"Pay attention to the little things people do." - my words to myself
Many years ago I learned a valuable lesson. I shared an office with a co-worker. He was younger than me and I helped train him. He did not directly work for me. We shared an office and a desktop computer. I also had a laptop that was issued to me.
I noticed that he would take things that did not belong to him as if it was issued to him. If I left a dollar on my desk, it became his. Any tool that I had became his. Since the desktop was company property I could not complain. However, on the desktop I had some personal files for my part time teaching job.
One week I left to teach a plant course on Spc and when I came back he had moved out of the office and taken the desktop. I went to his new office and asked to retrieve my personnel files. He said that he completely wiped the computer clean and destroyed my files.
I was pissed. I did not care if he moved out or if he took the desktop but the files he destroyed took a lot of effort to create. When I confronted his boss he just shrugged his shoulders.
The lesson I learned that day was to look at the little things that people do and extrapolate( predict) potential future problems with that individual. I should have noted his and hits boss' behavior and lack of boundaries when it came to assigned equipment and predicted that he could do something like what he ended up doing.
Today's question is:
" Do you extrapolate future actions from the small things people do?"
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