"To let you in on a little secret, sir, we here at the town service centre are required to satisfy any taxpayer request that is made repeatedly, or with threats of violence, no matter how stupid."
In the last couple of years, all the violent reactionary assholes showing up at my local town hall had finally pushed the civil servants into adopting a new policy. It's a lot like the rule at 7-Eleven: you can have all the money in the register, I'll even help you put it in the bag, please don't shoot me. Like the hard-working convenience store employees, the government folks would call the cops afterward, too, except that in the case of town hall, it's usually the cops making the threats.
Either way, I just had to fire up the ol' email machine and send fourteen hundred angry emails in a row asking for some road improvements, and boom. FIA race-specification curbs on my way to work. Now I don't have to worry about curbing my wheels when I go a little wide on that turn by the daycare, and with that extra confidence, I can finally wind third gear all the way out on that tricky right-hand sweeper before the dog daycare. Cut four, five seconds out of my commute. Real fast shit.
Sure, there's probably a negative to our government being beholden-by-policy to whoever the loudest, most murderous warlords in town are. Standing up to them, though, that's passé. That's some hero shit, and we're all too old to believe in things like "heroes" and "scruples." Now, the kind folks who work for the city just want to make it all the way through the day without someone throwing a grenade through the window of Recreation Services because the changing room at a public pool is insufficiently mopped.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a deranged conspiracy theory to spread on Facebook. Something tells me that The Man is trying to keep the proud, freedom-loving citizens of this city from having a free nitrous oxide dispenser on the oddly straight and exactly one-quarter-mile-long two-lane road outside the industrial yards.