Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cookies. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The way the cookie crumbles

Writer Douglas Adams, author of the book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", tells a great story about jumping to conclusions about people.

Once Adams was sitting in the waiting area of a railroad station and had placed a package of cookies and a newspaper on the table in front of him.

A stranger sitting next to him suddenly reached across, opened the bag of cookies and started to eat them.

Adams, annoyed, said nothing, but calmly took a cookie from the bag as well. Soon the bag was empty as the men both ate from it.

When the stranger left for his train, Adams picked up his newspaper - and found his bag of cookies underneath it. Rather than a stranger eating his cookies, he'd been eating someone else's.

Teachable moment: look to yourself first before you assume anything of another person. "Otherwise", as Adams quipped, "you'll wonder why it seems that someone else is eating your cookies."