Acting unprofessionally and out of character revisited

A few examples of people causing damage by acting unprofessionally and out of character have been given in the past; the time has now come to go into this phenomenon in a little more detail. 

The multi-level approach to finding explanations article mentions some of the influences that might cause people who are normally professional and efficient to behave uncharacteristically and make serious mistakes; this article revisits the issue, expands on these influences and includes some supporting material from previous articles.

The cases of interest here are those that occur at the third level down, the dimension where unseen influences such as energy vampires, people with witch-like personalities, psychic crime and psychological black magic operate.

There are questions to ask and possibilities to eliminate at each level before descending to the one below; there are also some points to be made before starting the exercise.

The definition of the problem
It is important to understand that examples of people doing something wrong are worth investigating only where two elements appear together i.e. when someone acts both unprofessionally and out of character. After all, some people will act unprofessionally because this is their usual mode of operation; not only that, a few of these incompetents might act out of character by doing a good, professional job for once! Neither of these groups is relevant here.

Acceptable margin of error
People are not machines; they sometimes have off days. Occasional errors will be made and should be allowed for, but an investigation into the cause is called for when so much damage has been done that the mistake cannot be overlooked, excused or explained away.

This is where the multi-level approach comes in.

Level 1: the person and the job
On this, the top, level, it is best to work systematically through a list of the most obvious and likely explanations for a damaging, out of character action. The possibilities fall into two groups: one is of factors in the life of the person who made the mistake and the other of common and typical problems with the job.

More minor misfortunes and an unexpected ending

Accounts of bad days, bad decisions and strings of minor misfortunes have appeared in several previous articles.

There is a little more of the same to report, including a very recent nightmare journey that had an unexpected but very welcome ending.

More electrical malfunctions

Tills have recently behaved strangely when it was my turn to pay. Although they worked for the customer immediately in front of me, one went crazy and had to be reset and the other refused to function at all so the girl on it had to move to another station.

It is interesting that Joyce Collin-Smith says that her friend, the one who could make events turn out to good advantage for herself and her circle, caused problems with electrical apparatus.

Some minor disappointments

It is quite a while since I have had what I think of as a good day. Most of the misfortunes are too petty to report, but a long string of tiny setbacks makes me feel that I am living under a cloud.

On several occasions I have made special a trip to a particular shop I remembered only to find that it had closed down.  I took some unwanted items to my favourite charity shop only to find that they were not accepting donations on that day.

These things have their funny side: I remembered seeing a stall in an indoor shopping centre where they repair watches, so took mine there to have a new battery put in. The watch repair man said he wouldn't do it because it would involve taking the back off and unscrewing things!

These are all very trivial problems; things could be and have been much worse. Not only that: a bad day had a good ending.

The importance of self-protection

I have recently been reminded of minor incidents in my life that are ideal for further illustration of a very important point: people who can sense unseen influences need to take good care of themselves and avoid getting overloaded.

The good inner state

I was on a bus one morning. As it drew near to my stop, I got up and started to walk down the narrow aisle. A young man who immediately made me feel uncomfortable suddenly put a bag down in front of me, blocking my path. I sensed that a few people had moved in behind me, guessed why, and immediately moved my backpack round to the front so that no one could take anything.

The man smiled ruefully and moved his bag out of my way. I turned round; I did not like the look of the people standing very close to me. The area is not good; there are services that attract many people who are best avoided.

I was pleased with myself for immediately seeing the risk and taking appropriate action. I realised that the outcome could have been very different if my inner state had not been so good at the time.

I had had a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast. I was looking forward to doing some interesting work on a database: I enjoy bringing order out of chaos. I was looking forward to seeing a very good film on TV that evening.

I was living quite comfortably in the real world that day, and had some spare capacity for dealing with the unexpected.

The bad inner state

On another occasion, I had a successful shopping trip in an area I like very much. There is an open-air market and other attractions, and I got a lot of stuff. I should have quit the game while I was ahead and gone home, but I decided on impulse to take a long, scenic bus ride into Kent. This 'good idea' turned out to be a very big mistake; it resulted in a small-scale nightmare scenario.

Do inner demons sabotage our lives?

It is important to take responsibility - where appropriate – when we do stupid things, make mistakes, and experience setbacks, accidents and misfortunes. 

I know very well that becoming tired, stressed and overloaded is asking for trouble, so I do what I can to avoid getting into those states.

I do sometimes wonder though whether hostile unseen influences are also at work, subtly taking advantage when people are distracted or not functioning well.  They do whatever they can to cause trouble, damage their victims’ environments and sabotage lives.

I have noticed that ideas that lead to trouble or even disaster sometimes slip into people’s minds. The man who had the ‘good idea’ of moving his daughters into the basement because bad weather was expected only for them to be drowned by flood water during the night, is an example of a very bad case.

Some much less serious examples from my own life come to mind. While I definitely need to take responsibility for getting so absorbed in reading or preoccupied with research that the real world disappears, so when forced to do something I deal with it with the back of my mind, other factors might be at work too..

On one occasion, I was immersed in a book; I became aware very slowly and dimly that something wasn’t quite right. There was a faint smell that I automatically and mistakenly assumed to be medicinal; an inner voice told me that it was just the vapour balm that I had been using for a cough. 

Eventually, I came down to earth and realised what was happening: I had not replaced the lid of a bottle of nail varnish remover properly, the bottle had tilted on its side and the liquid was ebbing away. I was too late to save most of it. It was definitely my fault for not putting the top on properly and for not immediately investigating the source of the smell, but I was misled by that small voice.