Comment by Zak

I believe pretty strongly that all automation should have a manual override, form the POS system at a store to the interconnected HR systems the author describes.

A store chain that comes to mind as getting this right is Publix, a grocery store chain in the southeastern US. Aside from a policy of giving the customer any item that rings up at a higher price than is shown on the shelf free of charge, the cashier can generally overrule the computer if something is unreasonable. I'm sure these things get flagged for review by a manager, but in the moment, the cashier is empowered to fix the problem for the customer. I've had other stores tell me they couldn't sell me an item at all because the computer said it was a two-pack and the store only had a single item in stock.

Every one of the systems in the cascade that terminated the author's employment in practice should have an override or undo button. For security reasons, it should probably set off alarm bells pretty high up, but a director was already involved, which should have been sufficient approval.