My Favorite Clause: The Flexibility Clause! (or: What I Learned at UPS)

Amidst the chains of a Bureaucratic Universe...the suffocating, emasculating, smothering, infuriating, dispiriting chains...how do we keep sane, free, virile, light, sovereign, noble? The anwser is: The Flexibility Clause! I learned this marvelous principle in my 25 career in United Parcel Service. The principle is straightforward: all the regulations, protocols, rules, dictates...all of them...(but not the moral law itself of course!)...can be displaced by a simple prudential decision. Another word for "prudential decision": common sense! Yes...all the rules can be simply disregarded as needed: flexibility, prudence, common sense reign! UPS management had two codes: the official and the actual. Officially, the "tightest ship in the shipping business" complied with all laws, regulations, correct work protocols, and the dictates of "science"... in this case sacred Industrial Engineering. But actually, management was a macho, quasi-martial culture in which we were fighting an unending war with weather, traffic, accidents, the union (teamsters), recalcatrant workers, and human error...a war to get each package from point A to point B in the precise time designated. What was really valued was decisiveness, toughness, courage, determination, confidence, flexibility, and street smarts. The real code was not "obey the rules" but "get the job done, whatever it takes, and don't do anything stupid and don't get caught breaking the rules." And so, this unofficial culture gave us a freedom, an empowerment, a masculine confidence to make decisions and do what was necessary to fulfill our mission. As a package car driver I was out one Christmas season with my helper and my supervisor on an icy, snowy, dark night. We realized we had missed a stop halfway back the hill we had just come down. The supervisor was driving: he kicked into reverse, sped in reverse up the icy hill with all that blind spot behind him. The act was reckless and dangerous. I would not have done that. But I was thrilled by the daring. To an intemperate extreme he embodied the determination to deliver that package on time. When I supervised tractor trailer drivers my biggest challenge was a anxious, conscientious, actually quite decent guy who compulsively obeyed, literally, every work protocol. He always drove the designated speed limit, not a mile over, even if all traffic was speeding; he covered every item in his vehicle pretrips, if a highway sign said "construction: 30 miles an hour" he would do the 30 even in the middle of the night when no work was being done. As a result, he was always one to two hours "overplanned", that is, above the time determined for his work. He was the epitome of the official policy but the nemesis of the actual culture. I liked and respected him. He had integrity, consistency and logic on his side and I could not lean on him. And so: I exceed the speed limit on a habitual basis; I park in illegal spaces here in Jersey City all the time; as I keep poor financial records I feel free to make up my numbers for tax purposes; I have never sung "Happy Birthday" while washing my hands no matter what Dr. Fauci says. Which brings me, of course, to the last year of pandemic, paranoia and paralysis. For me, the hysteria and phobia around the virus has been far worse than the sickness itself. Of course I accept prudential, reasoned measures like masks in public, social distancing, ban on super-spreaders. But the safety-obsession, the protectiveness, the paralysis is beyond common sense. Most of the front-line workers "showed up" nobly and did their jobs, even facing danger, without complaint or pretension. Two groups, however, disgraced themselves: our Catholic bishops and the teacher's unions. The Catholic bishops closed our Churches, suspended the sacraments, condemned the sick and elderly to face death without the Annointing and be buried without family. They showed not the faintest faith in their own sacraments. They complied in a cowardly manner. Our Church has never, in my lifetime, stooped so low. The teacher's unions have caved to an irrational anxiety and disregarded the needs of the young. Seeing this, who would want to be a bishop or a teacher? As teh tenacles of the systematic, totalitarian, governmental-capitalistic-health-care-network grow and expand and strangle our freedom, we need a revival of the Flexibility Clause, and the freedom, confidence, virility and transcendence it grants.