Remember the signs that used to be posted in service stations, when they actually worked on cars, rather than selling warm Pepsi and 5 year old beef jerky? The ones that said something like “Please don’t ask to borrow our tools”? Aside from it taking more nerve than a bad tooth to make such a request, I understand the signage.

I’m no mechanic, but I get asked to loan out items in my job; it could be the latest set of Solaris CDs, the latest Red Hat CDs, books, DB25 or DB9-RJ45 adapters, and such. Most of the books and adapters I’ve provided for myself, on my own dime. All the CD images are staged and shared via NFS on easily accessible servers. So I fail to see why people are compelled to borrow things. I still don’t want to be a total dick about lending to coworkers, being a team player and all.

So, if you want to borrow something that I’ve provided out of my pocket, I’ll probably politely indicate that this is my personal item, and please return it by end of day. If it’s company property, I’ll probably enter the item you borrowed, and a due-back date, in my new GTD list, @Loaned_Items. To be fair, I’ve established another list, @Borrowed_Items, for those rare occasions when I’m forced to borrow something myself.

-k-

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