Nutgraf

Once in a while, Spouse will send me an e-mail during the workday outlining a new theory about the nuances or workplace or interpersonal behavior. They are usually pretty incredible because he is in many ways a smart, smart man. He has consented to let me share this theory, which I think is just delightful and gave me a lot to think about.

Spouse says:

I think that people’s overall “well-meaning” towards someone, their benign disposition towards them and willingness to do favors (or even move a muscle) in order to make that person’s life easier, rest at a set of predetermined “ceilings,” much like the energy levels of the orbits of electrons, and not along a continuous range.

Okay class, are we with him so far?

Therefore, if they are on a “benign quantum level” of 1 towards you (bystander), and it takes, say, 7 abstract arbitrary “favor units” (funits) to move them to level 2 (ally), and you’ve been nice to them on 6 different occasions, but in increments of only 5 “funits” each, they are still BQL 1 relative to you, and still won’t move too many muscles when you need help, but you’re 30 funits out-of-pocket, which just were wasted into the “office space” around you…

So, if you’d done one pretty nice thing – valued at 7 or more funits – while having been neutral or a mild jerk on 5 other occasions, you’d be ahead of the person who was consistently nice.

Of course, perhaps after releasing 30 funits into the surrounding environment one has decreased the overall “bitching entropy gradient” of the surrounding office space, and as a result now reduced the BQL-jump ceiling from 7 funits to, say, 4.37, and then somebody just comes along and with a simple expenditure of very few funits gets someone who is still BQL 1 toward you to become their best BQL 3 buddy. Now you’re still out 30 funits, and have not benefited at all, but others have, and at much lesser funit expense.

And now you’ve gone and improved the overall environment, reducing the alliance barrier for others, but still not generating any direct allies for yourself. Boo. Spouse closes by positing that we should use this theory to build a working model to maximize our ROI for funit expenditure.

Hands off ladies, he’s mine.

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