“Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”

Recently, I went through a Wendy’s drive-thru to get my kids something. We sat in the drive-thru for 20 minutes. When we pulled to the window, they told us the credit card machine was down, and they could only take cash. I didn’t have any, so the question is: Does the cashier holding the bag of food still choose to give me the food we waited for, or does he keep it and just throw it away. After all, they can’t put it back on the frier once it is in the bag.

Dumbfounded about what to do, the cashier said he couldn’t give the food away. I asked. “So, you’ll just throw it away?” And he said yes. We ended up driving to McDonalds.

The story’s point is this: Industrialism has sliced the working class’s task on the assembly line so small that we no longer need to think or make decisions. Remove decision making and you can increase productivity. The answer was just give the food away and hope I come back soon to pay. Better to feed someone who waited 20 minutes then to watch it go into the trash. Perhaps, you delight the customer and it comes back in increase. The cog in the machine doesn’t understand this because it wasn’t in the simple set of instructions he was given. The answer wasn’t in the manual. It is exactly the system we have set up. Make the worker on the assembly line like a robot. Because if he was treated with dignity as a human, given authority, trust, and decision-making, I guarantee, outcomes look different.

When managers are left scratching their heads wondering why someone below them made the decision they did, it is because that organization doesn’t foster leadership, it fosters compliance.