I toured the Ford plant in Michigan (possibly not the same one) a couple of years ago with my family, because my father is very interested in architecture and the facility is listed in one of his architecture books as a particularly significant set of architectural works. One of the things that we noticed was the number of cars in the lots which weren't Fords.

At the time it just seemed like one of those funny things, but upon reflection, it seems like an indictment of the company. The people who work there don't believe in their products, or they know that those products don't fit their own needs, let alone the needs of the rest of us. Ford should get its employees to buy its cars the same way it wants to get everyone else to buy its cars- by making good cars! Trying to coerce them this way is just silly- they shouldn't need to do this.

Would we really want this to apply in other fields? Should bakers not be allowed to eat food from Tyson, if they work for Nestle? I'm a lawyer, but I wouldn't want to be limited to hiring someone from my firm to write a patent application for me, because we aren't patent attorneys. So restrictions (even mild ones like this) aimed at keeping people who work at Ford from buying a hybrid from Honda, for instance, are just ridiculous, IMO. Ford doesn't make all the kinds of cars people might want or need, and even if they did, they shouldn't have to resort to these kinds of strategems. They should focus on making better cars.