A Modern American Tale of Nudity, Violence and McDonald's

"Having eyes, they saw not"

There are times in which we become trapped, blinded by our need for stability and our laziness to sometimes think. We march to what our institutes call for. We follow the operation manuals to a tee without understanding what the instruction was placed there for. And in the laziest of cases, we don’t even take time to know the procedures, allowing others to do the thinking and ordering for us – to tell us to do bad things to our fellow man, or in this case woman. It is a story of our need to follow authority, whether it is a manager or a policeman. Let me retell a real life story, an American tale. It is a story that has just happened of a franchise manager, her fiance and the victim, who all believed everything they were told on the phone -- of a so-called policeman, of strip searches and molestation in the name of the law.

When Louise Ogborn volunteered to work late at McDonald's, she had no idea that the shift would turn into three hours of emotional, physical and sexual abuse by the assistant manager and her fiancé. A prankster called the local McDonald’s with a story that Ms. Ogborn had been accused of stealing a customer’s purse. The Assistant Manager was told to strip down the subject to her nothings to see if she had the purse, covered only by a dirty apron. One would think that an alarm inside her head would begin ringing. It didn’t.

So she did the deed, and young Ms. Ogborn complied. When it was discovered that Ms. Ogborn didn’t have a purse, the policeman on the line told the assistant manager to keep her in her birthday suit and watch her until the authorities arrived. It was a busy night at the restaurant and the assistant manager had other duties. The pretend-officer told the assistant manager Ms. Summers to phone her fiancé to come and watch Ms. Ogborn until the police would arrive. One would think that this order would have been a tip off. Unfortunately, it was not for this McDonald’s assistant manager.

To show that it takes one to know one, her fiancé, Mr. Nix arrived and was told to order Ms. Ogborn to drop her apron, bend over and stand on a chair. As Mr. Nix was instructed, he ordered Ms. Ogborn to do such calisthenics in the buff. Ms. Ogborn complied. It gets worse. Mr. Nix then told her to do jumping jacks to shake loose the purse she might be hiding in the crevices of her body. She did. And on and on it went for two hours.

Finally, when Ms.Ogborn failed to call Mr. Nix “sir”, Mr. Nix was ordered by the devious caller to spank her violently on the butt. The young miss later explained that she put up with such abuse because she didn't want to run out into the restaurant not wearing anything. So, she took the spankings for 10 minutes. During all the time Mr. Nix and Ms. Ogborn were in the office, the assistant manager would peer in to make sure her fiancée was carrying out orders. She knew the chain of command.

We Americans need to get backbone and think for ourselves. We need to get back to our roots, to shout out -- “Don’t tread on me” or in the modern vernacular, "Screw you!"

McDonald’s response to this story on ABC’s Prime Time news program showed how comprehensive their operation manual is. The Operations & Training Manual, which is available in every U.S. McDonald's restaurant, states: “Under no circumstances should any member of McDonald's management or staff conduct a search of any employee or customer's person. No legitimate law enforcement agency would ever ask you to conduct such a search”

Source: ABC Prime Time