Hi squad,

It’s been brought to my attention that we’ve been calling The Batman a little too much as of late. I think we can all appreciate that he is a valuable resource for this police department, but there are also things we need to be handling ourselves. The office toilet backing up, for instance, is probably not the best use of Batman’s time and something Luke should have managed through more traditional means. Although I think we can all agree that watching The Dark Knight solve that particular crisis was inspiring.

But word from Jim Gordon is that we’re “overusing” the Bat-Signal and I’m inclined to agree. So, with that in mind, and after looking at recent incident reports, here are some situations where we should definitely not be summoning the Caped Crusader.

We ran out of coffee. Running out of coffee is not a good reason to call Batman. Can we ask him to pick some up while he’s on his way here for something else? Yes, we can ask. Fresh coffee makes us all better at our jobs and chances are he’ll be driving by a coffee place anyway.

Greg won’t shut up about his kid. Nobody likes when Officer Greg goes on and on about his stupid kid. But does that mean we should call The Batman? What exactly was the plan here? Batman ended up beating the shit out of Greg and I’m told he feels awful about it. Now, did Greg end up learning a valuable lesson? Sure. But the ends don’t justify the means here.

Someone saw a bug. I don’t blame folks for being jumpy about mutant super villains these days. But calling Batman requires a little more investigative detail than just “Someone saw a bug.” What kind of a bug? Did you try squishing it? If it’s as big as that cockroach we found by the microwave that one time, then I’d say make the call. But otherwise let’s try to address the matter ourselves first, shall we?

Tupperware is missing. I’ll concede, this particular case is technically “a mystery,” but we need to start asking ourselves whether it’s a caliber of mystery worthy of The Dark Knight’s efforts? I’d argue it’s not, even though he did manage to locate a bunch of the containers in Hank’s car after beating the shit out of him.

Seinfeld’s on. Listen, we all love Seinfeld. Who doesn’t? But the fact of the matter is Batman is a busy crimefighter and he can watch Seinfeld on his own time. So we need to refrain from calling him in every time it’s on. Yes, even if the episode is “one of the good ones” (they’re all “good ones”). While we’re on the subject, we should probably all be watching a little less TV at work, too.

We want to feel his muscles. Batman is shredded, and it’s natural for all of us to be curious about that. But calling him in to feel his muscles is a no-go anymore. Again, we can ask to feel his muscles in passing when he’s here on a more legitimate matter. And if he says “not right this minute” or “maybe next time” we have to be respectful of that (Derek).

Look, I’m not trying to tie anyone’s hands here. We’re all doing the best we can to keep this city safe and running. Batman can be a valuable resource to that end, but let’s all try to be a tad more conscientious of his time, yes? On the plus side, I’m told we can call Robin whenever the hell we want, which is great because Luke has been in the bathroom for an hour and we all know what that means.