GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
OK so I had a job in San Francisco surfing the web and sending Internet jokes to my friends. Kind of.
Actually, my job title was legislative analyst for what other places call the city council. Sounds OK, right? I was supposed to figure out the impact of various legislation and write reports about it. Talk about how the rubber actually hits the road. And I wanted to write these reports, I really did. I wanted to be in the game.
Out in the byway in City Hall, things were bustling. Important-looking people with suit coats and briefcases, they walked with quick steps, making big moves, breaking into tense meetings. It was exciting. Time stood still for no one. Things had to be decided right now.
Until you arrived in our little office, where time had ceased her movement. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. So slowly - we moved so slowly. Four cubicles - boss lady one, boss lady two, Paula and myself.
See, in order to fight time, our office had instituted procedure. A city council member would rush in, demand to know right away what would happen if they strapped submachine guns to the roofs of school buses? But first they had to make a formal request. Boss lady number two had 24 hours to review the request before passing it on to boss lady number one, who had 24 hours to review the review. And she had another 24 hours to assign the report and then they inserted 24 hours for nothing at all. By this time of course the council member had forgotten about the machine gun thing. Instead he wanted to know where the gold was buried in Golden Gate Park. But of course, that too required formal paperwork be submitted. And so on and so on, until I thought I was going to lose my mind. It was horrible. Other City Hall people were living whereas we were dying. One second at a time, dying. And those other people, they were the folks I needed to impress - the future congressmen, the future mayors, the senators. I had to break this space-time continuum and I didn't know how to do it.
One day on the way back from my fifteenth bathroom break, something magical happened. A council member looked up and saw me and he said, hey, why don't you write me up a report on something ridiculous I just thought up? In this situation, face-to-face with a man who would be mayor, did I tell him to fill out the paperwork and wait for a forever review? No, no, no, no, no, no - I said, yes, sir, I'll have it on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.
I went back to my office, said nothing to the boss ladies, just pounded that report out, had it on the council member's desk that morning like I said I would. And it felt good. I felt like I was finally doing something, felt like I was in the game, you know?
So I kept wandering the halls - how you doing, Big Commissioner? Looking good, Council member, looking good.
It worked. Sure enough, they started asking me for stuff.
Glynn, I wonder if you could look into nationalizing the banks?
Yes I can, yes I can.
Glynn, can we declare war on Los Angeles?
I'll let you know, Council member. I wrote reports, handed them out like candy. The council members loved it - loved it. I loved it. It was almost like I had a real job.
And one day, one of them breached our office cubicle time barrier, rushed into the workspace to shout loudly, Glynn, that was the best damn report I've ever read. Good work.
He turns, leaves and this is the worst thing he could've done because boss lady number two says, what report? And boss lady number one says, what report? And then together, did you write a report without going through the proper protocol?
Uh-oh. The unpardonable sin. Deny, deny, deny. I say, of course not. No way. He must've had me confused with someone who actually does something. But now the boss ladies, they're onto me. They're watching me like a hawk and I've got all these reports I'd promised to get out, things to do. They hear me typing furiously away in my cubicle, desperate to fight the stoppage of time.
Glynn, what are you doing over there?
I'm just searching the Internet for Bigfoot sightings.
Well, OK then - as long as you're not writing any reports until they're assigned to you through the proper procedure.
They're temporary off the trail, until a councilmember cites one of my secret reports in one of his speeches - uh-oh. I get a message in my inbox that boss lady number one and boss lady number two want a meeting right away, right this moment, right now. Which thankfully, in our no time portal, takes about a month actually schedule, time I use to get a resume in the hands of every single council member. They all say, Glynn, you're great but after working with the legislative analyst, we don't feel you could operate within the hectic go-go pace of a politician's office, but thanks. Thanks so much for stopping by. I'm tainted. Its guilt by association and I want to scream. The meeting with the boss ladies comes and I'm thinking, fire me. Go ahead, fire me, fire me, fire me, fire me. I dare you to fire me. And I think they do fire me, it's just that, time moves so slowly it's hard for me to even concentrate on what they're saying. Something about, your problem is that you're hostile to the chain of command.
Chain of command? I turn in my badge, I turn in my keys. I escape back out into real time. I suck real time air. And I'm smiling, wondering what I'm going to do, but I'm smiling. You see, it really is better to be jobless in real time than to be stuck in no time at all.
Today on SNAP JUDGMENT from PRX and NPR, "Chain of Command," amazing stories from real people desperate to follow the correct protocol - or not.
My name is Glynn Washington. Get your papers nicely stacked in alphabetical order because you're listening to SNAP JUDGMENT. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.