Our local chain of shopping malls asked our local Girl Scouts for $200 rent for each table they wanted to set up to sell cookies. Some well-meaning doofus probably thought it made sense based on risk-management expenses (or some other perfectly logical accounting).

What do you think happened?

Dozens of Scout troops x hundreds of moms = tons of angry.

Within 24 hours, it’s on the local TV news and the mall changed their policy.

This isn’t about how horrible the company is — mistakes happen and everyone makes dumb decisions from time to time.

But, what are you doing to make sure this doesn’t happen at your company? Do you have a filter set up for this? Do you have someone empowered to override policies when they’re obviously silly? Is there someone who stands up and says, “Maybe we should be donating $200 to little girls instead of asking them for it?”

Who’s in charge of common sense? Do they have the authority to enforce it?