[Sorry I’m late! But it probably doesn’t matter. This blog is becalmed, I can’t catch any wind in my sails. Just keep tryin’, I guess…]
If a testing laboratory mistakenly sends you a request for a stool sample, meant for someone else… do you just, well, send them your stool sample?
Someone actually did this.
I don’t know about you, but this incident still strikes me as one of weirdest I’ve ever encountered in real life. Scary thought: What if there are thousands of people like this, out there?
A lot of people are only spectators in life. They always comply, even when the requests are senseless. As we speak, I know a man with a definite health problem, that has been bounced between doctors for months. He just goes along, spends money, and does what he’s told, because he was raised to do that.
Let me see if I can find a video of Candid Camera’s “Backwards Zone” stunt–an experiment in mindless compliance.
Mark Steyn once wrote about the time he received a notice from the New York Bureau of Compliance that he was out of compliance. They never said what he supposedly should have complied with. Besides, as a resident of New Hampshire and a free-lance writer he’d never lived or worked in New York. Needless to say, he didn’t comply with the notice either. He used the incident, though, as an example of the way “free” Americans actually let themselves be bossed around.
Oh, I’ve got to remember that one! Sounds like a skit from a “Reggie Perrin” episode.
It may have been from one of his books, either “After America” or “The Undocumented Mark Steyn.” I’ve read so many of his books so many times that I can’t always place where I’ve read a particular item.
Sure seems like it!