Don’t Condemn Percy: Problems Often Aren’t, Especially People

One joy of moving into a new office is seeing old stuff in new ways. I am ashamed at the number of items I thought worked poorly that it turned out had been put together incorrectly, were being used improperly, or that were just broken and needing to be replaced. My favorite example is Percy, the Victorian doorstop.

Percy is a wyvern straight out Barterra and the Victorian Age . . . and Amazon. The problem with Percy is that though he weighs a ton, he kept tipping over when my door hit him. Sigh. What a product fail . . . a doorstop that will not stop my door.

And then I realized that I was a failed user.

Percy has one leg up to hold the door. Turned the proper way and Percy is stable and holds my door. I had been seeing Percy badly.

Now the obvious point must be made: sometimes our problems are not problems, but an inability to think differently. Khan lost to Kirk in Star Trek II because he could not start thinking in three dimensions. I was frustrated with my doorstop because I kept using it one way when it was designed to be turned in another direction.

This kind of idiocy happens all the time. It happens when college staff and administration swells to deal with problems that might go away if more teachers were hired and students faced fewer staff and administrators. Think differently.

Now that sounds like an Apple commercial with a grammar check . . . and there is a better lesson from my failure to use Percy properly. My first impulse was to (stupidly) assume that the people who made a doorstop did not understand their work. I have no expertise in doorstoppery, but I could see that their design . . . based on a pattern from one hundred years ago was bad. This was . . . foolish.

If something seems wrong, and there is good reason to think sensible people made it, I should first assume I am missing something. If the Ikea bookcase part does not easily fit, then Ikea is not to blame. I am. This safe assumption miraculously cures problem after problem without calling customer support.

I hope I am not the only one with this bias, so here is a warning: if you think something is foolish or broken or wrong, at least try out the notion that you are foolish, broken, or wrong. Try Percy in a different role. Think differently.

This is most important with people. I have friends who think Trump is the man and other friends that believe HRC is the obvious choice. Many others are saying “no” to both and looking for a third party. The easiest thing is to assume I know . . . and move on. This is a bad idea. My friends are (all generally) sensible people. What are they seeing I am not? Is there a way of looking at both candidates differently?

This is ever more vital with people I meet. Nobody should be assumed awkward or as a misfit. Any place where I have worked, firing has generally been our failure to imagine where that team member can fit. We did not ask. We did not think that perhaps we were “using” Percy in the wrong place or improperly. We needed to stop, listen, and imagine where this soul created in God’s image could use his or her gifts. We make the mistake of Santa in that profound classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. We don’t see what Rudolph’s nose can do, just that it is odd. We don’t see that the misfit toys can be fun, just that they don’t work well in normal circumstances.

Sometimes things are just a bad fit in our school . . . but that does not make the person a loser. Find the right spot and they can thrive. We need to give Percy a chance or better: we need to assume we are wrong until we are sure we are not.