the conversation (background sounds, voice of caller, what is said) and try to keep the caller on the phone. Then when the caller does hang up, call Security, don’t touch anything that looks out of place/suspicious, and wait for Security to arrive. I’m assuming there’s a “leave room if you do see something suspicious” bit that’s implied in there. Then we do what Security says, so if that’s “evacuate the patients”, fine. If that’s “Look around carefully, do you see anything unusual in these rooms?” then sure thing. Of course several employees found it “traumatic” but hey, there’s a bomb threat going on, I’m sure that “traumatic” is normal for that anyway.
(My own unproven theory is that if someone really wants to blow you up, they’re not going to warn you. Mind you, I didn’t find that comforting when years ago, someone called in and threatened to kill everyone in my department - psych at the time - but it’s a similar thing.)
And why was the employee allowed to quit? If WalMart was so good, wouldn’t the response be that we never intended for you to be forced to search, so there’s no reason to quit?
I’m sure all those employees in other WalMarts voluntarily worked off the clock also. And I’m sure they voluntarily got locked in the stores over night. It’s easy for company policy to be against it, but if managers who don’t cross the lines lose bonuses, there is a clear message. WalMart, in my understanding, doesn’t order managers to do anything wrong - they just set the budget so that you have to exploit your employees to suceed.
I’m sure they don’t have a policy on bomb searches. Let’s see if a memo goes out stating that searching is strictly voluntary.
Neither is it out of the realm of possibility that the Walmart spokesman is lying through his teeth.
We just don’t know, do we?
Nope. And judging anything by this very short article is nearly impossible. I mostly posted just to note my workplace’s method of handling bomb threats.
hijack
A few years ago, we had a bomb threat at the state agency where I work. As we’re not always popular around here, we weren’t completely surprised to receive a bomb threat. People have come in with guns before–why not a bomb?
Unfortunately, none of us knew about the bomb threat until a couple of weeks later–when our safety officer came back from vacation and checked his voicemail.
{Bolding mine}
I understand that you were trying to be funny with that, but it isn’t very funny to a whole lot of Canadians who aren’t Quebecois. You have (probably inadvertently) touched a real nerve for Canadians. Canada has two official languages, and French is only one of them.
Not only do they set the budget that way, they set the manager’s salaries that way. I worked at a wal-mart for a couple of weeks a few years back, and from what I overheard in the smoking shack, the manger’s base salary was only $48,000 a year. His bonuses for running the third most profitable store in Canada? $98,000 a year. Simply put, if the store isn’t making money, neither is the manager. So there’s even more pressure to make sure the store is making money.
Back on topic a bit, I’m not appalled at all that they would use employees to search the store. They’re the ones most likely to notice something that’s out of place or unusual. But as for not allowing employees to decline what they feel is unsafe work … well let’s just say I wouldn’t put it past them, and I find that fact repugnant.
Who said one did?
Uh, since when did Canada reinstitute slavery?
Duffer, I think you got your answer: It’s because it’s Wal Mart. Good show, old chap! 
And the very next sentence was
Since working for WalMart is like nirvana but not so annoying, I’m sure this person would have gone running back given the opportunity.
I hate WalMart as much as the next guy, but I don’t really see why we’re all putting devil-horns on the manager. From the ctv news article cited above:
(bolding mine)
Yes, the manager went along with it, and maybe he should have refused instead. But it’s hard to refuse a police officer when he asks you to do something. Authority figure carrying a gun, and all that.
I once had a principal who ordered the teachers to search for bombs when there were threats. We ignored him. A bomb had exploded in one of the neighboring schools the year before and we took all threats very seriously. Our priorities were to get the students and ourselves out of the building to safety and to remain there.
No teacher or Wal Mart employee is paid enough to look for a UXB.
Maybe working for Wal Mart wasn’t any better or worse than any other job, and once quit, stayed gone? Especially since they ran from a situation that nobody else ran from?