This Is My Pencil. This Is My Pencil Pretending to be a Gun. One Is for Writing. One Is for Mandatory Suspensions.
10th May 2013
Yeah, we can laugh, but modern life has place educrats between a rock and a spiky hard place. If they don’t want to get sued, they can take a chance on exercising ‘discretion’. In order to avoid exercising ‘discretion’, they put in place ‘mandatory’ policies. ‘Hey, it’s not my fault, the policy left me no option. Go complain to that guy over there.’ And mandatory policies, when pursued in a it’s-not-my-fault mode, lead to absurd results. But they’d rather look stupid (or at least dull followers of stupid policies) than be sued. Nobody ever got fired for following policy, no matter how stupid the policy might be, and bureaucrats are all about not getting fired. (If they can teach some kids along the way, that’s gravy, but that’s not what they’re there for.)
It’s just that simple.
May 10th, 2013 at 10:33
Didn’t Nuremberg invalidate the ‘just following orders’ defense?
May 11th, 2013 at 12:54
Only for Germans and Japanese.