It is a curious thing here at the Bulwark for Bilious Babies that some people are absolutely responsible for their work. No matter what happens, how it happens, or to whom it happens, if it happened while under your purview then it is absolutely your responsibility; no questions asked. This wouldn’t automatically be a terrible way to run the Bulwark, except that there exists a whole second group of people for whom everyone ELSE is absolutely responsible for their work. For these lucky few, every task they are given is magically transmuted by some mysterious alchemy into Somebody Else’s Problem. SEPs were first introduced to me as fields in the prescient work of Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and it certainly feels like this second group of people carry SEP fields around with them!
Today I was casually informed by a chance encounter that I have been made responsible for administering the Acupuncture and Cosmetics Trifle, or “ACT” for short. As per tradition here at the Bulwark, when an SEP is deployed against you, it is almost guaranteed that it will result in the most roundabout and wasteful plan imaginable by gods or men. I have been tasked with administering the ACT to a single student during the school day by a person who doesn’t teach a regular class.
I’m sure that my Dear Readers believe that this is a simple task easily accomplished and that I shouldn’t be as perturbed by this assignment as I clearly am. Please remember that I still have classes to teach on this day, so while I’m silently staring at a single student for 6 hours, substitutes (teachers with planning periods) will have to be found to oversee the classes I am already prepared to supervise. So now I must create a plan for my classes which doesn’t rely on the relationship or expertise I normally bring to class so that my actual students have something to do while I stare silently at a single student.
If nothing else goes wrong, this single Acupuncture and Cosmetics Trifle administration will require no fewer than 4 teachers and my students will experience a (hopefully only slightly) worse lesson than they might have otherwise. This, then, is the direct result of an SEP in action. This cascade of inconvenience on other people’s lives and work is all a direct result of the absolute certainty that their work is entirely Somebody Else’s Problem.
Does anyone have a slightly used SEP in good condition that they no longer need? I know that I didn’t go to school long enough or in the correct enough field to have earned one myself, but I figured that if I could even borrow one for a few minutes I could make that technicality Somebody Else’s Problem as well and by the time everyone figures out what to do about it, I would be back in my classroom doing my actual job.
Sarcastically Serious 