The other day, a colleague came into office and found the mouse of his laptop missing. He looked all over for it, accused almost all of us of having ‘borrowed’ it (though that was not the word he used), and when he wasn’t able to locate it anywhere, reported it as stolen. It was treated as a serious breach of security, and a mail was sent out to all staff members to take care of their belongings since there were ‘several instances of pilferage being reported’.
The mouse was referred to by name, seeing which, our CEO remembered the mouse that he had borrowed but forgotten to return. My colleague got his mouse back, and the status of the office returned to being a no-thefts zone. As a security measure, we were, however, asked to lock up our belongings before leaving the office.
When he left for home that weekend, the same colleague left his laptop unguarded on his workstation, but took the precaution of locking up his mouse.
Even after we pointed out the obvious error in his reasoning, he just didn’t get it. And this an otherwise sensible and reasonable man.
If you read something like this in a book, you would dismiss it outright as being unrealistic. But when you really think about it, aren’t we all prone to do similarly stupid stuff. Things that happen in real life, cannot always be put into a story, can they?
6 comments:
Rayna - yep, you can and people call it fiction. It reminds me of what Hemmingway said - make sure you write it true!
Truth is stranger than fiction!
He sounds incredibly immature.
Elizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
Oh that's hilarious! And sad... Wonder why he is so attached to the mouse, rather than to the more expensive laptop... Maybe he was a cat in a former life?
"Penny wise, Pound Foolish" as they say in an old english idiom
-Mana
Absolutely! "Nobody's that dense!" When in fact... we are... every last one of us can get tunnel vision, or so excited about one thing that we fail to notice another sort of related thing. I think our problem is we attribute all actions as rational, when in fact people so often act without really thinking...
@ Jan - and wise man that he was, Hemmingway was right!
@ Elizabeth - guess he is proof that age, a really good education, and fantastic career opportunities are not enough for a person to get that thing called common sense.
@ Fiona - I really must tell him that, and see what he says :-)
@ Manasi - thanks for dropping by. And yes, totally
@ Tami - quite. You imagine that nobody can be 'that way', while in fact, they are!!!
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