With Great Power

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
-John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

Uni Paul called me a socialist once - at least I think it was socialist, Paul calls me a lot of things, and a lot of the time, I don't know what they are. I do like the idea of a utopia where everyone works together in a perfect society, but I also know it's impossible. People are corrupt, even when they don't mean to be.

I once foolishly believed that I would not be corrupt. That I could rise above petty politics and be a fair and just ruler. Well, I haven't yet reached the stage where I am ruler of anything, but at work, I was given the management of some licenses for a training website. We set some rules from the start: there are more people who want licenses than there are licenses, so the licenses would be given on a rotating basis, the first lot sent out, and then reclaimed after two months and given to the second lot, and so on. There is no audit trail - well, there is a log, but the only people who can see it are me and the other two admins, and we can delete it if we want to. There is no accountability - someone else is paying for the licenses, and trusting that we'll do the right thing.

The first lot were given out on an ad hoc basis - at first, there were only a few people who knew we had the licenses, so they got them first, and word spread via word of mouth. Eventually, we hit our threshold, and any further requests would be put on a waiting list to be given a license in the second lot of allocations.

About a week before we reclaimed the first lot of licenses, someone at work mentioned that he really wanted to send a few of the people on his team on a training course, but his boss wouldn't approve the budget. I knew that we had fifty licenses, but only forty people were currently on the waiting list for the second round (which would three days later), so I told him that if he acted quickly and emailed our license mailbox, he'd be able to get his team onto the waiting list, and they'd definitely get a license in the second lot of allocations. As knowledge of these licenses was spreading really slowly, we were going to send an email out trying to tell more people about the licenses, which would result in more people on the waiting list.

Strike one. I feel like even though he would have found out about it eventually, I was giving him insider information by telling him about it before the email went out. My only intention was to help him out, but it was only later that I realised what I had done was unfair to all of the other people who read their email on time.

We've gone through about four rounds now, and it seems like the same people keep getting asked to be put back on the waiting list as soon as we reclaim the licenses, meaning if there aren't fifty people on the license, they'll get to keep their license as they'll just get reassigned again since nobody else is in need of one. However, these people don't seem to know that we can track their usage. One of them has used it for a total of 16 minutes. He has had a license for 8 months, and has only managed to clock 16 minutes. I had a look and none of the courses are 16 minutes long. He clocked those 16 minutes the first time he got the license, and in the 7 months since then, hasn't done a single course. Yet he keeps emailing us saying that he loves having the license, and how he wants to be put back on the waiting list. Rules are rules, we put him back on the list, and every time, he has kept his license.

WELL, NOW HE IS BLACKLISTED. Even if there are no other people on the list, we are not giving him a license. He has been sitting on the top of the list for the past few weeks, and as far as he knows, all the licenses are currently being used - but they're not, we have three sitting idle at the moment (waiting list is empty, I guess nobody wants to study over the Christmas break) . I know that having three idle licenses is pretty much the same as assigning one to him, but by having these spare, it means if someone emails us requesting one, we can assign it right away, rather than having to wait for the next reclamation.

I feel like this is strike two. We've set the rules and he is following them. Now we've changed the rules behind his back because we don't like what he's doing.

I've saved the best for last. There is one other license hog (I'll call him Jason), however, it cannot be argued that he does not use it, because his logs show that he has logged hours of time, however, I know it's not really a good indication. I heard Jason saying how he likes to leave the course videos playing so that we won't take his license away. I asked him why he even wants to have a license if he's not using it, and he said he likes having it because it's free.

Usually, we give people a bit of leeway before taking their license back after two months, however in Jason's case, I'm usually the first of the admins to say that we need to take his license back as soon as time is up. I seem to be on a campaign to get him added to the blacklist, but have no proof that he isn't using it. I feel like this is also an abuse of power, because to be perfectly honest, I don't like Jason. Despite that, it's not fair to him that he has different rules applied to him because I don't like him.

All this has really done is solidify in my mind that leading people is hard, and I don't think I have the right personality for it. I honestly believe that I set out with the best of intentions, but I get so easily influenced, and I want to help people that I care about, so I can see myself becoming corrupt quite quickly.