There are times in a man’s life where he must reflect back to Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience; “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”.
And today was one of those days. I transgressed it immediately.
I consider myself a public servant—I’m in the US Air Force, and serve because I want to; because I think that good men and women ought to. Yet in the past few years, the rub of bureaucratic red tape has me reconsidering my service, blunting it from the naïve nobility of public service to something slightly less. I’m jaded, and am sick of red tape. I fully understand that there simply must be a bureaucracy in some procedures, for the end-of-day tally of money or resources, for public accountability, or for accurate/better customer service, some damn reason that relates to the public good. I understand this. Everyone needs this. But there are some times that I get so tired of the red tape that even I have to bullshit my way through it out of spite, just to introduce disinformation into their system.
Take my experience today: I have a gym on base. I work out regularly at this gym. I’ve been stationed in Georgia for almost one year (it’ll be a year at the end of the month). I have a military ID Card, which, is checked for purposes of access to the base.
My bosses are gone but the secretary is there. Today I think to myself, “Self, you know, I worked hard the past few weeks, I’m going to treat myself to an early day and go to the gym after the Staff Meeting! Then I’m going to go home and relax. . .” This is the flexibility of being an Executive Officer. I can sometimes pull what I call ‘Executive Privledge’: “I’m the boss, I’ll do what I damn well please! (within reason)”.
Anyway, I get to the gym about 1545, well before my usual time of 1800. I walk into an otherwise busy gym—plenty of people milling about going to and fro. Stanchions and cords shepherd you towards a reception desk where they 99% of the time wave at you and smile. There’s a computer at the desk with a barcode reader that a lot of people go to. You’re “highly suggested” to sign in when you arrive. I never do—every other base I’ve been to doesn’t have this system, and I don’t know what it tracks, what it does, I don’t care. It’s a waste of time and I see no benefit. So I pass by the desk figuring I’ll be unmolested. This time was different. . .
I get ten feet beyond the desk, when someone behind it calls out, “You got I.D.?!?” Now, on a military base, if someone asks this, you show it. You don’t have to, but if you don’t you open yourself to suspicion the Security Police are usually called to inspect. I turn around, pull it out of my pocket, and innocently say, “Yep, here it is!” and flash my card.
The lady behind the desk says, “Okay. You gotta sign in. . .” Immediately I switch into ‘naïve guy mode’ but with a darker, more sinister intent. I’m going to be Butters, aka ‘Captain Chaos!’
Me (feigning ignorance), “I beg your pardon?”
Her: “You gotta sign in.”
Me:: “Sign into what?”
Her: “The computer, you gotta sign in. Do you have an account?”
Me: “No, I don’t think so. Account for what?”
Her: “Are you stationed here?”
Me: “Yep, for almost a year. I’ve never signed into anything. . . what’s this about?”
Her “You gotta sign in. Let me see your card.”
I hand her my ID card, and apparently, she starts setting me up with ‘an account’. She types my name in there, asks me an emergency contact number (which I give my work number), clicks half a dozen times, and then says, “Okay, now I gotta take your picture. . .”
Me: “. . . um, okay . . .”
She takes one of those mid-90s ProLogic camera ball things, points it at my face, and hits the space bar. Immediately I cross my eyes and snerk. The computer snaps this face, and she says, “You know, this picture is going to come up every time you sign in!” I reply, “Hey, great! It’ll be good for a laugh then!” Little does she know that I have no intention to ever sign in unless under threat of court-martial, and if I must, this picture will come up. I just don’t give a damn.
So, I go to the gym, and blow off signing out. Their system has no benefit for me, isn’t required, and is a waste of my time. Therefore, I will resist. And if they make me, I’ll protest. I deal with enough red tape at my regular job, I don’t need this crap when I go to the gym. It’d be one thing if I needed to prove membership, but I’m on an Air Force base, my membership was checked at the front gate.
Huzzah for civil disobedience!!
Tripler
And for my next act, I will dump Lipton tea bags into my toilet while holding a sparkler! W00t!
