Just the other day, I read an outage report and realized I had caused it.  Funny thing was no one had contacted me to yell or fuss or make me write reports.  None of the inevitable questions that insult your intelligence and make management feel they are in control.  It was a pretty major outage and my stomach flipped over.  I knew a shit storm was a’brewing.  I just knew it.  But 24 hours later all was quiet. 

Here’s the point:  If no one can pin the blame on you and by keeping your mouth shut, the outage is just chalked up to sun spots and the vagaries of computers, what would you do?

Most people, if they knew they wouldn’t get caught, would do just about anything.  I know we all like to tell ourselves that we would stick to the moral high-ground.  We would make it right and come forward.  We revile and spit upon people who don’t confess or run away.  We pat ourselves on the back knowing that we would speak out, break up a fight, call 911 on some mother with a little child loose in the car, and of course always help the police.  But I think that it’s just the fear of getting caught that motivates people…

I wonder.  If you knew there would be no repercussions would you tell your boss what happened.  Knowing that it’s raise time and you just cost the company money? Knowingly put yourself in front of an oncoming bus?

Think about it…

Ciao