Did you know that "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" is racist? A Southwest Airlines flight attendant learned this the hard way and is now being sued for racism by two black women.[1] Apparently there was once a variation of that rhyme that replaced the 't' in "tiger" with an 'n.'[2] Fortunately, the jury had more sense than the judge, and found for the defendants (the flight attendant and Southwest Airlines).[3] Unfortunately, Southwest cannot recoup its costs for this ridiculous law suit. Equally unfortunately, some businesses have learned the wrong lesion from this: do not let your employees talk to customers.[4] The clear implication here is that this litigious behavior is to be expected, and companies can and should do whatever they can to avoid being sued. This is not the right thing to do. This leads to stilted interactions with customers (which they will not like) and lack of innovation (new things are always more risky), just to name two results off the top of my head. It used to be that the business wanted to create a relationship with the customer, now, it seems, we will be satisfied never to see you again — as long as you do not sue us.
[1] Malkin, Michelle. "Crybabies In The Courtroom"
MichelleMalkin.com 2005-08-15
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003268.htm
[2] Malkin,
Michelle. "Crybabies in the courtroom" Creators Syndicate, Inc. via
Townhall.com 2003-02-14.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/printmm20030214.shtml
[3] Frank, Ted. "Eenie Meenie Minie Update" overlawyered.com
2005-08-15 http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/002651.html
[4] BizActions, LLC. "Thatâs Not Funny" morebusiness.com 2004.
http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/legal/c3s2351.brc The
exact advice given is to use scripted responses to avoid having
employees think of responses themselves.