management behind bars

Can American workers learn something from the Chinese employees who locked up their American boss in Beijing?

The jailers/employees are demanding severance packages equal to those of 30 workers who had already been laid off ... even though the boss has said there is no danger of the current workers' losing their jobs.

The jailer/workers, Chinese who live in a shrinking economy, apparently didn't believe his promises.

"I feel like a trapped animal," [Chip] Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window's bars. "I think it's inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen."

Interesting choice of words ... "inhumane." Accurate? Probably. But what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: How much more quickly might management recognize inhumanity when it got a dose of a similar medicine?

Of course, not all inhumanity is delineated by guns or bars.