For a very long time I’ve noticed something very peculiar about my job. I like to call it the “Cardboard Standee Effect”. When my clients run into trouble using their technology they do their level best to resolve the issue before contacting me, as is what anyone would usually do, but then they give up. They contact me and ask me to either control their workstation or come out to visit them. I walk in, make my greeting and ask what the trouble is and then have them do the very exact thing they did before, which didn’t work for them, and then it works and they are utterly flummoxed.

I’ve mused in the past that the office is populated with invisible naughty gremlins that love to cause mischief. For some reason, in this imaginary framework, I like to think that I scare them off. All I have to do is walk in and arguably, that’s enough for all the technology to suddenly start working like it’s designed to.

On a more serious note, it occurs to me that each one of us has a unique perception of the world. Some males are colorblind while I am not. This sort of example may be a part of what this is all about. Perhaps my presence, my observation of the situation causes a change somehow in how things turn out. There is a lot of deep explorations one could take involving things like a Schrödinger wave collapse which might also contribute to the explanation of this. That my presence, my observation of the situation is really all that is needed to pin down the randomness in these kinds of situations.

Depending on my mood I switch between these two senses, the fantastical and the scientific. I think the world is rich enough to hold both at the same time without any trouble and it certainly does make for some easy laughs – at least for me. My coworkers may feel otherwise, but so far nobody has tried to clasp me in manacles and pin me to one place – yet. 🙂