How Not to Be a Dick: When Compliance Smokes Out Judgment

 

Before I ever sat in an HR office, I was hauling mail through Michigan blizzards. From 1979 to 1986, I worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, and if you think the USPS has labor problems today, trust me, it was worse back then. The culture was pure command-and-control, supervisors lived for clipboards, and grievance slips flew like confetti.

I joined the National Association of Letter Carriers, became a shop steward, and learned labor relations the hard way: face-to-face with managers who thought enforcement was a form of leadership. It was less “career” and more “combat training,” but it gave me the foundation for the 35+ years I’ve spent in employee relations since.

And it gave me villains. Not crooks — pettier than that. Petty tyrants with clipboards. Which brings me to Ron.

Ron was one of those. He managed me when I was a young letter carrier in Michigan. To this day, whenever someone asks me what pointless management looks like, I think of Ron’s Pinto rolling through a blizzard.

Blizzard Theater

It was one of those Great Lakes storms where snow comes in sideways, visibility is down to nothing, and survival feels like a coin flip. I’m slogging through my route, face half-frozen, wondering if I’ll lose fingers to frostbite before I finish. Then Ron shows up, creeping down the street in his Pinto, puffing on his pipe like he’s auditioning for Postal Inspector: The Movie.

Did he check if I was okay? Offer help? Ask if I could even see the damn mailboxes under three feet of snow? Nope. Ron waves me over, window cracked, smoke curling out.

“Michael,” he says, “I need to see if you’re wearing your tie.”

Let me repeat: in a blizzard.

I wasn’t. He threatened to write me up. The streets were impassable, the mail was soaked, people were huddled in their houses, and Ron’s priority was making sure the kid carrying the mail had on the proper neckwear.

In a blizzard.

The Box-Checker Archetype

Ron wasn’t as aggressive as Dick. But he represented a different breed of bad boss: the bureaucratic zealot. These are the people who care more about whether the “form was filed” than whether the work mattered. They don’t lead, they enforce. They’re not interested in outcomes, only in paperwork that proves they “did their job.”

And here’s the kicker: this wasn’t some one-off. The U.S. Postal Service has a long, ugly history with labor problems, and the numbers prove it. USPS’s own No FEAR Act data shows thousands of EEO complaints every year: 3,508 in FY2024 and already 3,268 by June 30, 2025. On top of that, unfair labor practice charges regularly pile up. While the NLRB doesn’t publish a simple USPS-only total, there are dozens of fresh ULP cases against the Postal Service in 2025 alone, from information-withholding to bad-faith bargaining.

Ron’s tie inspection wasn’t just one man’s nonsense; it was a microcosm of an institution that still racks up complaints like frequent flyer miles.

Why It Matters

• Box-checkers bleed trust. When managers enforce nonsense in the face of reality, they show they don’t understand or respect the work.
• Optics > outcomes kills morale. Nobody wants to bust their ass in a storm just to get written up for not wearing a tie.
• Culture rots one stupid act at a time. Multiply Ron by a thousand and you get grievance factories, lawsuits, and ULP dockets that never end.

Don’t Be Like Ron — Do This Instead

☑ Use judgment: rules are a guide, not a hammer

☑ Lead with empathy: check on your people before checking compliance

☑ Reward effort in hard conditions, not just adherence to policy

☑ Treat policies as support tools, not weapons

☑ Ask “What do you need?” before “What box didn’t you check?”

Try This Script

“Storm’s rough. Forget the tie today — stay safe. We’ll regroup after this blows over and figure out how to make things easier next time.”

Stress Inflictor Index

• Fear factor: 😐 2/5 (annoying, not terrifying)
• Competence drain: 😬 3/5 (time-waster, morale-killer)
• Legacy damage: 🤦 2/5 (memorable only because it was dumb)

Overall: 2.5/5 Stress Inflictor Category: Bureaucratic Clown

Anti-Dick Checklist: Ron Edition

What happened: Ron enforced a uniform rule in a blizzard. Rules > people.

Why it matters:

• Tells employees that rules matter more than people
• Destroys credibility: once you’re “the tie guy,” you’re done
• Creates the kind of petty culture that generates ULP charges by the truckload

Do this instead:

☑ Adapt rules to context

☑ Ask about wellbeing before enforcement

☑ Prioritize safety and common sense

☑ Build credibility through judgment, not paperwork

Ron wasn’t evil. He was worse: boring, predictable, and perfectly aligned with a system that still racks up unfair labor practice charges like frequent flyer miles. He was the tie cop in a snowstorm — a human reminder of why the Postal Service became both a labor law case study and a cultural punchline.

Next time: Sir William the Inconsistent

If Ron was the embodiment of petty box-checking, Sir William was chaos in a tie. He didn’t just enforce rules; he bent them, broke them, and weaponized unpredictability as a management strategy. What Ron did with clipboards, William did with whiplash — and the fallout reached far beyond one snowstorm.