Dear Reverend Mike,
I recently got a DWI. I have struggled through two weddings, too much money (I can barely pay my rent and bills most of the time) and various degrading and silly requests such as months of stupid, pointless classes and blowing into little plastic tubes every morning before going to work. My probation officer screwed up my paperwork, & there was some confusion as to whether I was finished or not. Next Tuesday should be my last day.
This man has made my life a living hell, even though the only thing I did wrong was miss a few BAs to go to two of my best friends' weddings. He's been dragging it out and trying to milk more time and money out of me for weeks now.My question: what should i do if he tells me I have to keep doing BAs for the rest of my natural life?
Here are some viable options I've come up with:
1. Slash his tires.
2. Find out where he lives and let my boyfriend burn his house down.
3. Go to his supervisor and complain.
4. Take him to court (this isn't really an option; if I could afford a freaking lawyer, I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place).
5. Grin and take it up the behind like a Rhesus monkey.
BTW what denomination are you? Because I hate organized religion. But that's neither here nor there.Your advice would be much appreciated.
Signed, Damn Sick of DUIs
Dear DSOD,
Receiving a DUI myself a few years ago I know what you’re going through and I can tell you the bullshit never ends. Ever. At least until it does actually end. But in the mean time it never ends. You’re not dealing with just one bureaucrat who answers your every complaint with "You should have thought of that before you got behind the wheel." You’re dealing with many vast and deftly inept bureaucracies full of underpaid and emotionally weary government employees who have neither the desire, nor means to feel pity for you. The courts, the DMV, the agency who administers your drug tests, the school that you pay tons of money to go to that tells you little more than "Don’t drink ever again, even though we know you will, so don’t drink and drive, but we know you will, so see ya in few years, if you’re lucky." And you’re not allowed to say anything to them because that takes time away from holding your head in shame.
I rarely make the case for complaining until you get what you want, but the one thing every bureaucrat fears is his supervisor. And the supervisor is just somebody who did the shit job for so long that they got promoted to having a even shitter job pay raise so small it’s probably lost in taxes. If your PO tells you the problem with your paperwork is worked out easier by having you keep coming back every single day when you know you’re done, by all means go to his supervisor. And if that person doesn’t help you, go higher. The right paperwork may emerge, but it’s more likely that somebody is going to feel too important to deal with this micro managing and just let you go.
Your nemesis won’t be punished though. You could cry to every person there and claim all sorts of mistreatment, but nothing will happen to the guy. They might let you go, but they won’t sympathize with you, if anything they will sympathize with him for having to deal with you. Unless he made a pass at you, that is. But as a guy, and I think every guy would agree, that’s a claim that would so ruin a man the only crime worthy of that kind of punishment would be if was true.
Which brings me to my main point: revenge is a dish best not served at all. Few things are more base and less satisfying than revenge. What you slash his tires and he has to take a cab home and buy new tires? You risk getting caught and that would just make him more of an asshole to the next person in your position. Not to mention you might be taking it out on his wife who needed the car to drive the kids to school in the morning, or go to night classes, or cheat on the prick. There is always somebody who is punished by aggression besides the one it was intended it toward.
I find great satisfaction knowing shitty people have to live in a world of shit every day. They live in constant fear about being treated to the indignities they subject others to, they cling to insignificant victories over people who have nothing but contempt for them, nothing you could do could them feel worse than they already do about themselves each night they have to go to sleep reassuring themselves they are not the tiny, meaningless people that they truly are. In the meantime you’re going on with your life and he becomes nothing more to you than an anecdote when your friends are discussing douchebag customers, dick bosses and burnout teachers.
Eventually it will end, he can be weathered and eventually become nothing more than an increasing forgotten memory. A memory made better probably if you start planing now, using everything you know about the man, the last thing you’re going to say to him that will make it that much harder for him to reassure himself that he is a good human being at the end of the day.
I knew I’d have to address the important point you bring up at the end of your letter sooner or later, being which cloth my manhood falls under. I am a devote and legal minister in the Universal Life Church, a sect dedicated to what is right and what is right for you. Unified by many different voices of its nearly completely ordained congregation, we hold dear what is dearest to each member. In short, I’m an atheist who sent five dollars to an internet church a dozen years ago because I got a kick out of being ordained for five dollars. I thought about getting my doctorate (in religon) so I could be Dr. Mike for this column, but I was afraid of getting sued or somebody bringing a lawsuit against the Universal Life Church. As misguided as the faith of the founder of the ULC might be (oh yeah, he’s a true believer) the last thing I want to is to shut down a institution that has done so much to make a mockery of faith.
