The SquizLog

A Tale of Uniqueness

Once upon a time a boss needed a way of keeping track of how much time his workers actually were at work. Why? Because this particular boss was generous enough to allow each worker a day off each month so long as they had worked enough hours during the previous month. Back in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, before the days of unions to represent the workers, this was indeed an enlightened policy.

The practice sounds simple enough but there were all sorts of complicated rules governing the allowance. And to make things more complex the boss had many, many workers spread throughout many factories. The organisation had existed for a long time and different methods of keeping track of information about workers had evolved in different factories. As more and more workers were employed the task of keeping track of whether or not each worker was entitled to their day off became more time consuming, requiring more workers to maintain the records.

Then one day the boss heard about a wonderful new calculating machine that promised to solve his problem. Excitedly he commissioned one immediately. It would just require a little customisation. All it needed was a unique number for each worker and it's operation would be simple. No problem! There were already procedures in place to allocate a unique number to a new worker at each factory. Each number was guaranteed to be unique so the system would be foolproof.

The new machine arrived and everything went according to plan. Several factories began using it and the boss and his machine operator were very happy.

But unfortunately their delight was short-lived. Soon afterwards, a worker from a factory that had just started using the calculating machine, became very angry. His request for a day off had been refused. How could this be so? He had even worked twenty hours overtime the previous month. He was so furious that he thought about sabotaging the machine.

When the boss found out he too was unimpressed. He prided himself on being a good boss and he had paid a small fortune for this new technology. He was determined to get to the bottom of the machine's malfunction. What he found was that the number of the disgruntled worker had already been used by another worker who had been granted a day off earlier in the month. It turned out that worker numbers were not unique after all. They were unique within each factory at the time they were allocated, but there was nothing to stop the use of a worker number in one factory being duplicated in another factory. The numbers were not in fact unique.

Later, the boss was relating this sad saga to an Irish friend who helpfully suggested: "You should have asked how unique the numbers were!"

Note: This story is fictional. Any resemblance of anything described to anything real is entirely coincidental.

Posted to Personal by Keith Pitty