Those who make rules, those who get around them

Bureaucratic rules and regulations can really get out of hand. They’re usually created with noble purpose but often end up making whatever problem designed to solve worse. It doesn’t matter where in the world you are or what the institution is. Bureaucracy is pretty much the same.

Take the United States Navy, for example. When my father graduated from dental school in 1942, he joined the Navy and served during World War II. He seemed to like the service but didn’t spend much time on a ship.

The reason was his specialty. The Navy found him more useful serving the dental needs of Marine Corps personnel on land bases.

But in the early 1950s, Dad made the decision he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life filling teeth. Nothing wrong with that, but another profession was in its development called “oral pathology.” In 1952,

Pop got the Navy interested in the subject, and they agreed to pay for his advanced education at the University of Michigan and Georgetown medical schools. Later, he became a leader in this field.

There were only two places in the military where he could practice his newfound profession. They were both in the Washington, D.C. area.

But Dad had a surprise in store for him, and yes, you guessed it — bureaucratic regulation.

As I recall at the time, the Navy had a rule that all personnel must serve aboard a seagoing vessel at least once every four years. My father had not been on one in 10 years. He got the requirement delayed because of his continuing education. Now the bureaucrats would have their way.

“This makes no sense,” Dad argued with the powers that be.

“I can’t practice oral pathology in the middle of the Pacific

Ocean. Why pay for my expensive education, advanced degree and then put me in a floating dental clinic?”

“Rules are rules,” the bosses replied. “You must serve your sea duty.”

After several rounds of discussion, the two sides came to a compromise. Pop would serve his sea duty, but it would be on a hospital ship in Long Beach. At the time, there was no Naval hospital at that location, so the USS Haven provided services.

One weekend per month, it left port for Catalina Island to make sure the ship was still seaworthy.

So what did my father do during this two-year hiatus? Because of the inflexible regulation, his new profession would be placed on hold. Hundreds of cases of oral disease, including cancer, would go undiagnosed — but the regulation would be obeyed!

Dad kept his mind stimulated by working with dentists and other physicians on reconstructive surgery cases.

Sailors with weekend passes loved to get into barroom brawls. Unfortunately, some came out on the short end. I remember in 1955 my father showing me a Kodachrome slide of an enlisted man, who had been beaten with a baseball bat on Christmas Eve. His head looked like a basketball.

I guess one could say it was useful work patching up these young brawlers for the Navy, but it certainly wasn’t the focus of what Pop was trained to do.

His requirement for sea duty ended in 1957. That’s when Dad returned to Washington, D.C. Now he could practice what the taxpayers had paid him to do in the first place.

I guess the brass later saw the light and “forgot” about the regulation, because my father served in the D.C. area until 1967. At his retirement, he became chair of oral pathology at the University of California, San Francisco.

There seem to be two types of people in the world: Those who love making rules and those who find creative ways to get around them. Reality requires the second type, as in my father’s case, inflexibility made no rational sense.

And so lies the problem with bureaucratic regulation. We certainly need structure to avoid chaos, unfairness and fraud. But without common sense, too often logical outcomes get lost in the maze.