Meet Nigel Haskett: Hero

Can I get a fuck job with that Happy Meal?

Meet Nigel Haskett, enlistee of the U.S. military, hard-working lower class kid, and a goddammed hero. He's a good looking kid right? His whole world laid before him like a ribbon of desert highway. No limits besides what his talent, hard work, ingenuity and the occasional break can yield for him, right?

Wrong. See, Nigell is griveously wounded, if not crippled, now. Shot, actually. Another useless, senseless shooting. But he was not gunned down in the inner city or in the back alleys of Najah or Kabul. Nigell was shot by a disgruntled patron at a Little Rock, AR McDonald's. A guy was slapping and beating a woman, so Nigell, doing what most of us wish we had the balls to do, if not the moral obligation, confronted the abuser. Haskett tackled him, stopped the assault, pitched the man bodily from the store, then barred the door so he couldn't re-enter. Later that night, Nigell's life would change forever.

The aggressor came back to the store, after retrieving a pistol from his car, and blasted Nigell in the stomach with several gunshots. Haskett has had three surgeries for his wounds, and has rang up over $300,000 of medical bills. How does he pay for that, you ask? Well, don't ask McDonald's, because they aren't providing workers' comp to a kid that stopped the assault inside the store.

Read that again, the McDonald's Corporation is arguing that employees can't be "good samaritans", that they just have to call the cops, sit back and let someone (or someones) get savagely beaten, and perhaps killed. Don't be a hero, don't save lives, because Ronald will stick the screws to you.

This is fucking disgusting, and McDonald's has, I swear, lost all business from me, forever. The one bright spot is that courts in most jurisdictions construe workers comp to encompass injuries sustained during rescues and other good samaritan activities while on company time. C'mon, Ronald, do the right thing for fucking once without making this kid be dragged through the sausage grinder of the work comp system, the subsequent court battles and pricey legal fees. You owe it to him.

Read Nigel's story here.