Honey Badger Don't Care

I love the "What I've Learned" feature in Esquire. You get the benefit of the accumulated wisdom of some very smart people like Regis Philbin and some people who have figured a few things out via some hard knocks (like Tim Allen).

Or the "Ask Jimmy the Bartender" feature in Mens Health--same thing. Great advice!

Recently, David Brooks of the New York Times did a series of columns on life lessons from folks who have lived a good long while. Excellent reading!

The point is, it's always less painful to learn something from somebody else's mistakes if you can.

So here, for your benefit, is what we have learned from our mistakes with APS:

1. Put on your headphones and listen to your iPod.

When you go to a meeting with APS people, you're going to be told over and over again what a great job they are doing and how they are using data-driven best practices and how they are on the upswing and how things are continuously improving. Put on your headphones and ignore this crap, because it's just a spiel Bevvy Hall told everyone to tell to parents.

Hall believed in the old football adage that the best defense is a great offense. So by always going on the offensive--always telling parents things were great and getting better all the time! --Bev was able to prevent APS from undergoing any real scrutiny for nearly all of her tenure. Until, of course, she left office utterly disgraced...

2. Don't worry about asking nicely, because it doesn't matter.

There are a great many people I know who really believe that if you ask a municipal employee to do their job better in a really nice tone and with your practiced empathy on full display you'll be able to persuade them not to hate your privileged ass and actually do the job they were hired to do in a halfway-competent manner.

I probably believed that at one point. But I now know it's a sucker bet, and it never works.

3. If you really want something done, there's only one way to do it, and that's to get a lawyer.

APS is condescending-to-openly-hostile to parents--you're the paper and APS is the scissors. But lawyers are the rock. So bring the rock with you. Trust me on that.

My prediction is that this whole redistricting thing will end up a bonanza for lawyers, and the communities with the best lawyers will win. I hope I'm wrong. But just in case, I want to find the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger of lawyers.