methylethyl

After the rules post, I was still chewing on the problem. What burbled up in my brain is the perfect encapsulation of my struggles with implicit rules. 

In the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker books, he introduces the SEP field: a cloaking device. It's too hard to make things truly invisible. There are too many problems with it. People can still notice an invisible thing, run into it, etc. The SEP field gives you all the advantages of being invisible, without actually making you invisible, so you avoid those pitfalls, and it tweaks a pre-existing human impulse, so requires far less energy to work. The cloaking device simply makes the thing it's cloaking look like Somebody Else's Problem. People see it, but then immediately push it out of their minds, and do not remember it later. You're not invisible, you just look like that spill on the kitchen counter that nobody wants to clean up so everybody studiously ignores it. 

At church one day, I noticed the handle on one of the ladies' room toilets had broken off the flush lever. It was still there, but you couldn't flush the toilet with it-- it jiggled fruitlessly, attached to nothing, purely decorative. I took the lid off the tank, pulled the chain and flushed it, then made an "out of order" sign and put it on the stall door. I asked around until I found the person responsible for toilet maintenance, informed them about the problem, and...  figured my job was done. I offered to do it myself, but I was assured this would not be necessary. The person did not forbid me outright (this is important), but also did not authorize me to fix the toilet. 

Weeks passed. The toilet continued to be broken. There are five stalls in the ladies' room, but after church EVERYBODY with little kids takes them to the bathroom all at once. 99% of the time, two stalls would be sufficient, but then there's that one predictable time where all five are necessary and important. If you didn't have little kids, perhaps it would not seem urgent. Maybe there's a latent SEP field around it. 

This was after I had been dressed down by the choir director for violating chain of command, so I was not feeling great about...  what I was definitely about to do anyway. Toilet mechanisms are very simple. A trained monkey could fix it in 1 minute, without any special tools. Risk of accidentally breaking it nearly zero. Every week, I'd entered the "out of order" stall, reached into the tank, and lifted the flap to flush the toilet-- it was getting slimy from disuse. I took a look at the mechanism to make sure it was the ordinary familiar sort I've replaced half a dozen times before, and checked the other toilets because I thought I could hear a trickle somewhere. The toilet at the opposite end had a flapper that was aging poorly. OK, that's another easy replacement. 

I went to the hardware store, paid about $15 for the relevant parts, stowed them in my oversized purse, and waited. Soon enough I found myself at church after most people had gone home. Alone in the ladies' room I replaced the leaky flapper and the broken flush handle without authorization, hoping I wouldn't get caught. Took down the "out of order" sign. Toilets have all been working fine for several months now, nobody the wiser. The problem is fixed: internal discomfort about non-working thing banished. Yay. 

I feel guilty about this. I probably should have gotten permission first. But I had already tried the "proper chain of command" route and it hadn't worked. I don't need recognition. But I really, really, on an intensely visceral level, need the toilets to work properly. It chafed my soul to have such an easily-fixed thing not working, week after week. From previous experience...  I hesitate to keep working the chain of command and pestering people after I have found and notified the right authority. It doesn't work AND people get irritated with me. Not everybody has the same soul-deep need for things to be correct, work properly, function well. Keep hammering at the chain of command on that and a lot of people will perceive it as a personal attack. 

I don't want personal drama. I just want the toilet handle to work. 

My brother is the same way, but with a lot more experience. He says half the problem is, when you're new anywhere-- new workplace, new duty station, new unit, new boss, new roommates, new whatever-- no matter how helpful you are, anybody who authorizes you to fix something is sticking his neck out. What if you're a moron and you break everything? Now it's their fault for letting you do it. Once you have had time and opportunity to establish that you are not, in fact, a moron, then it's different. You still can't get any traction with the proper chain of command most of the time, but you do reach a point where everybody is willing to overlook you violating it to set things to rights. They won't take responsibility, but they also won't stop you and you don't have to smuggle toilet parts in your purse like some kind of reverse burglar. 

I struggle with that part: integrating myself into the group enough to achieve "not a moron: can be trusted with flush handles" status. But it's deeper than that. I struggle with hierarchies whose priorities are opaque. Probably, they have bigger things to worry about. Maybe it's my perspective that's wrong. Maybe they were waiting for someone else to fix it, like the coffee spill on the counter. Or maybe they just forgot because they never use that stall. I have no idea where the line is between a gentle reminder about an important item and relentless harassment about trivial things... or rules that are absolute and rules that are just guidelines and OK to work around when necessary.