With great power comes great responsibility, that is the creed that a cat who dreams of becoming Spiderman in the office tries to live by.
But what’s often never mentioned is the second line:Â Abuse your power and people will take it away from you.
And that was literally what happened when a safe-distancing ambassador was caught on CCTV doing things he should not be doing.
SDA Who Allegedly ‘Abused His Power’ Had Power Removed
According to Mothership.sg, Enterprise Singapore (ESG) has confirmed that the man is a Safe Distancing Ambassador (SDA) who was deployed by them to Century Square at Tampines.
The moment ESG was alerted, they immediately carried out an investigation on their own.
Not only that, but the SDA was also suspended on the very same day.
Using Authority To Solicit Favours
ESG’s preliminary investigations revealed that the SDA had “behaved unprofessionally” and “used his position to solicit for favours”.
Basically, what they mean is, the owner who complained about the SDA seems to be telling the truth.
The SDA was subsequently removed from service and ESG apologises to the affected store owner and staff.
Meanwhile, ESG says they’ll investigate further and see if they need to take any further actions against the SDA.
What The Man Did:
According to the owner of the store, the SDA had entered the shop on multiple occasions to ‘disturb’ the staff.
He was also caught on CCTV pressuring the female stuff into polishing his Tiffany Platinum bracelet.
The officer also made inappropriate comments such as “I like you la”, and professed that he wouldn’t write a report because of her help.
On a separate occasion, the officer allegedly tried to strike up a deal, saying that he would “close one eye” if he saw something amiss in exchange for them piercing his ears for free.
You can watch the CCTV footage below:
Please Be Professional
ESG also took the chance to remind all SDAs to behave with integrity and professionalism.
That’s two out of the seven core values for water parade.
They said that they take a “serious view” of these breaches and will not hesitate to take any action against them.
And if we’re basing it on track records, both this incident and the previous one, which happened at White Sands Shopping Mall:
They’re more than willing to back up their words.
People With Power Tend to Abuse the Powerless
If you know about the Stanford Prison Experiment, you’d find this act disturbing and yet at the same time normal.
The popular social psychology experiment, which was done in 1971, tried to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power by getting people of the same status to experience lives as either prisoners (powerless) or prison officers (with power).
It was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and certain portions of the experiment were filmed, and excerpts of footage are publicly available.
Needless to say, the results, if you’d even call it a result, were disturbing. So disturbing that halfway through the experiment, it was abandoned.
Why?
The people with power tortured and harassed those without power, so much so that some of those without power left the experiment because they couldn’t take the abuse.
While there is no official conclusion to the results, it shows something: with great power, you don’t just have great responsibility. You might abuse it as well.
Moral of the story?
If someone abuses his or her power, step up and report it immediately, and the authorities will do something about it. If not, the abuse will continue.
Would you be jailed for being half-naked in public? Well, the answer will shock you. Seriously. Watch this to the end and you'll understand:
