Recently commented on a post and remembered this one. Posting it here for your amusement.

Over the years, I’ve developed a seemingly counterintuitive mantra that “If you ain’t part of the problem, then you ain’t part of the solution”. This is the story of how this glorious epiphany first dawned on me.

I’ve never been one to take much bullshit from anyone, and especially not one to hand bullshit down to others. Obviously, this lead to mine joining the military at a young age, where such attitudes were praised (/s). Somehow, I survived my days in the military with this “go-getter” attitude to the point of being put as the lead of a division.

My department was in charge of all the major equipment for my unit. Each division owned their specific equipment, and as a whole the department maintained quite a bit of administration for this equipment. Run hours, maintenance logs, hourly readings for every gage and meter, etc. were kept on paper. I mean a lot of paper. Being as it were, the people under my charge had developed an efficient system where about a ream of paper’s worth blank forms were pre-made and marked with yellow highlighter and ready to copy each day to make the forms for the next day. (Fun fact: Markings made in yellow highlighter will not transfer to the copies when fed through a copier.)

On the day in question, my division was responsible for making forms for the next day’s use. However, the auto document feeder for the copier had broken.

Now in the military, there’s no such thing as established working hours. No picking it back up the next day. You work until the job is done whether it’s noon or midnight and you start “fresh” the next day. So there’s obviously a lot of incentive to get the job done, and done right (lest you get “called back in” to fix it) so that you can go home. Being there periods of time where you are deployed and “home” is a barracks halfway round the world, when you weren’t deployed, time home was something to be valued at the end of a work day.

I took a look and this copier was on its last leg. The plastic was completely busted, and there were obviously multiple previous “repairs” made to lengthen its life. However, the copier’s wounds were now clearly terminal and no additional life could be afforded with any amount of ingenuity. As it were, I declared a do not resuscitate, and sent someone to requisition a replacement. Upon return, I was informed that the supply officer had denied my request on the grounds that manual copies could still be made using the document glass, one document and one side at a time. Cue malicious compliance!

Now before I finish, I want you to remember that: 1) I don’t take shit from anybody, 2) My department was using this copier daily for 500+ documents, 3) This would directly impact the amount of time people had with their families, and 4) I wasn’t about to let shit travel downhill to people under me.

I lugged this copier into the supply officer’s quarters along with a sledgehammer. Wouldn’t you know it, but upon seeing it up close (and its innards all over the floor), the supply officer not only agreed that a replacement was in order, but approved the transfer of a seldomly used copier from another department. Sure I got a talking to later, but in the words of Lt. Aldo Raine, “I’ve been chewed out before”