The World's Worst Person Of The Week Works For Disney
Where small-mindedness meets mindlessness.
I’ve never been Disneyfied.
I know some people believe the world of Disney to be so magical that they can’t wait to inject that same world into their children’s veins.
I know people who believe Snow White and the Seven Shorter People isn’t a subtle statement about Utah’s fascinating polygamy laws, but the apogee of family entertainment.
I even know people who subscribe to Disney+.
But have you ever wondered whether this fantasy is regurgitated in reality?
I only ask because of the astoundingly painful events that recently occurred at Disneyland Paris.
Here we had a man dressed all in white.
No, it wasn’t entirely flattering, but good for the gentleman that he committed himself so totally to purity.
The woman who accompanied him was dressed in a simple, comfortable dress.
They had stepped up to some sort of stage, with a castle in the background.
This, apparently, is the home of Sleeping Beauty.
(And you thought it was 10 Downing Street.)
Suddenly, the man gets down on one knee.
He clearly loves this woman. He’s prepared to dirty his white trousers in order to demonstrate his love for her.
He pulls out the ring of promise and begins his proposal.
She’s clearly charmed. I know this because she puts her hand over her mouth, the universal signal of being charmed.
Yet before she can utter or even mutter a yes, up runs a man in a polo shirt wearing a pair of large plastic ears.
This, it transpires, is an employee of Disney.
Was, perhaps.
Not only does he rush toward the couple, he snatches the ring box out of the bekneeling man’s hands and rushes it off the stage.
This unspeakable oaf doesn’t speak.
Instead, he indicates with an imperious left arm where this proposal is allowed to take place.
“She said yes,” yes the pained groom-to-be.
“Yes, that’s great,” replies the plastic-eared oaf, “but over here she’s going to be even better.”
To the boos of onlookers, he waves the woman off the stage as if he was traffic policeman.
Or just a plastic-eared oaf ruining the moment of a lifetime.
The person who posted this video to Reddit insisted that the white-trousered groom had been given permission to make his proposal. (Not that this may have mattered. See below.)
The plastic-eared oaf didn’t seem to care.
For him, all that mattered was to crush this couple’s tiny fantasy.
And, in the process, wreck the brand image so lovingly — and, I fear, cynically — created.
Why, even Disney thought it wise to muse: “We regret how this was handled. We have apologized to the couple involved and offered to make it right.”
How do you make right the ruination of a couple’s little moment of personal history?
A free weekend at some middling Disneyland hotel?
Some gratis plastic ears?
Proposals at Disney happen all the time.
The company’s own website says: “While you are not required to contact Disney in order to propose, you may want to if you'd like to plan something more elaborate.”
I fear one or two humans may wish that, one day, this plastic-eared oaf gets to make a proposal of his own and that proposal meets with a refusal so brutal that it melts his ears.
So swiftly that the molten plastic blocks his (real) ears for a decade.
Naturally, I’m not of such aggressive tendencies.
But if you’re peddling something you want people to believe in, don’t you think it wise to make sure your employees help maintain that illusion?
I do.