Pigs is Pigs

The most dangerous words in the English language: "The rules are the rules." When Mr. Morehouse tries to ship his guinea pigs at the pet rate, express agent Mike Flannery won't budge. They're pigs, aren't they? And pigs ship at the swine rate. What follows is a magnificent escalation of bureaucratic stubbornness, as Flannery's literal interpretation of company policy collides with an ever-growing population of rodents and a customer who refuses to pay a penny more than he owes. The result is chaos, absurdity, and one of the most perfectly constructed comedies of early American literature. Butler understood something essential: the absurdity of bureaucracy isn't in the rules themselves, but in the humans who enforce them with unwavering conviction. Over a century later, "pigs is pigs" remains a perfect encapsulation of the absurdity that happens when nobody dares to use common sense.