We haven’t quite made it a week since the last crisis management disaster involving a major US company and here’s The Consumerist at it again, this time with a doozy of a story involving sporting goods giant REI and Loomis security.
While Shane was standing in the customer service line at a Seattle REI, he watched two Loomis employees open and change out the cash in an ATM machine. Shane took a photo of them with his iPhone. This apparently freaked out the Loomis guards, the REI security staff, and then the Seattle police, who put handcuffs on Shane, drove him to the police station, and then made him sign a statement that he wouldn’t return to a REI store for a year.
Now, the rational move would have been for an REI employee to simply ask Shane to delete the pictures…how this didn’t happen is beyond me. It is not illegal to take photos of anything except military and designated national security areas – so unless there are top secret documents stuffed inside that ATM, Loomis, REI, and the Seattle PD are going to need a solid crisis response to avoid taking serious blows to their reputations.
JB
Jonathan Bernstein
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com