I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with most of your previous points, just prompting you to step back and see the bare logic of your argument. Your thoughts (and

I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with most of your previous points, just prompting you to step back and see the bare logic of your argument. Your thoughts (and to a certain extent mine) about what is acceptable and what is not is informed by our previous experiences. Things change, and this shouldn't invalidate other peoples experiences or stop them from trying something different. "Nothing is wrong with the current management structure we have" Completely indefensible. There is plenty wrong. No small part of what is wrong is to do with the way people's egos and prejudices get turned into policy and power. And there are a whole world of options between dictatorship and direct democracy. Everything else you describe past this point is, once again, a description of how things are, not how they should be. Your experiences are a description of how to function under an inopportune power structure. Just as it is fair to say that the manager decided that this act was insubordination and needed to be punished by a firing, it is also fair to say that if there is a company policy which does not effect revenue but does effect quality of life, then it is perfectly reasonable to organise with your fellow workers to change it. The only error from the interns here was about not gathering enough power to actually see through the change. "If anything has failed her here it's her education system that up till now didn't taught her that a petition is worthless, that if you want to something to change you build a position of substance and argue that one." Fully agree with this, but as a starting point of not understanding the way something works, testing it, finding the edge cases and breaking it down is a good start. Do you not do this with every new tool you use? Besides, the real issue you alluded to before is that they basically didn't get that by signing a petition they were organising. The boss understood this and his over the top response is indicative of why organising needs to be protected in law (in a fair and balanced way). PS. "I don't think that it's fair to equate the current management style of most companies to dictatorships". Fair enough, oligarchy then.. When the choice is 'my way or the highway', and when they are telling you how to act and how to dress, how else would you describe it?