“It felt like a knife going through me!” declared Mary Campbell, 53, after she was fired from her waitressing job at a restaurant in the Red Lobster chain. Instead of suing for what she considered unfair dismissal after 19 years of service, Campbell called for a peer review, seeking to recover her job and three weeks of lost wages.
Three weeks after the firing, a panel of employees from different Red Lobster restaurants was reviewing the evidence and tried to determine whether the server had, in fact, been unjustly fired for allegedly stealing a guest comment card completed by a couple of customers whom she had served.

PEER REVIEW AT DARDEN INDUSTRIES
Red Lobster was owned by Darden Industries, which also owned other restaurant chains like Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grill, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52. At the time of writing this case, the company had about 1,900 restaurants serving 400 million meals a year. Red Lobster, which had more than 180,000 employees, had adopted a policy of encouraging peer review of disputed employee firings and disciplinary actions several years earlier. The company’s key objectives were to limit worker lawsuits and ease workplace tensions.
Advocates of the peer review approach, which had been adopted at several other companies, believed it was a very effective way of constructively channeling the pain and anger employees felt after being fired or disciplined by their managers. By reducing the incidence of lawsuits, a company could also save on legal expenses.
A Darden spokesperson stated that the peer review program had been “tremendously successful” in keeping valuable employees from unfair dismissal. Each year, about 100 disputes ended up in peer review, with only 10 subsequently resulting in lawsuits. Red Lobster managers and many employees also credited peer review with reducing racial tensions. Ms. Campbell, who said she had received dozens of calls of support, chose peer review over a lawsuit not only because it was much cheaper, but “I also liked the idea of being judged by people who know how things work in a little restaurant.”

THE EVIDENCE
The review panel included a general manager, an assistant manager, a server, a hostess, and a bartender, who had all volunteered to review the circumstances of Mary Campbell’s firing. Each panelist had received peer review training and was receiving regular wages plus travel expenses. The instructions to the panelists were simply to do what they felt was fair.
Campbell had been fired by Jean Larimer, the general manager of the Red Lobster in Marston, where Campbell worked as a restaurant server. The reason given for the firing was that Campbell had asked the restaurant’s hostess, Eve Taunton, for the key to the guest comment box and stole a card from it. The card had been completed by a couple of guests whom Campbell had served, and they had seemed dissatisfied with their experience at the restaurant. Subsequently, the guests learned that their comment card, which complained that their prime rib of beef was too rare and their waitress was “uncooperative,” had been removed from the box.

STUDY QUESTIONS
1. What are the marketing implications of this situation?
2. Evaluate the concept of peer review. What are its strengths and weaknesses? What type of environment is required to make it work well?
3. Review the evidence. Do you believe the testimony presented?
4. What decision would you make, and why?