Of Mice And Men: When Plans Go Awry

He hurtled five stories to the ground like a comet wrapped in a 600 thread-count bed sheet. We didn’t know if it was a suicide attempt or a poorly hatched escape plan.

This day started out like any other, eventually bringing me into the lobby of the station to take a report of credit card fraud. The poor lady who was the victim believed that her ex-boyfriend had gone on a shopping spree with her credit cards and ran up quite the balance. While we were still talking in the interview room she got an alert on her phone that her credit card was being used at a local hotel.

Knock Knock

I called the hotel and confirmed the guy had a room there so myself and a couple other officers went there to have a little chat with him and, with any luck, to lock him up. After arriving at the front desk I got a key card to access the room in case things didn’t go as planned (They didn’t). The oldest and saltiest officer stayed in his cruiser out back where he could call in the play-by-play in case the guy turned into a track star and squirted out the back door. The rest of us made our way to the fourth floor hotel room and knocked.

Who is it!? came the distant reply from behind the door. It was definitely a man’s voice so I felt like we were on the right track. After letting him know it was the police I heard feet shuffling and the muffled sounds of things moving around in the room. I knocked again and tried some verbal judo to get him to come to the door. Nothing doing.

Open Sesame

I looked at the other officers lined up to my left and gave them the nod to let them know that I was going to open the door. I slipped the key card into the slot above the door handle. The indicator light turned green so I turned the handle and pushed. The door was suddenly stopped by the security hasp that had been closed by Mr. Wonderful. I stepped back and gave the door a quick boot and open-sesame, we were in.

As soon as the door opened I noticed three things. One: the room was full of open packages from high-end electronics like televisions, video game consoles, and the like. Two: I saw the white, semi-transparent curtains suddenly bow outward through the open window and then flap in the breeze like something had just sucked them out of place. And three: the room was silent.

Peter Pan

We quickly cleared the room and found no one inside. I made a beeline for the open window shrouded by flailing curtains and stuck my head outside. I looked straight down and to my dismay there below me was a man wrapped in a white bed sheet lying on the ground in the fetal position five stories below, mere inches from an AC condenser. In that moment I thought for sure that I would be blamed for killing this guy and lose my job. The Monday-morning quarterback in my head instantly went bananas.

The salty veteran parked out back had watched from the comfort of his black and white as Peter Pan plummeted to the earth. He took the liberty of awaiting the arrival of an ambulance — that guy certainly wasn’t going anywhere.

Poorly Hatched

After getting over the initial shock my eyes reversed direction and followed the trail left behind by my suspect. I noticed that the nightstand next to the king-sized bed had been pulled forward about ten feet toward the open window. It crookedly faced outward, toward the open window. The top drawer was wide open and a white bed sheet had been tied around the drawer handle. That same sheet led to the window sill where it abruptly ended in frayed threads right at the outermost edge of the sill where it had been torn in a perfectly straight line.

In the end Geronimo survived his injuries and faced prosecution. He revealed no suicidal ideations, so it seemed his escapades were of another nature. Our best guess is that he had tied the bed sheet to the nightstand drawer handle and went out the window to escape Indiana Jones style. However, the insufficient thread count led to the sheet tearing across the edge of the window sill, sending our friend hurtling to the ground with the remainder of the bed sheet flapping in the breeze behind him. It seems his fall was just a poorly hatched escape plan — most likely precipitated by watching way too much television.

Best Laid Plans

Sometimes our best laid plans come to nothing. It’s not that we didn’t mean well, it’s just that we failed to take certain factors into account — like gravity or the tensile strength of a hotel bed sheet. In my vast experience of making bad decisions and poor planning, I’ve found that when things don’t go well it’s usually because I failed for one of these reasons:

1. Emotion

Yes, even I have emotions. When life happens and there’s a decision to be made, or I need to come up with a plan that seems overwhelming, I’m no stranger to letting emotion get the better of me. And for me it’s usually fear, the kind of fear that falls into one of three categories: fear of missing out, fear of failure, or fear of what others might think. I let fear run rough-shod over me and I make a decision or formulate a plan for the wrong reason.

2.Procrastination

When I get stressed out, I go into avoidance mode (also known as procrastination). I just avoid the things I need to do, like doing the work to find other options. This, in turn, makes me feel stuck or trapped in an either-or scenario of two bad options. When I have no options and my time is up I feel rushed or forced into a decision. Afterwards, I abandon personal responsibility and start saying things like, “I had to!” to justify the bad decision that usually resulted because I sacrificed the future on the altar of the present.

3. Isolation

Have you ever believed the lies you tell yourself? I have. When it comes to decision making or planning I have fallen prey to the idea that no one else understands, my situation is unique, or I know what I’m doing and I don’t need any help. Once I start thinking like that I get stuck inside my own head, avoid seeking counsel, and isolate myself out of shame or exhaustion. This leads to decision making in a vacuum, which as it turns out, sucks.

Bust Out

The next time you need to make an important decision or plan for the future you might find yourself falling into one of the same traps that I do. We’re all human, we all do it, and we will always struggle with it to some degree. So if you struggle at times like I do, you might be able to bust out of it by trying one of the following:

1. Face the Facts

Years ago I wrote down an idea in my journal that someone had used as an illustration. The idea goes like this: We are like a racehorse. Reason is the jockey, emotion is the horse. The horse and the jockey must work together to win the race, but if the horse gets out of control it can kill the jockey. Reason, logic, and facts are what keeps all that horsepower under control.

When it comes to decision making, refuse to make a decision based on emotion — especially fear. Letting your emotions run away with you is a sure fire way to make a bad decision. Use your logic and reason to gather the facts, to keep your emotions in check, and then make a decision based on what is true, not on how you feel.

2. Be Proactive

Action always beats reaction — always. We know this from the firing range and from defensive tactics. Standing back on your heels and reacting to whatever happens to you is a losing formula.

Being proactive is simply aggression dressed in its Sunday best. It is elegant, intelligent, powerful, and persistent. It fails fast and iterates faster. When one door closes and there’s no other door in sight it lays some det-cord and blows a hole in the wall. It doesn’t just find options, it creates them.

And options, well, options equal power. The more options you have the more power you have over the outcome and the calmer you will feel. When options are limited you will feel desperate. When you feel desperate, you will be stupid. Refuse to accept only this or that. Choosing between two bad options is a bad plan. Find another way, find a third option. Be proactive.

3. Build a Community

Isolation is a psychological tactic of despots and tyrants. It makes people feel hopeless, helpless, and defeated before the fight even begins. So why do that to ourselves? I’ve noticed (at least speaking for myself) after doing this job for a while that I have developed the attitude of “no one understands.” Police work is truly a unique line of work and I do believe that it is difficult — if not impossible — for others to fully understand without having done it themselves. But that does not mean that we cannot seek advice from outsiders.

Build a community by surrounding yourself with good people, people who are generally older and have more life experience than you, and then seeking their counsel will not only give you comfort and confidence that you are not alone, but will kill that sense of isolation. Yes, you — even you — can benefit from their experience and wisdom so that you can make better decisions.

__________________________

• Do you make decisions based on facts or feelings?
• Do you listen to the lies you tell yourself?
• Who can you surround yourself with?
• Are you looking for third options?

__________________________

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