My writ doesn’t run

This afternoon someone from one of our client companies asked (well, demanded really) that I dispatch a replacement battery to one of their end users whose laptop battery wasn’t charging.  The difficulty in this arose because the user is in Brazil, which is in a different region of the Empire, one where I don’t have dispatching rights.  So I wrote an email to my manager and two or three other people, asking for a contact in Brazil who could take care of dispatching the battery.  In the email, I used the phrase “where my writ doesn’t run” to describe my difficulty.

That started me thinking about the word writ and why it runs or doesn’t aside from running leaving you out of breath and tired.  After I got home I went poking online to see what I could find about the history of the word.

“Writ” is an ancient word.  Merriam-Webster says its first recorded use is sometime prior to the 1100s.  It is, of course, a nominal form of the verb “write,” and its original meaning was just that:  something written down.  But then the lawyers got hold of it, and started extending its meaning. A writ became a document issued by a sovereign or a court, directing a person or organization to do something, or sometimes to stop doing it.  The problem begins when you travel to a place where the sovereign’s authority, or the court’s, is no longer recognized.  At that point, your writ has run out:  it has gone beyond the area where it has any force.

So that was the problem I faced today.  My dispatching rights are only granted for North America, and this user had gone to a place where my writ doesn’t run.  I’ll have to figure out tomorrow, with my manager’s help, how to engage my Latin American counterparts to get the guy his battery.  But that’s why I’m a resolution expert these days.

About Marchbanks

I'm an elderly tech analyst, living in Texas but not of it, a cantankerous and venerable curmudgeon. I'm yer SOB grandpa who has NO time for snot-nosed, bad-mannered twerps.
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