Source: Pexels / Reddit

The term “Air Force mission” sounds epic in theory, but it rarely is in practice. Very often, the most “exciting” part of the adventure is the safety of having to do the same tedious task over and over.

What would you do if a simple mission turned out to be a massive waste of time? One guy recently shared with Reddit how his own platoon dealt with this situation. Here’s what happened.

Spanish Air Base Tried to Enforce a Ridiculous Rule: The Great Car Registration War

This is a story from my time in the Air Force.

We took part in an international exercise in Spain.

For this, we deployed several aircraft and around 200 personnel to a Spanish air base.

Certainly not your average Reddit story already.

I myself was there ahead of the main contingent with a small advance party of about 15 men to prepare everything for their arrival.

One of our tasks was to register roughly 50 rented vehicles at the base gate and bring them onto the base.

To do this, the Spanish authorities introduced a rule that each of us could only register five vehicles under our name.

That doesn’t sound too efficient for what needs to happen here.

So we drove the vehicles up to the gate and then each of us gradually brought in three to five cars, including registering them in our names, which was noted on the vehicle’s access pass.

At first, this went smoothly and we were able to hand over the vehicle keys to the comrades arriving later.

However, after two or three days, problems started.

Seems inevitable here.

An official notice was issued stating that from now on, each person was only allowed to have one vehicle registered under their name.

So we gathered additional people and drove to the gate to transfer the excess vehicles from one person to another.

The whole process took about two hours, but eventually it was done.

Wrangling rabbits sounds easier.

That arrangement lasted for about a week.

Then suddenly, cars trying to leave the base were being turned back.

The guards would no longer let them leave unless the person under whose name the car was registered was actually sitting in the vehicle.

Maybe they should have thought about this beforehand?

We then sought talks with the local authorities and explained that we assigned vehicles according to current operational needs and that it was impossible to comply with this new rule.

However, we were dismissed rather smugly with the explanation that if it was absolutely necessary, the vehicle could simply be re-registered.

From that point on, it very much felt like deliberate harassment to me.

A line in the sand was certainly drawn.

But we still had good old malicious compliance!

We instructed all soldiers that whenever time allowed, they should drive to the gate in pairs and have vehicles re-registered.

Either from a person who already had a car to someone without one, or, if both already had a registered vehicle, simply swap them around.

That’s one way to teach them a lesson.

Within a very short time, the guard office was completely clogged up, and the official probably had to process around 50 vehicle registration changes a day.

And what can I say, after two days of the guard office being blocked by endless vehicle re-registrations, it suddenly no longer mattered whether the registered person was sitting in the car or not!

All’s well that ends well it would seem. Let’s see what the good folks of Reddit had to say about this one.

A few readers could relate all too well.

And shared their own experiences from the Force.

One person left behind some sage advice.

Another thought about the old days.

But one person pointed out the obvious.

They figured out how to drive circles around those guards!