John misses an interview after a chain of small failures: a cracked coffee pot, broken machine, lost keys, unavailable car, and a bus strike. Dominic Furniss uses the story to explore Charles Perrow's Normal Accident theory, which says accidents in complex systems come from multiple small failures interacting, not from one mistake.
It was a Tuesday and John had an important interview. He got ready, rushed downstairs, made himself breakfast, and tried to make himself some coffee. Unfortunately, his wife had already left for work and had left the coffee pot on the machine, and it had warmed too much and cracked. Desperately needing his coffee, he found an old machine that they had stopped using and made his cup of coffee. Running a bit late, he rushed outside to his car, only to find he had left his car keys and house keys inside. This wasn't a problem as they had a spare set around the side of the house. Unfortunately, this set had been lent to a delivery driver just 2 days ago who was making a delivery that week. He thought he would knock on his neighbor's door, who was retired and had a spare car. He did so, but unfortunately his neighbour's car was being fixed, and so he couldn't give him a lift into the interview. He said that wasn't a problem and asked if he could call a taxi to take him to the interview instead. The neighbour informed him that there was a bus strike that day, and so all the taxis were busy, and he wouldn't be able to get a bus either. John had exhausted all of his options. He was left with no other alternative than to try to reschedule the interview.
He called the secretary but could tell by her reaction that it didn't look good and he felt the job slipping away. Who was to blame? Was it a human error? Was his wife at fault for leaving the coffee pot on the machine? Was John at fault for forgetting his house keys inside? Was it a design problem? Surely the pot shouldn't have broken if it was just left on the machine for too long. Was it to do with the lending of the spare set of keys to the delivery man? Was it to do with John's neighbour? Or was it to do with the taxi and bus driver strike?
