Adrienne and I had to run some lunch-hour errands a few weeks ago, so we grabbed some sandwiches to eat in the car. We thought we’d park down by the municipal pier and look at the lake, but we forgot now that summer is here, you have to pay four dollars to pull into the pier’s parking lot.
“We really don’t want to park, we just want to eat a quick sandwich by the water,” I told the college-aged kid in the booth. “Do we still have to pay?”
“Um – well – it’s four dollars to park…” His voice trailed off.
“OK, but what constitutes “parking?'” I asked, trying to put quotation marks in my voice. The season had just started, he had just gotten out of school, none of the boss’s instructions had prepared the kid for questions of this complexity.
“Gee, I don’t know,” he said.
I moved in for the kill. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll leave the engine on and if anyone comes by, I’ll leave immediately.” How bad could that be?
The kid’s eyes darted toward the Parks and Recreation building. “No, no, you really have to pay four dollars if you want to come in.” I didn’t press the issue further. We drove away and ate our sandwiches elsewhere.
I wasn’t upset with the kid. He was, after all, just doing his job. It’s not his fault that the rulebook is written in black and white and the world is written in gray.
He reminded me of myself 20 years ago. One summer, during college, I took a job as a security guard. During the day, I sat at the door of a factory, checking badges on the way in and packages on the way out. Very black and white. Some evenings I worked events at the War Memorial Auditorium – concerts mostly, interspersed with things like professional wrestling. That was all gray. Of course, we had a long list of rules to enforce, but as I learned the first week, enforcing even half of them in the dark, smoky recesses of the early 80s concert venue was next to impossible. I was an authority-respecting young man, much like the kid in the booth at the Burlington waterfront, and I became increasingly anxious over my inability to resolve my dilemma.
My answer came from an unexpected quarter. Besides the college students struggling with philosophical questions, my security company employed a pack of thugs to work at concerts. These guys were considered an elite squad and they roamed the War Memorial in twos and threes, looking for some infraction, any infraction, to punish. Punishments were swift, physical and brutal. Behind the auditorium’s closed doors, those little tin Hitlers were a law unto themselves. There were off-duty city cops there as well, paid to stand around in their uniforms, but they never interfered. The thug squad taught me that there needs to be a spirit of the law as well as a letter of the law, and for the rest of that summer, I worked on that definition.
If there was harassment or hostility, I intervened. If someone was doing something stupid that might result in injury to themselves or others, I intervened. Beyond that, it was live and let live.
The young man at the waterfront started me thinking about this, the New York Police Department keeps me thinking about it. Innocent people keep getting killed by police eager to prosecute non-existent crimes, while a mob rampage in broad daylight goes unnoticed. How can people who do this for a living get their priorities so confused?
The other thing I learned that summer is that good laws don’t come from the top down, they come from the bottom up. It’s time we all got more involved.
Little Tin Hitlers
Adrienne and I had to run some lunch-hour errands a few weeks ago, so we grabbed some sandwiches to eat in the car. We thought we’d park down by the municipal pier and look at the lake, but we forgot now that summer is here, you have to pay four dollars to pull into the pier’s parking lot.
“We really don’t want to park, we just want to eat a quick sandwich by the water,” I told the college-aged kid in the booth. “Do we still have to pay?”
“Um – well – it’s four dollars to park…” His voice trailed off.
“OK, but what constitutes “parking?'” I asked, trying to put quotation marks in my voice. The season had just started, he had just gotten out of school, none of the boss’s instructions had prepared the kid for questions of this complexity.
“Gee, I don’t know,” he said.
I moved in for the kill. “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll leave the engine on and if anyone comes by, I’ll leave immediately.” How bad could that be?
The kid’s eyes darted toward the Parks and Recreation building. “No, no, you really have to pay four dollars if you want to come in.” I didn’t press the issue further. We drove away and ate our sandwiches elsewhere.
I wasn’t upset with the kid. He was, after all, just doing his job. It’s not his fault that the rulebook is written in black and white and the world is written in gray.
He reminded me of myself 20 years ago. One summer, during college, I took a job as a security guard. During the day, I sat at the door of a factory, checking badges on the way in and packages on the way out. Very black and white. Some evenings I worked events at the War Memorial Auditorium – concerts mostly, interspersed with things like professional wrestling. That was all gray. Of course, we had a long list of rules to enforce, but as I learned the first week, enforcing even half of them in the dark, smoky recesses of the early 80s concert venue was next to impossible. I was an authority-respecting young man, much like the kid in the booth at the Burlington waterfront, and I became increasingly anxious over my inability to resolve my dilemma.
My answer came from an unexpected quarter. Besides the college students struggling with philosophical questions, my security company employed a pack of thugs to work at concerts. These guys were considered an elite squad and they roamed the War Memorial in twos and threes, looking for some infraction, any infraction, to punish. Punishments were swift, physical and brutal. Behind the auditorium’s closed doors, those little tin Hitlers were a law unto themselves. There were off-duty city cops there as well, paid to stand around in their uniforms, but they never interfered. The thug squad taught me that there needs to be a spirit of the law as well as a letter of the law, and for the rest of that summer, I worked on that definition.
If there was harassment or hostility, I intervened. If someone was doing something stupid that might result in injury to themselves or others, I intervened. Beyond that, it was live and let live.
The young man at the waterfront started me thinking about this, the New York Police Department keeps me thinking about it. Innocent people keep getting killed by police eager to prosecute non-existent crimes, while a mob rampage in broad daylight goes unnoticed. How can people who do this for a living get their priorities so confused?
The other thing I learned that summer is that good laws don’t come from the top down, they come from the bottom up. It’s time we all got more involved.