There is an old adage in management circles that people optimise their work towards what is measured. In my business if you measure someone on the number of bugs they fix it has been observed that some programmers will actually introduce problems in their code just so that they can fix them and increase their measured ‘worth’.
Something similar has happened in our house. One of the junior members of the team (no names, no pack drill) has made a habit recently of climbing into our bed in the middle of the night. The occasional cuddle is OK but this had been happening every night for a number of weeks. I’d tried rational discussion, encouragement and even a little bribery but it still was carrying on. As a last resort I reached for the metaphorical stick. I said to the cuddler that every time he got into our bed I would charge him a dollar. He even paid up for the first two nights.
But then he got wise to this and, rather than stopping waking his Mum up as hoped, went for what I can only call the cunning angle. He has, on several nights this week, snuck into our room; tapped his Mum on the arm and whispered – “Can you come and cuddle me in my bed, if I get in with you Dad will want me to pay him money and my piggy bank is nearly empty.”
You have to admire the ingenuity of the little fellow. Now I’ll just have to resort to a sound thrashing each night before bed.
For more information on this kind of behaviour check out this article.