Unseen Laws of Restraint

I think people are funny. They will walk around something in their way hundreds of times, but never take a moment to just move it to the side. There is an area at work where we keep the common office tools, like the paper cutter and hole puncher. During the process of someone getting new furniture, a large rectangular table was deposited right in front of this area. A small gap was left to allow someone to be able to slide through and thus get to the tools behind.

I must admit that I am guilty of sliding through this gap three or four times before I became highly agitated. I then stopped and assessed the situation. After doing some mental calculations, I realized that the table could be rotated ninety degrees and still fit in the space. This would also open up the area to the tools, so nobody would have to slide through anymore. It took me all of twenty seconds to rectify this problem, but this table has been sitting here like that for months. Countless people have slid through that gap multiple times and nobody even once thought to just move the table.

It is almost as if people feel the need to unconsciously adhere to these unwritten laws of the environment. Laws that cannot be broken. Laws like always riding on an elevator facing the door, or never walking up a moving escalator, or walking around an obstacle rather than just moving it out of the way. People will actually expel more energy, walk further, waste more time following these “laws” than they would just simply changing the environment. They seem to overlook the simple, more obvious solutions to problems in favor of adhering to these un-imposed restraints.

I once received an e-mail about testing for admission into an insane asylum that went like this:

During a visit to an insane asylum, a visitor asked the Director what were the criteria defining whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

"Well," said the Director, "One test is that we fill up a bathtub and offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."

"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the teaspoon or the teacup."

"Well, no," said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a room with or without a view?"