Don't punish the workers
Once I started reading about the hullabaloo at the Salina Wal-Mart and the lawsuit involving photos, I just knew that I had to comment.
Just to refresh your memory, the synopsis of the story is this: A Lincoln woman is suing the store after police detained her for some questionable photos of her children, which she had developed at the Wal-Mart's photo processing lab.
The woman says she was embarrassed by Salina police when they detained and questioned her at the store. Wal-Mart workers had called the police about pictures that featured the woman's 3-year-old daughter playing in a backyard pool without a shirt on and lying on a rug with her bare bottom showing.
The incident has garnered national attention, and the woman was interviewed on Fox News a couple of weeks ago. Her lawsuit now seeks upward of $5 million in damages and may even name the individual photo lab workers in the suit.
So why am I writing about this? Because I know the perspective of these workers.
I worked at that very photo lab for about three months one summer, during the break between my junior and senior years of college.
From my recollection, that wasn't the most fun place to work. It got very busy and very stressful at times. If the machine broke down or someone's mail-in photos got lost, the customers were liable to get pretty nasty — and they didn't care if it was the poor cashier's fault or not.
The photo lab workers don't make much money — probably just a dollar or two over minimum wage. They're not photo experts. They just got picked to work there instead of at one of the registers up front.
The photo lab workers are told about the store's policy regarding questionable photos. There are specific guidelines dealing with nudity, and their job is to follow those guidelines.
The bottom line is this: No way should these workers be named in the lawsuit. They were just doing their jobs, for crying out loud.
I don't know if the photos were too risque — but I tend to think that they were probably innocent photos of a cute little kid. I don't know if the police "harassed" the woman unnecessarily.
But one thing's for sure: Leave the Wal-Mart workers out of it.
— JENNIFER WILSON
