Amusing Stories of Perverse Results

There’s this economic concept of perverse results (law of unintended consequences), that has some very interesting and amusing examples. Perverse results are those unintended negative outcomes caused by what was intended to be a solution, that instead worsens the original problem.
This particular example is from The Ministry of Commonsense.

It tells the story of a sneaky corporate COO who, wanting to reduce their employees’ coffee costs, has the coffee machine tweaked to dispense a little less coffee than usual.

However, the employees, oblivious to this sinister plan (:P), would unintentionally press the dispense button twice. As a result, the excess coffee would overflow. And not wanting to risk taking brimming hot coffee back to their desks, they would also spill a small portion out first to make it safer to carry while walking back to their desks.

So, far more coffee ended up being dispensed than the sneaky solution had aimed to save.

I witnessed a slightly unrelated one recently, where a large group had to decide on an important matter. The more beneficial option if chosen, would involve some expenses over the coming months or years. Amusingly though, a wise one among them, wanting to sway the vote in that same direction (or to prevent the slim likelihood the decision might go the other way), rallied his little tribe to preemptively make an initial payment to the group as a show of confidence in that particular choice.

While the group (not surprisingly) did eventually vote for the beneficial option, the anticipated costs didn’t come up quite as early on. So each member of that little tribe now has money sitting idle with the group as a result of being too clever by half.