I worked from Panera on Thursday because I just needed to get out of the house. Since I work there ever so often, I remember some of the faces that frequent the place. One gentleman (I'll call him Joe) who I have seen there a couple of times, always head down typing away seemingly oblivious to life around him was working close by and we were sharing an electrical outlet. If you are a virtual worker, you know what a hot commodity electrical outlets can be at a place like that. A woman walked up and asked if either one of us would be willing to allow her to use the outlet once our computers were all charged up. Joe, never looking up, immediately shook his head no. I had full power already and removed my cord.
A little while later, around the lunch rush, several others came over to our corner of the restaurant. A man asked Panera for a power strip (who knew they provided these). He asked Joe if he could unplug his computer long enough to plug the power strip in and then he would put both his and Joe's cords on the power strip. Joe angrily said no and explained that if the man unplugged his computer he would lose everything. What?!? Joe had been sitting there for hours and unless he has some new fangled computer that I haven't heard about, I'm pretty sure his battery was charged enough to allow the man to unplug it for 2.7 seconds.
Why one earth would Joe not give up his outlet for even a second. Was he just being a control freak, selfish or maybe both? Why would he get so nuts over an electrical outlet that he did not own or was really even paying for? The more I thought about it I realized that there really was no rational explanation. More importantly though, I realized that we all have an electrical outlet that makes us act exactly like Joe.
Each and every one of us have something that we must control - that we are driven to control for no explicable reason. Something, that in the grand scheme of things means very little, but nonetheless, we must have it our way. In the workplace, at home or at a Panera, there is something that makes us crazy if anyone tries to change it or do it differently.
I once worked with someone who would lose it if you sent her an email that said, "Good Morning" because she may not read it in the morning. I have a "friend" who likes her child's toys put up the exact same way and can get a little nutty if her husband tries to help and doesn't do it right (yeah ok, it's totally me). Neither of these things really matter, yet we act like they do.
These examples may seem crazy to you but I bet if you think about it, you have an electrical outlet too. Something that means nothing, but you still want done your way. Now the question is, what do we do about it? Do we really need to do anything about it? It seems to me to be completely normal to have one or two things that we are deliberate about, even if they mean nothing overall. Is that a bad thing or just something that makes people look at us funny at Panera?
