Lost Coat

Presented for your delectation, an email that was sent around our office this morning:

We seem to have a coat that's been left in [location deleted] on the coat hook. I wondered if anyone has lost one? It's a long female coat.

Two things immediately spring to mind:

1. A female coat? I had no idea that coats had gender. How do you tell if a coat is male or female? If you leave a male and female coat on the same hook, do they breed? Would you end up with a closet full of little jackets?

2. The fact that the coat has been left "on the coat hook" suggests that it's not so much "lost" as "left in a safe place for later collection". If the lady who sent the email walks around our office she will see many "lost" coats, hanging on coat racks, waiting to be found by their owners who are sitting, working - some of them over 12 feet away...

If it's not claimed within 3 days it should be sacrificed to the God of Lost Outdoor-wear: Quetzlcoatl.

Futility

I have to share with you a comment that a workmate made to me yesterday. After a day in which my planned work changed 3 or 4 times, due to the whims of someone else working on the same project, I said that I thought that plans were probably a mythical concept. My esteemed software developer colleague replied:

Well, they do say that no plan survives contact with the ‘enemy’. I suppose in this context, the ‘enemy’ is reality…

Anyone who has ever worked on a large project, with constantly shifting timescales, targets and priorities will know the despair that underlies the observation.