I mentioned in the comments over there that when I was a kid we kept a gallon jug of water in the refrigerator in the summer. No fancy water-and-ice-in-the-door refrigerators then. We had one problem with the water jug though. The rule was that whoever took the last of the water had to refill it. So we would get down to about an inch of water in the jug and everyone would start drinking water from the tap. After a while of waiting each other out someone would finally give in and refill it and would feel a bit like a hero and a martyr for being “more responsible” than everyone else.
I just got to thinking about how silly that was. How hard is it to fill a jug with water and put it back in the refrigerator? Sure a gallon of water is heavy to a little kid but we did more strenuous things just playing. It seems there’s something about “work” that always makes us want to get out of doing it, even if it’s not difficult or unpleasant. Just label it work or responsibility and we’ll go out of our way to avoid it.
July 26th, 2011 - 7:17 am
It may be more an issue of feeling “I’m doing this for everyone else and no one does it for me.”
I think of all the times I’ve griped about “someone ALWAYS uses up the paper in the printer here at work, and they NEVER bother to refill it, and it’s out when I need to print.”
July 26th, 2011 - 12:54 pm
In my life it’s the way no one else on earth seems to think there is anything wrong with not cleaning your lint off the lint screen of the communal clothes dryer. The apartment house I live in has one dryer in the basement. I always clean off the lint when I’m done. I don’t like touching other people’s lint so I figure that I should reciprocate and clean the screen. But when I go down to do laundry the next time, invariably the lint screen is full of the lint of the last person who dried their clothes. Grr.