Four Wal-Mart employees have been fired after management said they violated company policy by disarming an alleged shoplifter who had pulled a gun inside the store.

Full story.

So we have four “security” employees. They are doing their job when they observe someone shoplifting a netbook computer by detaining him. Then the criminal — who turns out to be a convicted felon — pulls a gun.

What is the Wal-Mart policy?

…the company’s “Investigation and Detention of Shoplifters Policy.” The policy instructs employees to retreat if an individual brandishes a weapon.

“If during an approach or investigation, it becomes apparent that the suspect has a weapon or brandishes or threatens use of a weapon; all associates must disengage from the situation, withdraw to a safe position, and contact law enforcement,” reads a copy of the policy available online. “If at any point the suspect or any other involved person becomes violent, disengage from the confrontation, withdraw to a safe position and contact law enforcement.”

Ah I see. Be a coward. Be a victim. Retreat and be killed like a fish in a barrel. Because law enforcement is going to arrive within seconds, right? they will come to save the day (have we learned nothing about responding to active shooter situations?) Then when the scumbag decides to go shooting up other customers, just let more people die. Oh wait that’s right, Wal-Mart doesn’t care about anything other than potential lawsuits. Fan-fucking-tastic policy there, Wal-Mart.

But then you have to love the following part of the policy:

The next paragraph instructs employees to “put people first,” stating that protecting the physical well-being of “suspects, customers and Wal-Mart associates is your first priority.”

Well-being of the suspect? Sorry. If someone pulls a gun on me, the last thing I care about is their well-being.

If employees are to “put people first” and protect the well-being of their customers, then I’d say these 4 (former) employees did exactly that. They went above and beyond to protect not just themselves, but all of the customers in that Layton, Utah Wal-Mart. I’m not saying Wal-Mart policy should force employees into harms way, but these 4 people prevented what could have been a far greater tragedy, and the thanks they get is a trip to the unemployment line.

So tell me, Wal-Mart corporate management? Would you rather have to be cleaning up blood? Would you rather have a store closure while the police clean up after a mass murder at your store? Is that good for business? Do you want the lawsuits from all the families of the slain customers?

A statement from the management said:

 

In a previously released statement obtained by The Deseret News, managers defended their actions, saying the four put their safety “and potentially the safety of our customers and other associates in jeopardy.”

 

As if some loony with a gun was so much safer.

I want to end with some sort of snarky comment, but I can’t think of one… I’m just too disgusted.

One thing that our wonderful modern life in the United States does? It insulates us and isolates us from reality.

Sometimes that’s good – because ignorance truly is bliss and I’m sorry but every so often we all need ways to not burden (or unburden) our minds and hearts of stuff. But for the most part, ignorance and isolation isn’t promoted as a successful long-term life-strategy.

The US is being hit by a pretty major winter storm. Temperatures here in Austin are in the teens overnight not getting above freezing during the day. I know to a lot of my northern friends sitting at sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures right now, but for this area of the country this is unusually harsh.

What makes it worse? State-wide in Texas they had rolling blackouts yesterday and are predicting more for today. Why?

Burst water pipes at two coal-fired power plants forced them to shut down, triggering rolling power cuts across the state, the lieutenant governor said Wednesday.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said this is something that “should not happen.”

Dewhurst said he was told that water pipes at two plants, Oak Grove and Sand Hill, forced them to cut electricity production.

Natural gas power plants that should have provided backup had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also caused by the cold weather.

That’s right, it shouldn’t have happened. But it did. Why did it happen? Looks like some combination of accidents, technical reasons, and perhaps poor planning.

I’m not here to point fingers, but rather to point out. To point out just how fragile our modern system is. Look at the uprising in Egypt and how instantly all Internet access was cut off. I recall a couple of years ago I was teleconferencing with the home office in California when everything went down. Turns out that some vandals severed the network cables and took out entire towns of phone, Internet, you name it (except radio), all of those cables went through a single manhole and left cities without access to emergency services. Part of the design intent of the Internet is if something goes down it’ll continue to route around to find its destination, but we have too many single-point bottlenecks such that when they go down it is a major problem.

We take much for granted, because we’re blissfully ignorant and unaware of how everything works and is put together. How the very fabric of our society is that fragile and untenable. Redundancy and backup solutions are good, but even those can fail. In the end, we’re humans, living with human constructs… mistakes will be made, things will fail. Best we can do is be prepared not for if they will happen, but when they will happen.