How do companies manage to hurt themselves? There are many ways of course, but one way is when a company allows an employee to go out of control due to a total lack of ethics. We may think that a major crime needs to be committed by the employee on the scale of murder or embezzlement to hurt a company, but it can be a simple error in judgment, or in this case assault.
Have you heard the name Benjamin Golden in the past week? Perhaps not. OK then, have you heard about a drunken Taco Bell marketing executive who was caught assaulting an Uber driver in California? The 30 second video showing him assaulting a poor slob who was just trying to make a living has so far gotten 1.5 million views and counting. Taco Bell can’t buy this kind of publicity!
Golden was no ordinary worker bee. He was in charge of Taco Bell’s mobile commerce and innovation initiatives. After the video of the assault took place and was posted on the internet, and after his arrest (he could be looking at a year in jail and a $10,000 fine), he was fired by the company.
“Given the behavior of the individual, it is clear he can no longer work for us,” Taco Bell said in a statement. “We have also offered and encouraged him to seek professional help.”
Closing the barn door
Golden, apparently a tough guy after a few drinks, had been with Taco Bell for seven years. His company biography described him as “a southerner who enjoys mint juleps and horse racing.” I suppose in corporate circles his bio was thought to be amusing. It should have been a warning.
However, updates to the incident have uncovered that on July 8, 2012 Golden was arrested for a DUI, well within the time he had been working for the company. It would be interesting to see if the company had any reaction to his behavior at that time.
As to the incident itself, there is enough about it in the media should we wish to relish on the details. It is sufficient to say that he was very intoxicated when he entered the car, was unable to properly tell the driver where he wanted to go, and when the driver asked him to leave the assault took place.
It would not at all surprise me to know that aside from this incident and the DUI in 2012, that Golden had displayed other negative characteristics while on the job.
I am not one of those older guys who would ever say that everything people of my generation do is great and everything Millennials do is bad. I don’t believe that for one minute. Unethical behaviors cross all generations. I know some very great men and women in their 30s and some real “jerks” in their 60s and older. What consistently separates people is not age, but a lack of ethics and sound judgment.
If someone were to tell me that Benjamin Golden had been getting away with bad choices and bad behaviors for years, I would not be shocked. Taco Bell’s statement is somewhat revealing. They said they “…offered and encouraged him to seek professional help.”
I may offer help to a person still in my employ. I would not be so quick to offer help to an employee I have just fired for dragging the name of my company through the mud. Or, as they say out West, I don’t think this was the employee’s first rodeo. I have been involved with ethical trainings with companies in similar situations; I have experienced many self-entitled Benjamin Golden’s. Invariably, they have long histories of under-the-radar, unethical behaviors that are either barely tolerated (because they were protected) or they caused many good employees to leave.
All of this is conjecture on my part, of course. What is not conjecture is the need for companies, especially those companies with broad exposure to the public, to have regular ethical training sessions.
One thing we know for certain, is that this dumb guy is not known by his name, but as the Taco Bell marketing executive who assaulted a young guy, on a limited income, trying to make a living. He assaulted his target market. In the big picture, whether Benjamin Golden is an alcoholic or a bully or kid that no one ever said “no” to, is irrelevant.
What is relevant, is that this one, highly unethical person managed to stain an organization with more than 6,300 operating units and quarterly sales in the hundreds of millions. Ethical training and closer management supervision could have helped to avoid this embarrassment.
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“a southerner who enjoys mint juleps and horse racing.” I suppose in corporate circles his bio was thought to be amusing. It should have been a warning.
Kind of a shitty thing to say bud