Musings of a West Texas Business Venture

Toilets A Go-Go

Rick Segal (who I found through Brad Feld's post today) pointed out some serious issues with context today, in his post about his toilet seat. Though I'm not inclined to send my developers into a customer's office with a toilet seat, I do understand what he's talking about.

The power of context is certainly amazing, and it can make people do some unusual things. For instance, most of our male developers go from Power Developers into a gaggle of tweens as soon as someone brings a female into the office. My employees didn't say or do anything they wouldn't normally do, but now there's something (the female!) out of place. Try taking your kids to McDonalds, not a problem. Now take those same kids, preferably a two or three year old, into your local 4 or 5 star restaurant, and see how the patrons react. You may end up with this particular story, from Waiters Rant. Need more excitement?

Take a normal pocket knife, the kind used for cutting shrink-wrapped electronics open, and stand in line to get on an airplane. In Lubbock, Texas, no one will bat an eye, but you will be asked to ship it home. In Las Vegas, Nevada you'll be lucky to not be arrested.

Back to developers and business people in general. Once a project starts up, or the details are all supposedly ironed out it's easy to forget that you have to pick your head up, look around, and make sure that you're still on track from time to time. Hopefully, if you're not on track, someone will gently nudge you in the right direction. Otherwise, you may realize that your manager is sending you to the grocery store, with a toilet seat.

[By the way, Rick has got to be fast on that BlackBerry to get all of that out while waiting around in Home Depot. That, or he's as handy as I am, and got to make multiple trips.]

posted by Anthony Presley @ 6:43 PM