Should Employees Work Past their Shift Because Customers Come First?

It happened on Sunday, October 23rd, at the Fort Totten station in Northeast D.C. A Metro operator refused to operate a train and Washington Metro officials are planning on taking action against the operator. The train operator refused to move his train claiming his shift ended (you can read the full story here). 

In an e-mail, Metro Chief spokesperson wrote that appropriate action will be taken, which could result in the operator being fired. Employees of Metro are expected to use basic common sense and to think about the customers first according to Metro's general manager. After all, customer focus is a profitable business strategy. There are obligations that employees should have, which is to perform their duties. However, there are rules and regulations to follow. Which is more important, the customers or the rules and regulations set by a company? 

This incident may have caused some customers to be unhappy, but the operator should not get all the punishment when all he did was follow the company's regulations. Obviously, if the operator had "used common sense" and operated the train pass his shift breaking the company's regulations, he still would pay the consequences. Perhaps, the solution here would be to have a better plan. To have some sort of "backup" in case an operator runs out of time to operate a train. Even though the incident caused the train to be immobile for over 10 minutes, the operator's supervisor ended up moving the train and operations continued as scheduled.