Letters to the Editor
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my take on this whole discussion
All I can conclude is that there are an awful lot of people out there who think things ought to be done on wink and handshake, and that rules can be ignored by "good" people who just "know" that they're right. It's no exaggeration (though many will take it to be) if I say that this is the kind of thinking that got us mired in Iraq.
Rules, laws, contracts, and processes are terrible impersonal things. We tolerate them only because people acting on their own discretion are often even worse. I've seen a long list of horror stories about the treatment of prospective adopters by animal shelters. I'm not going to claim that all of these people are well-meaning or competent. Some of the decisions really do sound arbitrary and amount to an abuse of power of the sort endemic to petty bureaucrats.
But what I want to know is whether you think these people would be better or worse if they were not bound by a process. My money is on worse, much worse. Ellen was burnt by a process, not by an abusive employee. It is her responsibility to know that process. Some things might have been handled better on both sides, but there is no letting Ellen DeGeneres off the hook.