The Wendy Scam

“Lies, lies, lies, that’s all I am hearing” said the “Woman Who Won’t Sue Over Finger in Chili”. (This was a headline in the JS on 4/14/05.) Was there ever any doubt by those of us with some common sense that she was trying to scam Wendys? She has now been arrested and charged with two or more counts of fraud; if she is found guilty as charged, she should be sentenced and removed from society for a very long time. She caused untold damage to Wendys, their workers, customers and management. This scam, created by probably more than one person, tied up a lot of public health and public safety enforcement people at a great cost to society.


There are scams larger or on a smaller scale run every second of the day by people who think they won’t get caught and are unwilling to contribute to society. Unfortunately, we don’t catch enough of them and when we do our justice system is often unable (for a multitude of reasons) to remove them from society, if not permanently, than for a long period of time. If this alleged scammer is convicted, the public should take note of the sentence, especially those most affected in San Jose, CA.

When I taught school, almost 100% of the kids in school, made something out of themselves in later life. Today, I visit classrooms in School District #150 (the same goes on in schools all over the country) and see a fairly large number of kids not learning and not wanting to learn, but who will at some point steal, cheat or try to beat the law, avoiding doing work. Because they are in living in poverty, they believe society owes them. They deny responsibility for their own actions.

The first thing any person should be taught is attitude and responsibility. Unfortunately “role models” for many of our kids are often second, third or fourth generations of family failure and gang bangers, who blame everyone but themselves for their failures. It has been said that society does not owe the poor; the poor owe society, mainly their responsibility. Responsible people do not need to scam; responsible people are in demand in the workplace; they also do not need to be poor.

In this country everyone that will work and pay attention can contribute to society and earn according to their contributions. They do not need to scam. If they complain they aren’t paid enough, I suggest they look thru the help wanted ads. Seven pages of help wanted ads in just the JS every week. If they then discover they aren’t qualified to do more than menial labor, and there is nothing wrong with menial labor, maybe they will start to pay attention and take action to qualify themselves as employable, get hired somewhere, hold a job for enough time to create a presentable resume and work their way up the earnings scale.

My next visit to a fast food outlet will be Wendys!!