Workplace Security

Considering all of the uproar surrounding we heard least year regarding employees bringing guns to work and then defending their workplace from armed attacks (and how horrible and unsafe this is), I noted with great interest an article being reported by The Daily Mail Online about a robbery gone bad in Paris last week. It seems that two men attempted to rob a sushi restaurant, and when the owners refused to hand over the money in the cash register, the criminals attempted to make off with the tip money that had been left for the waiters and sushi chefs. Unfortunately, the hapless thieves appear to have forgotten one important point about how sushi is made…

According to the story, seven of the employees became incensed that someone was stealing from them and attacked the robbers with the extremely sharp sushi knives that all such personnel just happen to be experts in using. One of the thieves received a fatal stab wound, and the other was badly slashed up before the police arrived to arrest all seven of the waiters who had been defending their money. The story doesn’t mention what became of the surviving robber, or what the waiters were being charged with, but it does suggest that they have some different ideas about the use of force, and what levels of force are permissible, in France than what we enjoy in this country…

Now, I’m not qualified to practice law in this or any other state, and I don’t propose to comment on the legality of these actions; I’m just going to comment that in America there would be a completely different set of complications in play. For one thing, most companies have a standing policy of not offering resistance to armed criminals, even if that is the way the 9/11 attacks were transformed from simple hijackings to major outrages featuring the deaths of thousands of people. A lot of firms would fire the waiters just for resisting the robbery, and many others would be worried (correctly, I believe) about the possibilities of being sued by the waiters (for maintaining an unsafe work environment) and the family of the dead robber (for wrongful death, although that one would be harder to win)…

Personally, I can’t help wishing that the flights hijacked on 9/11 had been equipped with an in-flight sushi service, and that these same waiters had greeted the hijackers with a flurry of razor-sharp steel. I’m not sure what the reward for attempting to kill yourself in a suicide attack and instead being turned into a decorative rose garnish on the side of a sushi presentation is supposed to be, but I’d be willing to bet it’s something less than 72 virgins. And I can’t speak for anyone else, but if an airplane I’m flying in is saved from murderous idiots by heroic sushi chefs, not only am I going to open my wallet and tip the chefs with ever dollar I have on my person, I’m also going to book a lot more flights on that airline…

I kid, of course, but that doesn’t change the underlying point of this story: sometimes offering no resistance isn’t the best choice; sometimes an employee with the right combination of experience, training and equipment really can safely resolve a situation without blindly following the manual; and no matter what, you should never second-guess the man on the ground…

Especially when the man on the ground is carrying a razor-sharp sushi knife…