MISUSING STATE RESOURCES. Where have you gone, Mike Royko? Many years ago, he made fun of Radio Shack's practice of asking customers for their names and addresses. (A quick Google search turned up nothing to link to, sorry, which is too bad, because the whole story is pretty funny.) A Radio Shack poobah wrote Mr Royko a letter defending the practice, which provided the material for another column. (We would understand this column today as a Fisking.) Somewhat later, Radio Shack dropped the policy.

There's another practice that deserves similar scorn. On a number of recent visits to museums, the ticket seller has asked me for my zip code, which I always decline to give. (I suppose one could be flip and give them 90210 or drive 'em nuts and give 'em SW1 4P5 which is somewhere in the neighborhood of Paddington Station.) One museum I recently visited had a sign up: "Please have your zip code ready for our State Tourism Reports." So I did some digging around. I have not yet found the precise statute or survey that mandates the practice. I did find this entry site for operators of businesses serving tourists, which clearly is making use of zip code data, this site for sightseers (might be fun to visit this site with the cookie sniffer engaged), and this site which won't let me go here. So while the universities are on restricted hours, the schoolteachers are supposed to be getting recertified without resources for the regional offices of education, the road reconstruction projects are delayed, and Metra recently took delivery of some overweight diesels, my tax dollars are going to pay for someone to ask all the museums to collect zip codes, the museums have to annoy their visitors with "what's your zip code?" and submit reports, and someone has to go through the reports. Sounds like a bigger waste of money than most diversity boondoggles. Illinois is not the only state wasting resources tracking the movements of tourists.

The practice of asking for zip codes seems to have found its way to some non-tourist businesses as well. Not too long ago I was buying some fixtures and plumbing supplies and the clerk said "I need your zip code." (subrant: and what is it with tellers and clerks saying "I need ..." as in "to see some ID" or "you to sign this" or something equally peremptory. In the war movies, the Gestapo man always said, "your papers, please." Find something less obnoxious than "I need..." Please. /subrant). For what purpose does a store have to ask customers for zip codes. It's easy enough to determine whether or not to build new capacity: just look at your parking lot; and it's easy enough to determine where to build it: just look where you're not. But lose the delusion that you're the Ministry of Internal Affairs and you have to keep track of where everybody lives.