When We Lose (Part 3) ­– Perfect vs. Good-Enough

When We Lose (Part 3) ­– Perfect vs. Good-Enough

A friend worked in high tech until an acquisition helped him bail out.  Now he toils in metaphysics.  Struggling to define what we really know, he has settled on references.  Rather than knowing the cup before us, he figures, we perceive features that have meaning only in reference to past perceptions.  Our window of current experience keeps moving with new perceptions, so the references keep changing.  As a result, perfect knowledge is unstable if not impossible.

Periodically I encourage him to go easy and accept good-enough.  The cup now is similar enough to the cup an hour ago.  They really are the same cup.  Have some faith, I urge him.

Not so much a battle between the forces of good and evil, whistleblowing is a contest between perfect and good-enough.

Wrongdoers are forever claiming that their behavior is good-enough.  Approaching his trial, Jeffrey Skilling, one of the worst, asserted in his innocence as CEO of by-then-defunct Enron.  But he was convicted anyway.

Davita, Inc. is another interesting example.  In 2014 Davita agreed to pay $389 million to settle kickback allegations without admitting guilt.  In 2015 it agreed to pay $495 million to settle claims it only partially dispensed medications charged to the government.  Again it admitted no guilt.  Now in 2017, it agreed to pay $64 million to end another whistleblower suit.  Without admitting to doing wrong it bragged, “We take full ownership and continue to embrace transparency and rigorous compliance.”

When I revealed HomeFirst broke a California licensing law, CEO Niklaus defended the behavior.  Strict enforcement could close shelters across the State and put more homeless on the streets, she said.  The State inspectors agreed to delay action against the company so that it could come up with a fix.  HomeFirst was, in its eyes, good-enough.

Whistleblowers look harshly on deviations from perfect.  This can lead to complaints companies insist do not tarnish their good-enough status.

When HomeFirst cut the number of beds in its youth shelter from 10 to 8 in violation of a California loan requirement, Niklaus didn’t think it was a big deal.  I blew a whistle on that.  I also blew a whistle when kitchen workers lacked the required State-issued food safety cards.  The cards could be earned after passing a quick test and paying the $10 fee.  Probably not a huge infraction, really.

I join others who disclose misdeeds that some might think ridiculous.  Joel Allen complained the Philadelphia police didn’t exercise its horses enough.  Two Valley Mills (TX) employees accused the city manager of taking their deer feeders.  Autopsy manager Kevin Gerity said his boss mishandled a bullet fragment.  A Florida police officer attending his son’s Little League game while on duty was something Travis Harper could not accept.  Each was punished.

Our complaints may seem petty to some, but not to us.  The violations often fit patterns of misconduct.  My food safety complaint, on the day I was fired, came after complaints about nine other HomeFirst matters.

Minor complaints could involve simple misunderstandings.  You wonder why we don’t just sit down and talk them over.  Then the table turns.  The organization dumps its stored complaints against the employee to justify disciplinary action.  They, too, can be petty.

An Iowa state agency said whistleblower Susan Ackerman put incorrect information on an insurance application.  The City of Charlotte didn’t like Crystal Eschert’s Facebook post.  Petersburg (VA) Derrick Greer police officer ate a piece of candy he picked off the floor at a crime scene.  Patrick Leonard cursed while working for the City of Bayonne (NJ).  Troy Thompson ate a past-expiration sandwich from the VA kitchen instead of throwing it out. 

Sometimes both sides exchange petty complaints.  Juana Walsh worked at a senior living center in Woodstock (IL).  During one shift a male patient seemed confused.  He told Walsh he was afraid of a nursing assistant in the facility.  The assistant had told the patient to stop bothering him.  Then he was rough putting the man’s head on a pillow.  Walsh wrote up the incident and gave her report to the patient’s brother.  Her boss was upset when she learned about Walsh’s communication.  She fired Walsh for sharing patient information and stealing pencil and paper for her report.

Organizations and individuals are always violating something or another.  They are good-enough until they no longer are.  Rather than reasoned, the distinction is, often as not, emotional.  Morality and ethics have little to do with it.

The whistleblower’s legal case is based on a perceived violation that is properly disclosed.  Whistleblower protection laws demand attention to those specifics and don’t care about the employer's pervasive bad behavior.  Once the disclosure is established, the employer seeks to show she was not good-enough, regardless of her disclosures.  Its petty complaints help that proof.  Then other reasons follow: the usual insubordination, poor performance, and didn’t-get-along charges.

We trust authorities – California’s Labor Commissioner, for me – to sift facts from false claims and get to the real truth.  Their lack of expertise in all laws related to all complaints forces them to be satisfied with a good-enough understanding.  We walk into our whistleblowing hoping for perfection, but we leave dissatisfied.

Big-time players expose extraordinary issues that point to the core problem: the wrongdoer is just no good.  The rest of us are bound to narrow rules and seldom break free.  The organization is judged good-enough, and we are not.