Why is everyone surprised when fast food employees don't get involved with disputes or violence in their place of employment? If I was getting paid $7.25/hour I for sure wouldn't be going above and beyond the call of duty. And odds are if an employee tried to intervene they'd get fired for that as well.

PROTIP: DO NOT GO TO McDONALDS IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR WELL BEING. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT YOU'RE GONNA GET A BEATING, THAT SWILL IS NOT FOOD.

Don't worry, Graham, we wouldn't expect you to get involved whether you were homeless or a billionaire.

@Graham - I like to think I'd get involved no matter how much I was making.

@Reymont: We all want to believe that we'd interject ourselves into a violent situation when they arise. However, continual anecdotal evidence seems to indicate we as a culture will not do so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genoves… or http://m.gawker.com/5523739 .

While the collective "we" may not speak up during a beating, we can work to train ourselves as individuals to speak up (insert social psych reference). This is hard to do, but worth practicing in small ways now so that it would be less hard if someone is being beaten in front of you. Make eye contact. Say hello. Dude passes out on bus: call 911 and stay with him until firefighters show up. Relatively little stuff, but makes it more normal to, at the very least, call 911 if someone is being hit in front of you.

And yeah, this is a challenging thing to wrestle with: personal safety, how much do you trust the police, should someone intervene in this particular situation, what about the privacy of two people fighting? But if we don't at least think and talk about these situations, I think we often just shut down, assume it's not our problem, assume there is nothing we can do, etc. I find this all really hard to do personally, but I don't want to watch someone be beaten in front of me or hear someone beaten to death and do nothing.

Whoa, a little heavier than I was expecting. Sorry, Team Blogtown for the pontification...

My uncle Greg--this was during the '70s, I believe--was in Seattle and saw some guy stabbing a woman. Greg knocked the attacker down, held him down until someone else could grab him, and then tended to the victim's wounds (he's a doctor, though retired from that field these days). Guess he hadn't read that Wikipedia article about Kitty Genovese.

Her grammar is atrocious. I think the trans community might prefer a spokesperson who can speak.

Also: People are dicks.

Yes, Kiala, it's a shame that she didn't take elocution lessons before being BEATEN NEARLY TO DEATH. Jeeze.