After the meal, Jon and his relatives walked across campus and, despite the clouds, brisk wind, and high crowds brought about because of "Blue&White" Weekend, decided to purchase some ice cream at Penn State's mildly famous Creamery. The Creamery is a cold room, with fans that blow sweet-cream scented air on the long line of sugar-anticipating customers that are lined up in orderly fashion from the cash register, across the blue and white tiled floor, out the side door, outside and alongside the building's brick walls. The ice cream purchase process is this: wait in line, announce the product you wish to purchase (cone or dish), step to your left to speak to one of the scoopers, tell the scooper your single desired flavor and, finally, eat the ice cream. The Creamery strictly holds to this process, line cutters are susceptible to being ejected from the store. The institution is not quite Soup Nazi-esque, but it certainly has a strict set of guidelines.

Jon's grandmother, a Pennsylvania Dutch woman to the best I can tell, in the true Pennsylvanian tradition, is indecisive. She had narrowed her ice cream selection down to two separate flavors, one with almonds, I believe, and something else. Jon's aunt told the scooper that grandma would like two flavors in a cone, if that's okay. The scooper quickly returned with rejection. He was sorry, but he just couldn't. Jon's aunt responded by asking if he could scoop two flavors, just this once, for grandma. Jon's grandmother even tried her luck to succeed in attaining both flavors, asking in grandmotherly fashion if she could have two flavors. Alas, the scooper would not succumb to the grandmotherly inquisition, Jon's grandmother would have to cope with a single flavor.

However, Jon told me that the resulting single-flavor ice cream cone was stacked higher than any ice cream cone he had ever seen. It was enough to be segmented and fill two separate ice cream dishes and still have enough ice cream remaining on the cone for a sufficiently large ice cream cone. Clearly this scooper felt terrible about not allowing Jon's grandmother a second flavor in her cone. Understandably a higher-up was more than likely breathing down the scooper's neck. One false move and the scooper was out on the street, perhaps it would even effect his college career as a Food Science major. Indeed, the fear of job loss was too much for this scooper to succumb to the wishes of Jon's grandmother.

Although it seems trivial, that second scoop could have change the outcome of that scooper's life. Jon's grandmother was in no way out of line asking for two flavors, other ice cream parlors do that sort of thing all the time. The whole event reminds me of an article I read today about the recent leak of Apple's new gizmo; the next generation iPhone. An unfortunate employee misplaced a prototype of the new device at a bar nearly a week ago. The device was found by a tech-savvy individual who recognized the small, almost insignificant, changes Apple made to the product and quickly "leaked" the product to various internet news sources. Though the bumbling, and perhaps absent-minded, employee was certainly down on his luck, he wasn't fired, nor was he nearly as unfortunate as another Apple employee who lost his job over a trivial mistake.

On Gizmondo.com, Steve Wozniak, or Woz for short, co-founder of Apple responds to the iPhone saga and sheds light onto the plight of a very unfortunate employee and a strict vale of secrecy enforced by Apple.

Steve Wozniak had bumped into an Apple engineer, whom he states "resembled myself and Steve Jobs when we were that age, and my younger son who programs for NASA. He's a kind of person I would always enjoy talking with." Wozniak realized the engineer was involved with the production of the iPad, and perhaps using the "not even for grandma?" approach, coerced the young employee to give him a test-run of the new iPad. What Wozniak hadn't realized is that this was no ordinary iPad that he was testing, it was the much anticipated 3G version of the device, a top secret gizmo. It seems implied that the employee was aware of the secrecy of the product, but could not resist the charm of Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder. The employee was, sadly, fired immediately.

However, should Apple really have fired someone for doing something so trivial? According to Wozniak, Steve Jobs even responded to the employee's actions with a "it's no big deal." Likewise, should a Penn State Creamery scooper be fired for providing an elderly customer with two flavors? It really comes down to the standards of integrity a brand has. Yet, this integrity often comes with the flip of a coin.

For example, it's pretty much common knowledge that Apple employs overseas factories to assemble its hardware, certainly benefitting from child labor; a fact that is certainly avoided and never touted by Apple fans. Likewise, Penn State's Creamery's ice cream has such a high fat content that it is rumored that the FDA cannot allow it to be sold in grocery stores. Why is it that these businesses have zero tolerance for employee misgivings, yet commit themselves to atrocious misdeeds? (Okay, perhaps atrocious misdeeds is a bit much to be applied to the Creamery's fat content)

Well, I must say that I tip my hat to those Creamery Scoopers and Apple Engineers of the world. It's hard to sacrifice self dignity for the good of a company. Ask Updike's character in A&P; he couldn't commit to it. Yes, it is morally wrong to follow the will of a corrupt leader (Apple or the Creamery, in this case), but those who hold true to their companies standards also realize that it is not the company they stand for, but their own survival in a game designed for them to play.