The chain of command in the military is set in stone and people must follow orders…no questions asked!

And, as you can imagine, sometimes that makes for some pretty entertaining stories.

Check this one out!

Are you sure that’s what you want… Sir?

“When I was a young man in the US Air Force, I was posted to work as a programmer on the master budget for the USAF in the Pentagon.

That might sound like something, but mostly it was just writing or modifying some old COBOL code to produce reports on things like lubricant expenditures.

Still, even using the word lubricants… not exciting.

Now, the USAF budget is a big, big, big thing.

I mean really honking gigantic big.

Everything is in there, from gravel to be purchased to sand a driveway in Minot North Dakota, to every nut and bolt and fiddly bit (technical term) to be found in a bomber.

The data is encoded not just by item, but by project, and also by base, and by category code, and by … etc.

In other words, there are a whole *lot* of different ways that you can report on the same data.

A lot.

One thing drove them crazy…

One of the banes of my existence during the blissful period of my enslavement to gigantic computing machines was when new budget analysts would come on board and start asking for new ways of looking at the data.

This is because there’s *already* a library of nine hundred and fifty seven bazillion different reports written by our team just to keep idiots like them contented and sleepy.

Now usually we could show the brand spanking new budget analyst an existing report and point out how to find the data that he wanted to see.

Almost always this pacified them and they did the best thing possible, which is pick up their large daily report and go away.

I say almost always because from time to time we would get a dude who would either ask for something no one else had ever asked for – very rarely – or they would insist that an existing report be modified in some stupid way to feature *only* the data they wanted.

Okay, one last explanation – these reports run every day.

They are printed out on 14″ wide green-bar fan-fold printer paper.

Then they are burst and collated, put on carts and then delivered upstairs to the hallowed sanctuary of the analysts.

They would then look up about three lines of data, mark a change and then dispose of the report for recycling in the pulping shredder.

So one day there is a new, fire-breathing analyst prowling my floor looking for someone to bother.

It was my turn in the barrel that day, so I took his request.

He explains to me that he needs a brand new report written.

I nod along.

He says that for each line item in the US Air Force spares inventory (about 900,000,000,000,000 things or so) to please print out the base that each individual component is assigned to.

Then for each base that each item is assigned to, print out the code name of the logistics program associated.

Uh oh…

In case my explanation is fuzzy, this is a laughably bad, miserable, terrible, horrible awful idea.

I explain to him that the information he is asking for should be collated in *exactly* the reverse order – Logistics program by base, then a list of associated items in spares.

And, it just so happens that we run that report at least once a week, and would he like a copy?

Needless to say, he made it apparent that I was an idiot.

So I called my boss over.

The analyst made his opinion of my boss perfectly clear to my boss.

So, the division chief was pulled over.

Now, this is when the beauty of malicious compliance begins.

The analyst calls his boss’s boss’s boss and ‘reports’ us for failure to make him happy.

I get told by my boss to run the report. I smile and nod.

You got it!

I tell the analyst “Sir analyst sir, this is a large report… you do not mind if we run it tonight?”

He says. “Have it on my desk in the morning!”

My boss says. “We will do our best, it’s a big report. Are you certain that you want this big report?”

Analyst demands it.

My section head says. “Great, please put that order in writing – here, and here, and copy here. And I’ll just note my objections here.”

Analyst has ignored about nine million warning signs and agrees.

So, I sit down at the punch card machine, modify an existing program to *remove* specific constraints that any sensible human who has enough sense to keep his **** out of his zipper would not *ever* remove, and I submit the job to start running on the midnight batch.

Usually, all our nightly reports are completed by about 2 AM.

This night, *no* nightly reports are allowed to run, as the machine is busy.

All the machine’s printers are busy. 2 AM comes and goes, 3…

Phone start ringing from the operators in the machine room – screaming like their pants were on fire.

No one’s reports are running.

My boss gets the call at home and tells them to make absolutely certain that job runs to completion.

Five AM comes.

The report is still running.

Hmmm…

Six AM

Finally at about 7AM, one of the general officers in charge of the budget program is called and informed that no nightly reports have run at all.

There are several hundred thousand pages of paper already spooled off the printers, with many, many millions more pages to come.

Guys from the staff have been running loads of reporting up to *one* individual analyst’s office, and no more will fit.

So they are storing it somewhere.

Just following orders!

Now, we got chewed out something fierce, but in the military there’s not really a lot that anyone can do when you have written legal orders from the chain of command that have also been verbally authorized by senior department officers.

Not much at all.

On the other hand, if you are a new budget analyst… it is entirely possible that you can get the spanking of a lifetime, and then get told “Don’t ever again ask the budget reports group to run a report for you as long as you work here.

You are too stupid to breathe your own air.

If you want something, ask another analyst to tell you if you actually need it, and then submit that request in writing to a senior officer.”

And that, kids… is the story of how I made someone disappear for four years.”

And here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person chimed in.

Another Reddit user asked a question.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another reader spoke up.

This individual shared their thoughts.

Sounds pretty wasteful to me…

I wish I could have seen his face the next morning.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.