McDonald's Phone Hoax...One Of The Most Bizarre Stories I Have Read.(link)

[The Great Escape]

If I had not read this in a legitimate newspaper, I would have thought it had urban legend written all over it.



http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051009/NEWS01/510090392

[fudge stripe cookays]

1. Holy shit!

How are people so freaking gullible?

I hope these poor women sue them within inches of their lives.

I suppose that explains why they're working in fast food?

fsc

[Xithras]

2. It has nothing to do with being gullible.

Humans have an innate instinct to follow the orders of those they perceive to be leaders. It's part of our ancient pack mentality, and probably aided our survival at some point or another. It's why some abused women still obey their abusers, it's why many Jews climbed aboard the trains in Nazi Germany, it's why so many normal German people went along with what happened, and it's why these managers did what they did. Heck, in modern terms, it's why soldiers tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We have an innate tendency to trust those we deem to be leaders, and when those leaders tell us to do something there are many people who will simply do it. We trust that those above us know what they're doing, and that they wouldn't ask us to do anything that was actually wrong.

For others, I think it was simply an opportunity to live out a fantasy without fear of consequence. The one guy in the article may have always had a fantasy about having a teen-aged girl give him a blow job, and when the "authority" said he could do it, he took advantage of the opportunity. The voice on the phone made it seem like the action was legal, and that the girl was merely an undeserving criminal anyway.

Take some psychology courses and you'll be SHOCKED to learn what kind of nonsense people can be talked into. The less educated a person is, the easier the process is for the scam artist. To their credit, the article does say that most restaurants refused to play along, so we can see that common sense does often prevail. Ultimately however, it comes down to the intelligence of the person taking the call, and the skill of the scammer at presenting and maintaining the illusion that he is an authority figure.

Hypothetical situation: You walk into a business and find a man holding a door shut. That man explains that he's an undercover police officer and that he has a criminal trapped inside the room. He says he needs to go call for backup to pick the guy up, but can't because he's stuck holding the door. If he asked you to hold it, would you?

Think about it.

[China_cat]

3. No, I'd offer to make the call for him.

[Left Is Write]

5. No, I would not do it.

Police officers do not recruit civilians to do their work for them.

[Xithras]

10. How many people know that?

If the person was convincing in his demeanor and presented himself with an air of authority, many people would willingly jam their foot against the door to hold it shut while the officer went for help. Ultimately, for most people it would come down to whether or not they really believed that the person was a police officer. If they truly believed that it was a genuine police officer and that he needed help, most people would do so.

Heck, we don't even need to be so vague about it. What if you walked in and found a fully uniformed officer holding the door shut, who gave you the same request? I'll bet that 75% of physically capable people would do so.

Now imagine their surprise when the real police showed up 20 minutes later to free the trapped employees who had just been robbed by a guy in a cop costume.

There's a reason that scam artists are still around. Once you convince someone that you truly are who you say you are, it becomes easy to get them to go along with anything related to your assumed identity. I work on a college campus. If I walked into a physics classroom on the first day and identified myself as the teacher, how hard do you think it would be for me to convince the students that the field of Physics is named after a 16th century inventor named Raymond L. Physics? I could probably get the majority of the class believing it in under 10 minutes if I acted as if it were simply an introduction to the class and didn't laugh about it. Because the students imbue me with a certain authority, they rarely question what I tell them and take it as fact.

Authority is a dangerous and powerful thing. History is full of examples of people abusing it, and of innocent pawns willingly going along with that abuse. This scam artist figured that out and used it to hurt a LOT of people.

[Shell Beau]

11. I would think it is common sense! Seriously.

There are some gullible people out there, but the article even said that the person on the phone called several places before someone finally fell for it.

[Gormy Cuss]

12. Scammers prey on gullible people because the rest of us don't fall for it.

Teenagers falling for this, predictable. The nitwits who wanted to believe a cop would tell them to engage in sexual acts with a suspect, simple pack animals.

In your cop example, I'd tell him I'd go call his backup for him, but then this example is in a domain where my BS meter would go off the charts -- a cop handing off a suspect to a civilian so that he could make a phone or radio call? Not likely. A more plausible scam would be to ask me to take over while he chased another suspect. That would be harder to see as a scam.

In the McDonald's story, I can see the manager falling for the detain and strip portion of the phone call. It's the rest of it where any reasonably mature adult should have seen through it.

McDonalds had the nerve to blame the 17 year old victim. I have an excellent BS detector but that doesn't make me immune to scammers. They do not want me on the jury.

On edit: I made a study of Moonie recruiters when I was in college. I would simply listen and learn. What they did was tailor their own life story to maximize appeal to the target. One you can see the scam, you're immune to it. It's identifying the scam in the first place that's hard.

[fudge stripe cookays]

13. I can buy the "wanting to be obedient" stuff

to a point, but alarm bells would have been going off for me the minute they told me to start a strip search. And I fall for a LOT.

I'd say, "I'm sorry, but if you require this girl to be strip searched, you need to show up at my business with 2 police in a marked car, take her to HQ, and I will call her a lawyer."

There is no way anyone should have fallen for this nonsense. And if they did, they are gullible.

fsc

[Shell Beau]

4. WTF?

That is absurd. There has to come a point when you realize this is bullshit. The maintenance man realized it. I don't see how anyone could legitimately believe that a cop would authorize sodomy (over the phone much less). I mean that is beyond absurd. I just don't get it.

[gollygee]

7. That's where I'm at

I can see people being gullible to a point, but that's beyond the point where it seems like people could possibly think, "well the police told me to do it."

[Shell Beau]

9. Exactly. I can see

the supervisor possibly calling the girl to the office and questioning her. But when it comes to telling her to take off her clothes, that sounds a little sketchy to me. And sodomizing her, I didn't think there were people who were actually that naive and gullible who would believe that sodomy would ever be a legit way to handle any type of crime. I am befuddled.

[brentspeak]

6. Needless to say, the supervisor is a complete fool

I can understand the gullibility of a teenage girl during an incident like this. But as for the supervisor and her fiance - the incident speaks for itself.

[crispini]

8. That's insane.

And scary. Wow.

[jackelope72]

14. All part of the grand freakshow called the USA.

Me, personally, the guy on the other end of the line would have gotten about as far as "make her take off her clothes" and I would have started looking around for the hidden cameras and one of the Funts. If he'd been insistent on it, I'd have been like, "What the fuck ever, dude." And hung up. Immediately.

[Fox Mulder]

15. The police would not contact you on a phone.

They would show up, for Christ's sake!

How stupid are those supervisors???

[LisaL]

16. People do stupid things all day long, but this is beyond the pale.

Good god, how stupid can one be to believe that a police officer would order someone to strip and sexually attack a young girl?

[Arkana]

17. OK, I would probably have bought this--until they told me to strip search

the girl in my office. Alarm bells would have gone off, and I probably would have asked for identification--among other things. Either way, I wouldn't have gone through with it, and I question the ability of anyone who would.

[LisaL]

19. I wouldn't buy this at all. Doesn't everyone gets some type of

crank calls over the phone, or calls from crooks trying to get numbers of bank accounts or credit cards? I have gotten calls from crooks asking me where I work, so they can offer me a great job, or trying to send me some money, so all they need is 4.95 $ shipping fees. I mean, how do these people even made it to their advance age, being that gullible?
I mean, these people just sound un-believably stupid, but I guess the world is full of them. But this is just too much. Poor girl, I imagine she should win her lawsuit. As for McDonald's, knowing how stupid it's employees are, they clearly should have trained them what to do in such situations, instead of just leaving them 30 sec phone message.

[alarcojon]

18. Pretty Amazing

All I can think is that a significant number of us will turn off our brains when told to do something - whatever it may be - by an authority. And we wonder why Bush's approval won't sink below the mid 30's...

[nini]

20. people are so stupid

wouldn't you wonder why the police themselves didn't show up in person to deal with this?


Sounds like there are some good lawsuits cooking at these places. (no pun intended)