"TrainingExercise" news and stories

A fast food restaurant manager went to the extreme in training his staffers on how to handle a hold-up situation: his method scared paying customers and earned a serious reprimand from local police.

A manager of a Sonic in St. Joseph, Mo., recently staged a lunchtime mugging, recruiting someone to enter the restaurant with a real-looking toy gun and hold it to an employee's head. Problem was, employees weren't the only ones taken by surprise: When authorities received frantic reports from panicked customers of a potential hostage situation, they sped to the restaurant to resolve it.

"The officers quickly determined this was a training exercise," St. Joseph Police Department commander Jim Connors recounts. "We forcefully got the message across that's not expected behavior."