Lately when I watch, listen to or read the news it feels like Murphy’s Law becoming part of our everyday life;
Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
At work
Applying Murphy’s Law to the working environment somebody formulated it as follow “If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way.”
But instead of looking at this adage with a pessimistic view, we should think of it as a word of caution; don’t overlook quality control and don’t accept mediocrity, because a small slip is enough to cause a catastrophe.
Origin
According to Murphy’s Laws site on the Internet Murphy’s Law was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base.
It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on a project designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said,
If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.
The contractor’s project manager kept a list of “laws” and added this one, which he called Murphy’s Law. Actually, what he did was take an old law that had been around for years in a more basic form and gave it a name.
Shortly afterwards, the Air Force doctor (Dr. John Paul Stapp) who rode a sled on the deceleration track to a stop, pulling 4 Gs, gave a press conference. He said that their good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy’s Law and in the necessity to try and circumvent it.
Aerospace manufacturers picked it up and used it widely in their ads during the next few months, and soon it was being quoted in many news and magazine articles. Murphy’s Law was born.
Apparently Mr. Murphy died when one dark evening when his car ran out of gas. As he hitchhiked to a gas station, while facing traffic and wearing white, he was struck from behind by a British tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road.
Different people see Murphy’s Law in a different light according to their unique situations.
# Other views
Some call it the Law of the Titanic: “If a device cannot malfunction, it will.”
Other interesting views are as follow:
- All Warranties will expire upon payment of the last instalment.
- You will always find something in the last place you look.
- The chance of a piece of bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
- Any tool dropped while repairing a car will roll underneath to the exact centre.
- The repairman would have never seen a model quite like yours before.
- Anything nice in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
- If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don’t know what is going on.
Yet somebody decided that “Murphy was an optimist” and called it Smith’s Law.
But let us not live in fear for what can go wrong like Job who said “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. (Job 3:25) No, let us rather believe what the Lord says in Gen 26:24 and in many other scriptures
I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you.
Job also said “My eye will never again see good” (Job 7:7), yet we know that he was wrong for after his suffering he saw more good than ever before.
Doing work that you really love can have a huge influence on your quality of life. A Career Direct Assessment will help you know and understand your authentic self. It makes all the difference.
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