Never Cover Your Ass

We have a limited time on this tiny clod of dirt called Earth, and we have to do what we can to make our lives count. You could die tomorrow, so each moment today is precious. One way to make better use of your time, is to Never Cover Your Ass™.

What does it mean to Cover Your Ass? It's an English idiom, and it means doing something not because it's worth doing on its own, but just because it gives you an excuse so you're not to blame if something else goes wrong.

Examples of Covering Your Ass:

1. A teacher who slogs through some required curriculum even if it becomes clear the entire class is left behind, just so the students can't say "uhh, we didn't learn that yet" to their next teacher. I wrote about this example in my previous article, Teach Steadily, Not Quickly. The teacher who goes through the motions even when it's clear the students are too behind to follow, is just Covering Her Ass so she can pin the blame on the students, rather than on herself for not being a good teacher.
2. A jet mechanic who just goes through a checklist mindlessly, half-assing everything in some Standard-Operating-Procedure manual so if the jet crashes, it's not his ass on the line.
3. A telephone operator who just reads a script like a robot.
4. When I was in the Air Force as a weather forecaster, there was a lot of Ass-Covering in that career field. We had specific "amendment critera" which specify when a weather forecast is so inaccurate that it absolutely must be amended. Airmen started just following the criteria like robots, and neglecting to use their common sense. Sometimes, some forecasts were pretty hilariously wrong, but somehow technically still "in category" and so no amendment was technically required.
5. A soldier who follows unethical orders, just to avoid "getting in trouble".

If your line of work involves Covering Your Ass, then rest assured you're not making the world a better place. One question to ask, if you're not sure whether you're Just Covering Your Ass, is: could a robot be programmed to do your job for you? Assume the programmer is really freakin good, so so any sort of Standard Operating Procedures, Mission Statement, checklists, regulations, rules, and bylaws can be programmed into the robot.

Noone will ever go down in history books for Covering Their Ass, except possibly in infamy. If you want to leave a positive mark on the world, never Cover Your Ass. Let's go through those examples and see what some alternatives would be to Ass-Covering:

1. A teacher who sees the whole class has been left behind, should immediately slow down, or possibly even move backward, until the class has, at least mostly, caught back up. Otherwise, the teacher is just talking to air, and everyone's time is wasted. If the class contains lots of required material for a later course, and slowing down will prevent all that material from being covered, then either do what it takes (extra review sessions, office hours...) or else man up and hand out some F's. The whole reason for degree inflation is that students get passing marks in classes where the whole class was left behind, because the teacher rushed through to Cover His Ass, and then graded on a curve so he wouldn't have to fail everyone.
2. A jet mechanic should certainly follow the checklist, but never half-ass it. If there isn't enough time, then let the flight be delayed. If some supervisor gets angry because of the delay, that's their problem.
3. A telephone operator reading a script robotically is just a loophole to get around laws which prevent companies from using actual robots outright. Interject some humanity into the conversation. Ask people about how their day was, etc. If this is forbidden, then the company is a sleazy company hell-bent on pestering people with unwanted calls, and such a company doesn't deserve your labor.
4. In the Air Force, I was as guilty as anyone at Covering My Ass. I'd even adjust the forecasts when I sent them out, so that they had the most possible "bending room" before I'd have to amend them-- even if this meant deliberately forecasting weather I didn't believe would really happen! I think this had a lot to do with the great agony I had in that career field. It was only when I grew past this immature, Ass-Covering behavior, that events unfolded to let me escape my time in that purgatory.
5. A soldier should never follow orders which are unethical. The "Nuremburg Defense" is named after the Nuremburg Trials, where German war criminals pled, "I was only following orders!" In other words, they were Covering Their Asses from Hitler. Of course the cover didn't work so well on the Allied Forces.

Try to look at famous people and see who among them was Just Covering Their Ass. You'll have a long, hard look, because I don't think there are many. Do work which requires your unique skills as a thinking, feeling human being, or else your job will eventually be outsourced to a robot.

Here are some other articles I wrote. None of these articles were written by a robot.
Teach Steadily, Not Quickly
The Solution To The Money Game
Activism Goes Away After Graduation
Examples Of Japanese Onomatopoeia