I recently had a very unpleasant experience with my mobile phone. Actually, it wasn’t so much my mobile phone itself, as it was the sharing of my private mobile phone number between colleagues. Seemingly harmless, but with great consequences.
One of my colleagues, in his innocence and with nothing but good intentions, shared my phone number with another colleague. As I was sitting in the hospital, the second colleague called me with questions about estimates I made for a project, which at that time intensely frustrated me.
Although I had the whole weekend to cool down, I was still pretty pissed the following monday. Some unpleasant conversations followed. I think everything is solved now but I can only hope somebody actually deletes my number when he says he does. Which got me to think about the old fashioned and spectacularly broken addressing model phone companies are still using.
Quite often I am amazed at people’s ability to miss what looks obvious to me. Not only the small things like cleaning up when you spill coffee over the floor, or washing your hands when you get off the toilet, but also bigger things. Like the silly “solutions” to the world’s pollution problem for example.
Stephen needs a new car. Being dilligent and a car lover, he takes the time to write down all criteria for a great car. When he finishes the list, he notices that the only car matching all his criteria is a Ferrari. Well, he always loved a Ferrari so that makes sense. To make things more realistic he adds another criteria, called “price”, and starts looking for alternatives.
