Just could not agree more with Ben McConnell. Look at what he has to say:
A Lawrence (Massachusetts) handyman has been invited back to Home Depot, just days after the retail giant banned him for a year for absent-mindedly leaving the store with a used 41-cent pencil.
The company also apologized for the incident that led to the ban, which it blamed on an overzealous store security guard who it said enforced its zero-tolerance shoplifting policy "to the T."
Michael E. Panorelli, 51, was shopping at the Methuen outlet on Thursday with George Salas, owner of Salas Auto Repair on Lawrence Street. Panorelli said that as he purchased $117 worth of lumber, he asked Salas for a pencil to write down some figures.
Salas took a carpenter's pencil from the cash register, and Panorelli said that, without thinking, he put the pencil in his pocket after using it. As they walked toward the parking lot, security guards approached them and accused Panorelli of stealing the pencil.
Panorelli had been forced to sign a written statement, which said he was "forbidden to enter into any and all premises of The Home Depot for a period of one year." It accused him of "the unlawful act of attempting to remove or removing goods or merchandise from one of our stores without paying for it."
A second document warned that civil charges could follow.
Any zero-tolerance program is defeatist. It categorizes human behavior into neat and tidy buckets that make no room for error or deviation. Machines can strive for 99.9999% accuracy but that's stretching the limits of engineering, especially if outside variables are involved.
To force employees into 100% compliance of anything is a sign that management that has given up on managing people. It says, "We do not trust you to make good decisions."
When it comes to customers, any type of company-first, zero-tolerance policy is a sign of rot within.