Is Common Sense Dead? - 5 Year Old Girl Fined £150 for Lemonade Stand
Introduction
Just a quick post today. I was catching up on my recent news feed and almost spit my coffee out when I saw this story from a few days ago.
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According to the BBC a 5 year old girl had set up a little lemonade stall in Mile End (London) where she was selling people glasses of lemonade for 50p.
It seems that a humourless employee from the local council spotted that she was breaking the rules and "heroically" stormed in to shut her criminal enterprise down.
He started filming the girl whilst reading out the various council regulations that she was breaking (presumably he thought that a 5 year old would understand such things).
In the end he fined her £150 because she did not have the requisite license (which she couldn't have anyway because you need to be 17 to have it).
Unsurprisingly the little girl burst into tears and told her father- "I've done a bad thing".
I very much doubt she will ever make "the mistake" of using her initiative again. The streets are safe again (in case it isn't obvious I'm being sarcastic).
You can read the full story here.
My Thoughts - An All Too Common Failure of Common Sense
From what I understand these kind of laws and rules are supposed to exist to protect the public and prevent child labour.
They are not there to harass young children who show entrepreneurial spirit and initiative.
One must ask the question of what was going on in the mind of the council employee who thought this was a valid case for issuing a fine?
Anyone with even a modicum of human decency would have ignored the situation as not being worth their time. Further if they were scared of getting into trouble or not doing their job they could have had a quiet word with the father in private.
It is not difficult to handle a situation with sensitivity and discretion.
Instead they found the situation warranted scaring a small child and possibly traumatising her for life.
I wonder how much entrepreneurial spirit has been crushed as a result of such of such boneheaded actions?
Sadly we find that in many aspects of life, socially awkward, humourless people are given clipboards and rule sets to follow without first checking if they actually have any common sense.
Often these people are incapable of doing anything beyond ticking boxes - exercising actual judgement is actually something which requires too much effort.
Some people even seem to get intoxicated with the power it gives them over others.
In a good system such people would be weeded before they could ever reach such positions and certainly removed if they ever acted in this way.
Sadly it seems that often the exact opposite seems to happen where these kind of people actually seem to be over-represented in these kind of occupations and don't suffer any consequences for their actions.
In this case the council involved has apologised and cancelled the fine but the damage to the young girl is done.
Further there is no word on what action (if any) has been taken against the moronic employee who was responsible for this idiocy.
-One would hope they were fired, but I doubt that happened.
Thank you for reading
What the actual fck! That's just pitty nicking from that guy. I understand that there are regulations but come on.. This should be for adults. Kids need to explore things and can do such things. They probably make $25 on their best day. That's not much for an adult but for a kid its a lot.
They should be ashamed of theirselves!
Exactly my thoughts too. It is pretty disgusting and it is not protecting anyone.
Precisely. Those kind of people just wanna snitch on something because their lives are crap. Giving a fine to a little kid, and even a big fine, is just terrible. That kid is not scarred and doesn't want to do that kind of stuff anymore that's just a shame.
When you see a little kid sell something with joy, it lights up your world. Even though the lemonade can be disgusting, you still buy it to see that smile and make her day. I see some kids in my neighbourhood do it sometimes and some even make it theirselves with real lemons. Honestly it's disgusting haha, but they are so happy when they sell it. I always ask them what they are saving up for, and one kid even said she was saving up for new books to learn new stuff. Without any hesitation I gave her a fee afterwards haha!
Exactly. These kids should be encouraged. She could be the next Richard Branson.
Haha exactly! An empowered business woman that starts business one after an other!
There should be a 'free' zone where those kids should be encouraged. When it's your own front yard you should be able to do it!
I suspect in your own yard you could get into trouble for conducting business in a residential zone!
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Nobody cares how the law should work. Or for what it is intended. The authorities simply execute it as they want in the framework of any possible interpretations. And sometimes far beyond this framework. But in the latter case, sometimes they manage to sue them.
Right.
there is actually something dysfunctional in our society. A friend just told me about a young girl using her i-phone while driving drunk with her 14 yr old sister and a friend. She lost control and flipped the car killing her sister. She took photos of the whole thing including her sister lying dead in the road with a bashed-in skull.
Every day I watch the news and ask myself, where is the humanity?
Wow that is some sick psychopathic behaviour.
Is it society or the availablity of tech?
If camera phones were around in the middle ages youtube would be horrific.
There are examples through history of people bemoaning declining society. In reality now is the safest time in history to be alive.
yes, that's definitely part of it - but what's alarming to me is people putting aside normal human tendencies to help in favour of recording the moment
This the new generation of "record everything and do nothing to help". I live 10 min from the place where a few teens recorded a guy drowning and wouldn't even call 911.
I heard about that too - as a parent, I don't know what I'd do - a teen like that is missing something
These days, standard procedures aren't implemented to increase quality, but to lower costs; they allow management to hire a cheaper ilk of people: the slightly stupid incompetents. All they have to do is follow procedure, no thinking or discretion required or even wanted.
The completion of procedures quickly becomes a goal, instead of means to an end; as long as procedures are followed, you can do nothing wrong, whatever the outcome. This is often combined with targets in the general form of completing a procedure as often as possible per day, even when it concerns fines for law violations.
It's happening everywhere these days, universal beyond what you describe.
They need to look at the situation rather than a rule book, a judge is meant to judge; not throw someone away or shut a child's business down . but sadly, every day legal systems are preying on us. It has turned into a profit scheme not a way of seeking justice.
Sadly I think you are correct. Sometimes people are even given targets - take parking fines for example.
The possibility of hiring cheaper people, who won't be allowed any discretion in their work, has been an explicit item in most pre-project briefings I got as an industrial engineer and ICT architect in the 20-odd years I worked for large multinational companies. It's no secret.
Interesting - was not aware that it was an actual goal.
This has happened in the U.S. as well. All the rules are supposed to protect us but they are often written to prevent competition with existing businesses which bribe the politicians writing the laws with campaign contributions.
Yes I'm afraid it seems they often end up protecting existing interests for that very reason.
Oh, now we can take a breath! Justice has been served.
I can't even imagine what would happen if that despicable evil child would give someone a lemonade. Everyone knows that the scariest thing about lemonade is a lemon!
Oh well... this sick world. Common sense is now officially dead.
Yes we are all safe now!
Maybe i am such a firecracker in entrepreneurism because I didn't get stopped selling cherries when I was small. The rule comes as far as I know from too many poisonings in the past. It makes sense to me because you cannot walk around with a laboratory all the time to check everything. Children should be allowed to do that and for older people I find it better to send companies out to test the lemonade and once you get caught with poison in it you cannot sell for 10 years or so edit: instead of a licence, fuck off gov..
Yes but if they really wanted to prevent food poisoning they would actually be testing rather than handing out fines.
'If God gives you nothing but lemons... apply to your local council for a permit before you sell lemonade...'
This is how they raise serfs. When something like that happens to a kid he's gonna think to himself that he's better off home, doing nothing. At least nothing nothing bad can happen he/she watches TV.
That little girl will probably have complex of thinking that she is not worthy of doing business.
Or the opposite happens..and she grows up to start a revolution!
Sadly it does encourage people to give up on trying new things and new ideas at a young age.
Exactly.
No words. Fkng freedom is just a word with as much weight as air in a balloon.
The more we hand over our 'lives' and responsibilities and securing us to the AGENCIES the more ridiculous things, like this one, will happen!
Yes and it seems to be getting worse every day. The most annoying thing is that some of these people exercise no judgement whatsoever. Those kind of people should be weeded out in the initial stages of job application.
She's learnt an important lesson: The authorities will hound you until you díe.
For real ? What the fuck is wrong with this world. There are so many idiots around that it's not even funny anymore. Why do this to a child...
Exactly - some people are just idiots basically.
I approve this statement. Shla-rafia, approving statements since 2017
:)
Common sense died a long time ago. Welcome to idiocracy.
Yes sadly I think you are right.