Murphy’s Law and Its Variations

Today I had quite a chuckle…

In the early afternoon, I received a call from one of my clients about a project… he wanted to know if we had received the drawings and specs yet. I told him “no,” and that I didn’t expect them to arrive today. I assured him that I would let him know when they did.

And… what do you know… 20 minutes later, UPS delivered the drawings and specs. So, far, no big deal. It’s like UPS waited for me to call him before delivering! Sometimes it just happens that way.

Keeping my promise, I promptly emailed my client that the packages have arrived… and I mentioned something about this being a funny sample of Murphy’s Law, that the declaration that we haven’t gotten the drawings caused them to appear.

Shortly thereafter, I received a response

“I typically operate under O'Toole's Law, which is, Murphy was an optimist. I received this email seconds after I emailed the architect to assure me that we were on track. Timing is everything.”

Well, this was hilarious. LOL (laugh out loud). Ok, I couldn’t let this go. I wasn’t familiar with O’Toole’s Law, so off to Google, and subsequently to Wikipedia I went! I became enlightened with the many variations and adaptations to Murphy’s Law:

Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Murphy’s Paradox: The more you plan, the more will go wrong. The less you plan, the more likely that you will fail.

Murphy’s Extended Law: If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.

O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.

Silverman’s Paradox: If Murphy’s Law can go wrong, it will.

Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives (Corollary to Murphy’s Law): Anything that can go wrong, will – at the worst possible moment.

I also found other laws, with a similar view as Murphy:

The Unspeakable Law: As soon as you mention something, if it’s good, it goes away; if it’s bad, it happens.

Non-reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results.

Howe’s Law: Every man has a scheme which will not work.

Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can.

Skinner’s Constant: The quantity which must be multiplied by, divided by, added to or subtracted from the answer you get to give the answer you should have got.

Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Barth’s Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types and those who do not.

Ninety-Ninety Rules of Project Schedules: The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90%.

I was amazed at how many of these laws directly apply to the construction industry!

~Natalie Nigro
President of Nigro Firm, Inc.

Cartoonist: Working with Chaise Payan

We have been working with cartoonist Chaise Payan for a while now, he has created many colorful, creative and fun cartoons for us, many of which are featured on Blueprint Bluepers. Working with a cartoonist is interesting, especially considering he has to take our ideas and real construction document errors and turn them into art. This is one of the first so-called "professional" contracts this young artist has had, it has been a unique experience for him to migrate from creating art that he wants to do, to creating art that a client wants. But he has met the challenge and is doing a great job, we really like working with him.

Here are some thoughts from the President, Natalie Nigro, about working with Chaise.

1 – His attention to detail is amazing. Not only that, there is almost always fun stuff hiding in his cartoons, for example look more closely at “I Heart F...” in the cartoon "Dead End Exit," the text wraps around the mug out of view, we keep wondering what word the F starts?

2 – He always comes up with stuff that we would never expect or be able to think up ourselves… but his cartoon ideas are always fabulous! All we have to do is give him the gist of an idea, brainstorm with it a bit, and he runs with it. He knows us and what we like and then comes up with highly creative, wonderful pieces.

To turn the tables, when we asked Chaise what it was like to work with the Nigro Firm he said, "One thing I find interesting in creating images is how people react to them, so it's nice to work directly with a team of people that are responsive to what I'm making."

We have four new cartoons coming up, here is a sneak preview of one that we are getting ready to publish.

We haven't come up with the text yet, but we can't help but compare this cartoon beagle to real canine behavior.



Someone even created a porcelain replica of a beagle enjoying a doggie "water fountain."

Well, come back soon and visit Blueprint Bluepers to see our great cartoons created by Chaise.