It’s been a while since I talked about work, so I figured I’d talk about some craziness.
I have often said that as long as you look like you are supposed to be doing whatever you are doing, then no one will question it. Take tonight: a couple of guys drove into an apartment complex parking lot and backed their truck up to a motorcyle. They then proceeded to load the motorcycle into the back of the truck and drive off. This was done in front of a number of witnesses.
Half an hour later when the resident of the apartment returned to find his motorcycle missing, they were surprised that those two guys had been stealing the thing. They thought it looked a bit suspicious, but, hey, those guys looked like they knew what they were doing.
I could tell a lot of stories like this. Ones where the police department never gets a chance to do anything about a problem because no one tells us about it. (I’m thinking of a story where this guy called to complain that the police hadn’t done anything about this crazy incident at his daughter’s residence, and after five or ten minutes of complaining figured out that the police didn’t do anything because no one called us about the incident in question.)
In other dispatch news: don’t go AWOL. The military is never pleased when you take their signing bonus and then try to bail on the rest of it. They’ll basically come get you anywhere in the country.
Thomas
re: going AWOL. Yeah, I think the US Military is on the top of that list of “groups you don’t want to mess around on”.
Yeah. The “look like you know what you’re doing” thing works even better over here, especially at 5 star hotels where the wait staff is sure you must be a celebrity and that if you are said no to it will result in your head immediately exploding and the immediate loss of their job. It’s what made Brand able to challenge the coach of the national cricket team to a grudge match, and made me able to wander over to one of the most famoys Kollywood celebrities and say hi. No one would dare stop me.
Even the times when a guard or an army ranger or a cop has stopped us somewhere, or where we haven’t been able to check into a hotel because we hadn’t booked in advance, a serious facial expression and a statement that says we know what we’re doing has waved us through. It’s crazy.
That reminds me of when I still did land surveying. I remember getting assigned to paint aerial targets for an aerial survey. Basically you need these giant, fairly precise, icons painted on the ground. A plan then flies over the area and uses paralax calculation and GPS correlation to fix the precise coordinates and elevation of each target.
It turns out that the best surface for aerial targets is pavement because it is high contrast (especially with white paint) and uniform. Also it is flat and makes a good painting surface. So we drove out to the area in question, parked the truck with its flashers on, and put on reflective vests. Then one guy would direct traffic around one lane of traffic while the other walked out and started painting lines in the middle of the road.
I don’t think a single person asked us what we were doing. Not even the one or two police officers that drove by.
Thomas
Heh. Okay, we were doing a serial improv drama in univeristy, and for one of the episodes, we were rigging up a pyrotechnics prop that would gout flame on command. For it, we were rigging a remote trigger, witch was a black box, with a single red detonation button. We wired it, all out in the open on the table of the cafe we used to hang out at in the day, complete with a label that was taped above the detonation device that clearly said “BOOM”.
In the hour and a half when we were wiring, only one person asked us what in the hell we were doing. When we responded: “Building a bomb!” She replied “Oh. I should be worried, but I’m not, and wandered away.”
It’s not just that you need to look like you have the authority or the right to do what you are doing, you also need people to notice, well, anything at all, and care when they do. It’s shocking how rarely that happens.