Sideswipe: June 25: Blunders on the job

If your boss looks like Beaker, it might be best not to tell him.

1. "When I was 25 I made a PDF assigning each employee to the Muppet they reminded me of the most. I meant to send it to my work friend, but I accidentally sent it to the entire company. My supervisor (Beaker) wanted to fire me, but the owners (Bert & Ernie) intervened."
2. "I was using my desktop calendar to make a monthly note of when I started my menstrual period, but after several months I realised I was making that note on a calendar I shared with all of my colleagues company-wide."
3. "As a young lawyer, I proofread a legal brief and filed it with the court. I caught a typo and blindly used the global find-and-replace function. Pro tip: don't do that. My brief argued for the rights of 'the panties'. Not 'the parties'. All 50 pages of it."
4. "I once sent an email to 5000 employees asking them to update their benefits but I didn't bcc them so hundreds of people hit reply all and then hundreds more hit reply all to tell others not to reply all and it crashed our whole system email system."

Too soon?

Wellington bollard just learned about the Delta variant.

An everyday superpower

Being unbothered by blood and guts. "I'm a veterinarian. I've spent days up to my elbows in all manner of bodies and parts and fluids. I can watch surgery or necropsy videos over lunch. I did an eye surgery on Tuesday and somebody had to catch the new kid. The big ones aren't allowed to get faint, it's very inconvenient. Related aside: When the nice young lady at the bank says, 'Oh my God, there's blood on your shirt' assuring her that it isn't your own offers no reassurance."

Conspiracy theories

A calamitous event - yes, like a global pandemic —makes a very fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories. When people feel threatened or they can't fully comprehend a significant event, conspiracy theories can somehow help them make sense of it. Take, for example, the JFK assassination. When the world seemed scary and out of control, it was easier to imagine that "shadowy groups and agencies" were controlling things behind the scenes. Randomness is very discomforting to people. Fundamental Attribution Error is the tendency to believe that the actions of others are intentional as opposed to simply being the product of external circumstances. Hence, when things happen that are random or unplanned, we may have the urge to find an intentional reason behind them.