A popular new philosophical idea is the “Shopping Cart Test” which holds that putting shopping carts back where they belong is a perfect test of a human’s ethical framework, because:
- There is usually an obvious right choice to make with an empty cart (like a cart corral).
- Making that right choice is a virtually painless action (it’ll take just a few seconds).
- Making the ethically wrong choice (leaving it in an empty spot, or in the driving area) will never be punished.
Thanks to those three facts, what a person will do with their cart proves a good predictor of their ethics.
I posit that an equally good predictor of your ethical orientation is how you coil a microphone cable.
- There is certainly a right way to coil the cable. (It’s the one that will both not damage the cable and be easy to uncoil later.*)
- It will only take you a few minutes and a little practice to learn the right way to coil cables, and only a few seconds to coil an average mic cable.
- If you coil a cable poorly, probably no one will notice, and almost definitely you won’t be the one to have to deal with it.
Coiling cables well, then, is a good way to assess what kind of person you are. Choose wisely.
* It ought to be obvious, but the right way to coil a mic cable is in circles of roughly 18″ diameter, in the over-under method. You can tie it off with a loose overhand knot or with a tie line or velcro strap.
