Logic wins every time
My interaction with the world is governed absolutely by logic.
I know that this applies to everyone, but from simple observation I see that most people can easily override the logic they apply to things with a little common sense. I rarely manage to do this.
This was most-recently brought home to me a little over a week ago.
We live close to a miniature steam railway, and enjoy taking the kids a few times a year to see the little steam trains and to take the bumpy ride a few miles up the valley and back. So when I collected my daughter from Nursery a couple of Thursdays ago, and was handed a flyer and a couple of money-off coupons for the railway, it seemed like a great way to spend one of our days on the coming weekend. The flyer advertised that there was a special food and drink fair in the railway grounds that coming weekend, and the coupons would get the kids on the trains for free, cutting the cost of the day by about a third. Great! We decided to make a day of it.
Then on Friday I saw it. The coupons had ‘Not valid for special events’ printed on them.
Ah. So we wouldn’t be able to use the tickets that coming weekend, as it was clearly a special event. What a shame. We decided to go anyway – we hadn’t visited since last summer, and we’d all enjoy it.
So, Saturday morning came, and we rolled up to the car park. I went to buy the tickets, and what should I see, but a pile of the ‘kids travel free’ coupons sitting by the till. I was immediately very angry with myself. Why hadn’t I brought the coupons with me, on the off-chance that they were accepting them?
When my turn came to be served, I pointed to the coupons and said, “Are you accepting those coupons today? We have a couple, but didn’t bring them as it said not valid for special events”. The woman enthusiastically said “oh yes!”, and then looked embarrassed, as she realised I didn’t have the coupons with me, and she didn’t know what to do. She called over her boss, and I explained again that we’d got the coupons earlier in the week from my daughter’s nursery, but hadn’t brought them due to the special events clause. The boss was apologetic, and said that they meant to cross the clause out of the ticket but had run short of time and had forgotten. The coupons were intended for this weekend to help draw the crowds in to the food and drink fair. He kindly agreed to let me have the money off without the coupons.
We had an enjoyable day, and the sun even put in a few brief appearances to help us enjoy the spring countryside.
This is always how it goes with me. Other people clearly assumed they’d be able to use the coupons. It’s not a great leap of common sense to reach this conclusion, yet I didn’t, and frequently make judgements like this using a very rigid logic. Hell, even if you didn’t think the coupons were going to be valid, you’d still take them with you and ask, wouldn’t you?
For me logic wins every time, even when the application of a bit of common sense would result in a different outcome. This is often very frustrating.
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