Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid.
-- Stephen Stills
(from The New York Times) "First we learned that a Wal-Mart employee taped phone calls between Michael Barbaro, a New York Times reporter, and Wal-Mart officials. This came after The Times reported on a Wal-Mart memo that suggested such clever tactics as forcing all shop clerks to spend some time hauling shopping carts in from the parking lot -- the better to weed out unhealthy workers who might submit health insurance claims.
Wal-Mart fired the employee it said was responsible for taping the calls, a man named Bruce Gabbard, and said his actions were unauthorized. Then Mr. Gabbard started talking to The Wall Street Journal, saying the department he worked for had spied on critics. Wal-Mart quickly issued apologies to the critics and got a judge to order Mr. Gabbard to stop talking.
Mr. Gabbard said he told a Wal-Mart lawyer that ''I'm the guy listening to the board of directors when Lee Scott is excused from the room.''
Does that mean that Mr. Scott authorized spying on his own board when it was discussing his performance? If so, it would be a shocking breach of corporate etiquette and governance.
For a few days after that quote appeared, Wal-Mart declined to comment. But eventually a company spokeswoman, Mona Williams, did issue a denial: ''We never would have authorized'' bugging board meetings, she said, and Mr. Scott never listened to any such tapes. (more)
