Originally Posted April 13, 2008
A story I heard.
So two local gyms combined and in coming together pooled their resources and got themselves into a huge building in good repair. All involved are good-hearted hard working small town folk dedicated to teaching and coaching kids. None of them are well-connected, and when they got into their new building and started making it a safe place for kids they didn't go to the "City" to see what they were "supposed" to do. What they did was pull in the parents and the kids and everyone worked together to make this newer bigger gym a safe and happy place.
Enter a city Inspector…..
Mr. Important walked in and with not an ounce of compassion told the principles' that he was going to lock the doors of the gym on Monday, that they could have a hearing in a couple of weeks and maybe get a decision in a month or two.
The principles' were devastated. Every dime they had had gone into preparing the new facility for the kids. They wouldn't survive a months shutdown. This was a catastrophe.
Apparently there was a commercial use issue and a question of if there were enough parking spaces for this endeavor. In the eyes of Mr. important these concerns outweighed the needs of some five hundred kids and their parents and the business owners.
There is a happy ending to this story. One of the principles called the gyms landlord. The landlord showed up and after a heated tirade directed at Mr Important and some calls to the Mayor and some city councilmen, Mr. Important was directed to let the gym open Monday. Mr. Important returned and gave the gyms principles' a list of needed changes they would need to make. These amounted to a couple of hours work.
My problem with all of this is that if the gyms landlord was not a well-connected and influential person in the city, the gym would have closed Monday morning. Five hundred young athletes would have been put out, several local entrepreneurs' could have lost their investment and Mr. Important would have won the day. Is Mr. Important really an evil guy? No, he's just a garden variety bureaucrat.
Posted 9:32 April 13, 2008
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