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Fast Freddie’s Castle of Common Sense: Episode 34: ZERO TOLERANCE
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Come on in to the castle, Ladies and Gents.  Sit by the warm fire and warm your toes.

Tonight’s subject is entitled, “ZERO TOLERANCE.”

A major attack on our collective common sense has quietly been conceived and implemented as we  carried on our endless debates over abortion, gun control, crime, same sex marriage, taxes, bad economy, war , liberal vs. conservative, and so forth.  While we made sweeping, simplistic statements over coffee and cocktails on how to solve all of these social problems with our own version of a single “magic bullet”, our Governments and institutions began to establish a frame work within schools and many other organizations  to ensure fair and ethical behavior for all. In other words, while most agreed that there was no single magic bullet to solve all of our problems, we are going to begin to implement this new one because “it can’t hurt” and “will help put us back on track.”

To insure that it is easy to understand and to make it easy for others to copy as well, we will call this a program of “ZERO TOLERANCE.” That means we will establish various straight forward , simple rules for our organization that everyone can understand and, at the end of the list of rules, we will close with “there will be NO exceptions.”

Once this concept became accepted and understood many of us jumped on the train and began to expand the idea to our everyday interactions as well. I mean, after all, it’s much easier to apply tough decision making when there’s already a simple rule to guide you right? No stress on you because a rule has already been written for it. We can proclaim our judgment on this issue and move on to something nicer like lunch or vacation planning.

An interesting derivation of the zero tolerance emerged from this movement. This one is designed to allow judgments on all those around you while being able to disassociate yourself from any possibility of a wrong judgment. It’s called “One aw shit cancels out 10 attaboys.”  No longer is it necessary to look at the big picture. Regardless of a long record of exemplary behavior from a friend or associate, if they screwed up once (an aw shit) then that’s it for them. You close the book and move on to find new friends. Note: it is more difficult to apply this concept toward family members, but for a true believer it can be done.

Unfortunately, there is a down side to this world of black and white with no shades of grey ever. We are beginning to see the results of major applications of zero tolerance and, well, they just don’t seem confirm that it works right — er — I mean that we have ended up with situations that create the possibility of an exception when there aren’t supposed to be any!

For example:

A third grade girl gets an 8 day suspension from school for bringing a dinosaur shaped squirt gun to school (no guns of any kind allowed).

A sophomore girl gets expelled for having Midol in her purse (no drugs of any kind allowed ).

A valedictorian doesn’t get to make his speech to the graduating  class because of a forgotten Swiss army knife in his backpack (no knives of any kind).

These types of grey situations create major stress because they require additional thinking and the application of common sense from the ruling authorities. The very things that establishing the rules was supposed to prevent! as long as we follow the rules, we won’t risk MAKING AN ERROR in judgment - right?!

As we expand this mantra of zero tolerance into our interaction with others, we can then find others guilty of terrible wrongheaded ness on a particular subject and reject them as a friend right then - regardless of how many previous pleasant agreements may have been shared. This because of the application of the one aw shit rule which - of course  - can’t have any exceptions  right?

For the graduates of the all things are black or white school of thought there is of course a downside or two.

You may look up one day and find that after a life time of applying the “this person doesn’t measure up” rules you have ZERO friends in return for your zero tolerance philosophy. Just as painful, you discovered that you yourself committed an aw shit or two on someone.  Did they cancel your friendship?

Maybe you caught a break! Wasn’t it fortunate that they weren’t truly zero tolerance folks, eh? I suppose you could apply your own rigid, uncompromising way of thinking and cancel the relationship yourself. I mean, you would at least protect someone you thought well of from being subjected to YOUR aw shit right? It ’s the least you can do to protect the rest of us from errors that you make and someone fails to make final judgment on you for them! Surely they must be aware that YOU don’t often do an “aw shit”  and when you do one it’s just an accident, unlike the other transgressors. You didn’t really mean it - right? But then - wouldn’t THAT be an exception to the RULE?