We've all heard the stories about disgruntled food service staff doing unmentionable things to food on its way to unsuspecting patrons. While the thought of such nausea inducing behaviour crosses my mind every once in awhile when eating out, I hastily reassure myself that it doesn't really happen all that often. I mean really, what are the odds???
Well, thanks to a Dominos Pizza employees' video recently uploaded to Youtube, I will forevermore believe that they are not in my favour at all.


There are obvious PR ramifications to the actions of these extraordinarily immature employees. Everything from corporate reputation, health and safety regulations, investor relations, franchise accountability and responsibility, human resource and management policies and practices...the list goes on. When I saw this video, my first thought was, "Oh man, who has to clean up that mess?"

In my career, I have often felt like the poo sweeper at the zoo. Funny enough, my higher ups were resistant to letting me use that as my title on my business cards. My heart goes out to the corporate communicators at Dominos who now have to dance a jig to rival Michael Flately in River Dance. I am willing to bet that at least one or two members of what is sure to be a very large Communications department spent a lot of time developing communications policies for employees and franchisees. Yep, I even bet that out of the 8,000 outlets and God knows how many employees, someone even read those carefully prepared guidelines.

The moral of this story is simple. No matter how many people you employ who are doing their best, it only takes one (or in this case two) to spoil it all.

Nobody cares about your company, your brand, your reputation, more than you. The person who cares second most is your PR person. Seriously. While I have always believed that anyone who works for an organization has an investment in it, it's the PR person whose very career relies on the appropriate, respectful, and successful messaging and reputation of a company. Countless hours of communication planning, media relations, community relations, and policy development can be wiped out by two idiots who are just passing through on their way to another job that they care nothing about.

Put that way, it sounds kind of depressing. It's not. It's just another challenge. How do you engage your employees so that they do feel that investment in your (their) organization? How do you communicate the importance of respectful and congruent messaging so that even the most immature employees might think twice before acting on their Id saturated impulses?

I have a few ideas on that and I'll be happy to share in my next post. For now, I think I'll just cancel that pizza delivery order.


AC