Losers never learn | Defiant hero

• About a decade ago, several fast-food restaurants (especially during evening shifts staffed by sometimes inadequately trained managers) were plagued by a prank phone-caller, posing as law enforcement requesting investigative help, asking managers to strip-search employees for "contraband" and to describe the searches in real time to the caller. (A suspect was arrested, and the calls stopped.) Managerial judgment was also on display at a Morro Bay, California, Burger King in January when a prank caller somehow convinced BK employees to begin shattering the store's windows because of a purported "gas leak." Several windows were smashed in, and an investigation of the call is ongoing. [KSBY-TV (Santa Barbara), 1-21-2016]

• In January, 15-year-old Anthony Ruelas, trying to rescue a classmate gasping from an asthma attack, became the latest casualty in public schools' relentless insistence on "zero tolerance" of any deviation from rules. Gateway Middle School in Killeen, Texas, suspended Ruelas for two days for what others called his "heroic" assistance in gathering the girl in his arms and taking her to the nurse's office -- while the teacher, following "procedure," waited passively for a nurse to email instructions. (Ruelas had defied the teacher, declaring, "(F-word) that -- we ain't got time to wait for no email from the nurse.") The school district's superintendent later cited a federal law that he interpreted as justifying the procedure. [KCEN-TV (Waco-Killeen), 1-27-2016]

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