A watched kettle never boils. Does this make it a quantum or even just a steam powered time machine?
That said, the kettle in our work kitchen takes ages even when you’re not there to grow old with it.
Indeed, the kettle takes so long to boil I may as well go off and make a cup of tea whilst I’m waiting for the water to reach boiling point.
Many colleagues walk away whilst it hopefully brings the cold / tepid water inside to boiling point, and come back later to make their drink, but this brings about a moral dilemma; when I get to the kitchen to make a tea and see a kettle recently boiled and still full of water I’m faced with two options: first (and the most polite) is to hang around indefinitely until the person who switched it on comes back for his water, or secondly, add more water to the kettle so that there’s enough for both of us, and switch it back on again.
But this means another long wait.
Personally, I go for the third option – take the water. I kind of think that if you can’t invest time in a good cup of tea, then you don’t deserve it and deserve to wait until those of us who do are ready.
I wonder if people of the future would have a similar dilemma if they saw a time machine parked outside and no-one there to use it…

Paul
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