Regular readers of this blog know that I spend a lot of time writing about bad workforce practices, so much so that I have instituted an annual Workforce Management Stupidus Maximus Award for the “most ignorant, shortsighted and dumb workforce management practice of the year.” This year’s winner, Sam Zell of the Tribune Co., set an incredibly high standard for bad management practices that will be very hard for anyone to top.

Sometimes however, you see some spur-of-the-moment action take place in the workplace that is so over-the-top wrong that it makes you wonder—what the hell were they possibly thinking?

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, in the sunny Sunshine State of Florida, “Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day” events in the local prisons turned into a form of show-and-tell that ended up going terribly wrong.

“A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous ‘Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day’ events gone wrong at three state prisons,” according to new information provided by the Florida Department of Corrections to The Miami Herald. “Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup.”

According to the newspaper account, “Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees—from corrections officers to a warden—will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing. None of the children in any of the incidents required medical attention or was notably harmed, McNeil said. He said the children, who ranged in age from 5 to 17, were all children of prison officials.”

And in what must easily qualify as the Management Understatement of the Year (and I’m open to your nominations for a better one), DOC secretary McNeil said, “I can’t imagine what these officers were thinking to administer this device to children, nor can I imagine why any parent would allow them to do so. This must not happen again.”

If  you look at the goals for “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day,” it talks about things like “helping (children) discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, and providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future and begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment … each year, we develop new interactive activities and partnerships that will assist us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.”

Somehow, I don’t think that the organizers of this event anticipated that the “hands-on and interactive environment” would include getting some up-close-and-personal contact from the business end of a stun gun, but the thing that surprised me the most is that this isn’t just some random incident. It happened at three different correctional facilities to 43 children!

I can’t imagine a worse way to expose children to the workforce, even if you account for the fact that a prison, jail or correctional facility isn’t your typical, run-of-the-mill workplace environment.

“(Corrections secretary) McNeil repeatedly stressed that the stun-gunning only happened at three of the 55 institutions and that it wasn’t part of a widespread practice,” the Herald story said. “Still, he acknowledged that it was ‘logical’ to assume other children had been shocked on other take-your-kids-to-work days.”

And if that’s not bad enough, the newspaper story added this kicker: “So far this year (in Florida), none of the devices have been used on the 100,000 prison inmates—only the children of DOC workers.”

I’m all for helping get children excited about jobss and careers, and I’m sure that “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day” is a wonderful success 99 percent of the time, but really, did any of the numbskulls wielding the stun guns stop and think about this for more than 10 seconds? If they had they would have known that this is hardly the way to handle children, keep your job, or most importantly, to encourage those delicate young minds that will become your future workforce.
  
Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.