Senseless Sensibility

Picture from Grainiums #1: Why a Blog.

See, it’s there! Right where I said it was!

In that big red circle! See it?
USE IT!!

Common sense is defined as "sound and prudent judgment based on simple perception of the situation or facts." It is a definition that is as subjective as the object it defines. It has to be, because common sense, in an objectively applied and substantive form, does not exist.

In a previous post, Words, Part 5 (August 29, 2012), I questioned the sense of school administrators and a public official in Prague, Oklahoma, for refusing to give the 2012 class valedictorian her diploma because in her speech she said "hell" in place of the school district-approved word "heck." One of the points I touched upon was the "rules are rules" mindset voiced by officials in their own defense. My response to that was, yes, rules are rules, but within the letter of the rule is the spirit of the rule. There aren't many rules that cover every circumstance affected by any particular rule, thus it's this in-between area when the concept of "common sense" should come into play. But it doesn't, because people are reluctant to use the gray matter that exists between their ears when encountering the gray matter that exists within the "black and white" of the rules.

Take the case of the 68-year-old Iowa man who was fired as a customer service representative by his employer, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, because he was convicted of operating a coin-changing machine by false means. What this man did was get caught using a cardboard cutout of a dime to operate a washing machine. For anyone wondering if coin-operated washing machines even accept dimes, they did back in 1963 when this crime occurred. 1963. Almost fifty years earlier. The man, 18 at the time, was caught, convicted and served two days in jail, which didn't preclude him from being hired by Wells Fargo. Fifty years later, Wells Fargo fired him - as all banks have similarly fired thousands of employees - because of a regulation that was put in place in the financial industry that "forbid the employment of anyone convicted of a crime involving dishonesty, breech of trust or money laundering."

The regulation, created in the aftermath of the financial meltdown that crippled the U.S. economy and designed to focus on executive-level employees who engaged in transactional crimes, has been applied across the board to all employees retroactive to their date of birth because the banks are afraid the FDIC will fine them for noncompliance by keeping them employed. The spokesperson for the American Bankers Association said that because of "public clamor for tighter regulation...the safest route is to fire the employee and let them pursue the FDIC waiver." The FDIC waiver process takes six to twelve months for approval. So this 68-year-old man loses his job for up to a year, loses his benefits and possibly his retirement, because no one had the common sense (a.k.a. balls) to step up and do a common sense thing like let the man stay employed and assign him non-transactional jobs until the waiver gets approved. Instead, they took the "safest route," meaning the decision made was not a sensible decision but one that covers an ass at the expense of someone else's ass because "that's the rule." But, hey, the banks used such great judgment deciding how best to manage the country's financial backbone, so why question how they use their judgment now?

Then there are the parents of a three-year-old deaf boy at a preschool in Grand Island, Nebraska, who became embroiled in a dispute with the school district's administrators because they claim the boy's sign language gesture for his name violates the district policy that encompasses "mimicking a weapon." The boy's name is Hunter, and the sign gesture he uses for his name is an actual, registered symbol with S.E.E. (Signing Exact English). In spite of that, the school is apparently afraid that someone will mistake a 3-year-old deaf boy's hand gesture as a lethal weapon and wants the parents to change the boy's sign language name. The parents don't seem to be inclined to do this and, to their credit, the community of Grand Island supports the family's decision.

Freedom of speechlessness

It's shameful to me that an adult or group of adults who are charged with overseeing an education system aren't mature enough, compassionate enough or, dare I say, educated enough, to comprehend how their decision not only emotionally impacts this child and his family, but also reflects poorly on the community they represent. That they can't differentiate between a deaf kid using his hands to speak his name vs. using his hands to pretend shoot someone leaves me speechless.

Understand, this isn't about rules or the need for rules. This is about the sensible application of rules. People seem to be less and less inclined to look at an exception to a rule and judge a sensible way to deal with it. Not the best way, a sensible way, because the best way isn't necessarily sensible. The desire has become to fall back on the easy answer - the rule - and take comfort believing one's absolved of any real responsibility for enforcing it even when knowing it's being wrongly applied. But as the official from Prague High School said, "...there's ways (sic) to change rules if you don't think they're right." Exactly. But it doesn't have to be a prolonged battle after the fact. It can start with sound and prudent judgment at the first point of having to enforce it.

I'd like to see the Iowa man gets his job back, and every person who passed the buck because they thought they were protected by the letter of the rule should get fired for doing unto others in the spirit of the golden rule.

As for the parents of Hunter, if they end up changing his name I hope they change it to Dick and teach him to drop his pants and wave his little pecker around every time he introduces himself...starting with every single shitbird Grand Island school administrator supporting the enforcement of the letter of the rule.