Authoritarianism in daily life, or in the workplace. How do you confront it and change it?

I work in the mailroom of a university. Although we operate very much like a post office, we are university employees, not employees of the U. S. Postal Service. We handle a lot of packages addressed to students, as well as very important papers: visas, visa applications, passports, applications to graduate schools, checks, airline tickets, etc. Soon there will be absentee ballots.

When a letter or package is too big to fit in a mailbox, or when it has been sent by a method that requires the receiver to sign a receipt (FedEx, UPS, Express Mail, Certified Mail, etc.), we put a slip in the student's mailbox telling them to come to the window to pick it up. The slips are marked with the student's name as well as a unique serial number that identifies the package.

All the mailboxes have combination locks on them. So if a student comes to the window with a slip in their hands, we already know they must know the combination to the mailbox it came out of (barring some unlikely scenarios).

As a further precaution, we ask the student to show a picture ID. No problem so far. But here's what sticks in my craw: My boss says the only acceptable identification is the official ID card issued by the University. A driver's license or even a passport isn't good enough. But students often don't have their University ID with them. They are far more likely to have a driver's license.

My boss says that's the official policy of the University, and she didn't make the policy. However, there is no rule book in which I can look this up; I have to take her word for it. (Or I could go over her head, but that would be politically dangerous.) I believe she could change the policy if she wanted to, but she doesn't want to. She likes the policy, and so do my coworkers.

Correctly identifying the student who owns the package is not the issue here. The main rationale for the rule (according to my boss) is that we are helping to make the campus more secure by encouraging students to carry their University ID with them at all times. It enables the campus security guards (she says) to stop suspicious-looking people and ask them to show their ID. This is an awfully weak argument, in my opinion.

My boss has clearly given me the authority to make exceptions to the policy, but she insists that, in each instance, I must tell the student what the policy is, and that I am making an exception. The result is, I treat every case I handle as an exception. But I still hate having to lecture students about a rule that I think is stupid to begin with.

It's clear to me, by observing my coworkers, that they simply enjoy playing out a little drama with the students. They love being able to tell a student they can't have a package and then hearing the student plead, "Oh, please! Please! I paid fifty bucks for that textbook on Ebay and I really need it to study for a test tomorrow!" And then, when you finally "relent" and agree to make an "exception" you get to hear them say, "Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" What an easy way to get your ego stroked!

I asked one of my coworkers—who argued vehemently in favor of the current policy—"Would you ever absolutely refuse to hand over a package because the student didn't have the right ID?"

She said, "I might if I didn't like him—if he was a troublemaker."

(A troublemaker is anyone who has ever complained about the service they have gotten from the mailroom.)

My coworkers and I have fought about this until we were practically yelling at each other. Now I don't want to bring it up again unless I have some very powerful arguments. Any suggestions? Reactions? Are you dealing with similar problems?