No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I'm a little under the weather, so there won't be a long post today. Just a short, sad observation about how doing the right thing gets you nothing but trouble these days.

School kitchen manager fired for giving lunches to hungry students

Della Curry is out of work -- and unashamed -- after being fired by a school district in a Denver suburb.

A married mother of two, Curry is the former kitchen manager at Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora. She lost her job on Friday after giving school lunches to students who didn't have any money.

"I had a first grader in front of me, crying, because she doesn't have enough money for lunch. Yes, I gave her lunch," Curry told CBS Denver station KCNC-TV.

Parent Darnell Hill told KCNC-TV Curry had helped out his son when he forgot his lunch money.

"Do something different than fire her," Hill said. "She's trying to help."

Curry said she understands the school district was just following policy when it fired her...

Ah yes ... following policy. God forbid there should ever be an exception to almighty policy.

It's not just school districts, although they are among the worst culprits. We as a society have become so fearful of people using their own judgment and initiative that zero tolerance for any deviation from 'policy' has become, if not an outright crime, at least a firing offense.

Of course, the parents aren't without blame here either. To its credit, the school district does give the kids a hot meal "the first three times they forget their lunch money."

So the parents screw up, the school district mindlessly enforces its policy, the kid goes hungry, and the one person who tries to do the right thing gets fired.

Reminds me of the old joke about a father and his son who come upon two dogs humping. The little boy watches them for a while, and then asks, "Dad, what are those dogs doing?"

His father, thinking the boy is too young to hear the 'birds and bees' lecture, replies, "Well, the dog on top must have hurt his two front paws, and that dog on the bottom is helping him home."

The little boy thinks that over for a minute, and then says, "It figures -- every time you try to help someone out, you end up getting screwed."