While in our team meeting this morning, I found I was growing bored. The discussion had turned to subjects that either did not concern me or were things I had heard already. In an effort to keep my mind active, I decided to embark upon a social experiment.
Even though I was standing near the meeting's facilitator, my intent wasn't to disrupt the meeting, so while everyone was talking, I quietly extracted a crumpled five dollar bill from my pocket and smoothed it in full view of the group. Folding the bill into a quarter of its size, I carefully inserted it into the cardboard shell that surrounds the handhold of one of our dry-erase board erasers. I then put the eraser onto the conference table in the center of the room and left it there. I spent the remaining five or so minutes surveying the room to see if there was anyone who could possibly give me trouble if for some reason circumstances conspired to make us opponents in the inevitable gladiatorial slave pits of the near future.
At the meeting's end, I left the eraser where it was, hidden treasure intact. It was a risk, I know. That five dollars was going to buy me lunch later. But I wanted to see if anyone would take it. The odds are that no one would just happen to look close enough at the innards of the eraser to discover it by accident, so if someone did take it, they would be doing so because they knew I put it there. And be conscious of who they were stealing from. Unless, of course, they rationalized my action away as discarding the money as trash, thereby relinquishing any claim to it. Which would be ridiculous. But people are remarkably good at lying to themselves.
Anyway, I let the matter lie for several hours, and then went back to the room at noon. Another meeting was just breaking up, and several people were interested in my pointed and immediate assault of the eraser, and watched me dig out the bill. Yes, indeed, it was still there. No one did anything. It could have been an easy grab. They would know who they took it from, but I wouldn't know who took it. And yet, it remained where it was. It didn't even look like the eraser had moved. It turns out people aren't the theives by nature I assumed they were. Or they knew it was all a ruse, and like the clever wretches they are, avoided the issue entirely.
There is the chance I have an overinflated sense of my own visibility, though. Maybe no one saw me do what I did. Or more likely, they just didn't care why I was fidgeting with an eraser.
Oh, and unless someone in QA is harboring wicked net-and-trident skills, I'm pretty sure I could have taken every one of them in the arena. I would take no sweet glory in the bloodthirsty cheers of the spectators, though. Nope. Nor would I take a severed finger from my opponent as a trophy or paint my eyes red using it as a brush. It just wouldn't be right.
