Manufacturing Bad Luck
Lets face it we can all have a run of bad luck. Things will occasionally just appear out of the blue and slap us in the face like a wet kipper but some people seem to get more than their fair share. This morning I was talking to a friend who has permanent bad luck. Everything goes wrong for him to the point he now expects it to. His outlook on life is, expect the worst and then if it doesn’t happen it’s a nice surprise.
OK, I can understand that one. It should mean you’re never disappointed. Then I got to thinking…. does that attitude force the results? If you’re expecting a bad outcome does it influence things? Can we actually manufacture bad luck?
Take June this year for example. I had parked my car on the road. I couldn’t park it outside our house as Harv’s car was there so I’d parked a bit further along. I was working in the office when there was a loud noise from outside and further inspection reveled that a neighbour’s chimney had been blown off his roof. The landing place it chose was my car. Now most of you are thinking WOW that was bad luck, and I have to admit after I’d got over the horror and the cursing and the battle with the insurance company I also figured it was just bad luck but looking back I could have prevented it.
I knew the neighbour’s roof was in poor repair. I’d spoken to him about it several times. Had I taken into account the fact that one day we might get a strong wind (as we did that day), and looked at the angle of trajectory (assuming the wind was in the right direction), then I would have seen that the landing place was going to be exactly where I’d parked. But you see I’m one of the “cup half full” people. Eternal optimist and most of the time it pays off. I live by the creed that if something went wrong and it was my fault, learn from it, get over it, and move on.
My friend on the other hand dwells on his “bad luck” and allows it to beat him up. His latest catastrophe? He’s lost his job. He was sacked for constantly being late. It seems this was due to the appalling state of our trains and the fact that his either got cancelled, was too full to get on or just ran late. Most of us in the UK who have been subjected to commuting to work will immediately nod our heads in a sage understanding of the predicament, but his unsympathetic boss had fired him.
Offering the shoulder to cry on I listened to the whole sorry story for some considerable time and made the right noises at the appropriate moments but having put the phone down I got annoyed. Being convinced he’s subject to bad luck means he now suffers from something that seems to afflict more and more people these days. Lack of personal responsibility. It’s always somebody else’s fault.
He catches a 6.30am train. There’s another one 10 minutes before it. Had he bothered to go for that one instead then he’d have doubled his chances of getting to work on time. His boss had checked the timetables and was well aware of this but my friend was oblivious. It never even entered his head to leave a bit earlier. His train was the 6.30 and so he arrived at the station at 6.25.
Am I worried about him reading this and getting upset? No, not really. You see, his computer rarely works. It’s all the manufacturer’s fault for supplying bad kit. If it was decent kit then he’d be able to install a virus checker and keep it up to date, he might also be able to defrag it occasionally, which might mean it would run fast enough for him to delete the mountains of crud he has on there filling the hard drive to near capacity……..
And if he does manage to get online to see this….
sorry babe, you’re a great mate but it’s about time somebody said this…… you have only yourself to blame.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: December 19th, 2007 at 8:13 pm →
Man, I completely agree. When I was reading this I was wondering why he just didn’t leave a bit earlier (thinking 20-30 minutes between trains), that was before I knew that meant only ten minutes. He got canned because he had it coming as far as I can see… not acting when such an easy solution was at hand. We have a saying (here, and maybe there too):