Workplace Calisthenics: D.C. snipers violate contract of mutual trust

Cal LeMon, of Executive Enrichment Inc., solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.

"And, now, the latest news alert about the D.C. sniper."

It is somehow obscene that CNN, the instant pacifier of all things warped and wonderful, would have to remind us there is an invisible lacework that holds all of life together it is called trust.

At the heart of our horror, announced by another violent crack splitting the predictable air at a bus stop or Ponderosa parking lot, is the announcement that nothing is sacred.

We used to pad around our neat, Franklin-Covey Daytimer lives with clear expectations of each other. We eyed one another from our car windows and school playgrounds with the assumption that no one would center our heads in the vortex of a sniper's crosshairs.

We have been screaming, as the body count mounted, "You just don't do that." We believe there has always been an unsigned contract we have penned with each other that life is special, sacred, and, without a justifiable motive, no one has the right to cancel that contract.

I do know the snipers, aside from being a serial killer, have announced the end of our contract of mutual trust.

The United States has never been the same since Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Brown vs. the Board of Education, the assassination of John Kennedy, Vietnam and Sept. 11, 2001. Our national psyche does spin on a potter's wheel and regularly caves in to the pressures of heavy, historical thumbprints.

The snipers' prints will be all over us for generations. This story would have been another CNN Teflon tale if the shooter were another "Boston Strangler" or "Son of Sam." Serial killers taught us there was always a "target audience."

Not the D.C. snipers. All bets were off. Any age, any ethnic group, any gender and any socioeconomic class no one was safe. And, trust is the ultimate victim.

I am suggesting that the D.C. snipers are a watershed of what we have encouraged for generations.

If your response is, "That's a stretch, come on, there will always be whackos out there," I'm not questioning the eternality of whacko; I am questioning whether this society has encouraged the demise of a national value system.

And, the business community, I am convinced, must accept some responsibility for this dearth of a national belief system.

To decide if there is any credibility to my argument, answer these questions.

Is lying, when it benefits your career or business, justified?

Do people who blow the whistle, because it is the right thing to do, get rewarded or punished at work?

Do people who "suck up" to power people get the promotions?

Is there "small print" that your customers do not know about that will protect you from replacing a defective product with a brand new product?

Did your boss tell the truth in your last annual performance review?

After your last major purchase of an automobile or large appliance, do you believe you were "taken"?

Do you regularly check your credit card bill because there has been a history of being overcharged?

With the growth of this southwest Missouri community, we are no longer eyeing each other over a pickle barrel making deals with a handshake. We, like the rest of this nation, are doing business as virtual strangers connected by AOL and Yahoo.

Our ability to profit from each other by lying to and cheating one another is legion. From "slamming" on the telephone, to doubling the price of gasoline on Sept. 11, to quadrupling the cost of natural gas to California in 1999 the new golden rule is, "Those who have the gold, rule."

There is no legislation in Washington or any SEC ruling in New York that will turn this around. This is a deeply spiritual issue.

The renewal of trust is nothing less or more than our decision, in the quiet moments of doing business, that we will never lie to or take advantage of anyone even if we can get away with it.

And don't expect that CNN will cover that story.