How to complicate stuff.

What's the first thing I do once i reach office?. Head to our pantry for a Tea, of course. One of these days, I noticed something interesting. Though there are about 20 people drinking tea in the morning, the tea kettle is empty most of the time. Which means I have to fill up water every time I need to drink tea. Won't it be efficient and easy for me) if the first person filled up the kettle before heating it?.

"So, Is it a technical issue or a social one?" my great uncle Muralee Thummarukudy will ask. With the social solutions beyond my powers, why don't try to solve it technically?.

What is the obvious technical solution?. Easy. Just design the kettle to heat up only when water is filled to a specific level. So unless and until you fill in the water for 10 people, you are not getting your tea.

"What if someone feels like having a tea at say 1:00, when nobody else is interested?" I hear you say. We need a way to switch off the water level flag, so that if the security guy wants to have a tea at midnight, he need not fill the kettle.

"What if people keep switching off the flag too often ?". Aha, why not have a way to auto-configure the timings when the water level flag is on?. We should can set it on for 8:30-10:00 AM & 4:00-5:00 PM.

Now, How do we make sure that people are not toying around with this configuration to get around the issue?. Pre setting the timing from manufacturer is too risky, they can get it wrong and every office can have different routines.

So, you need one person with exclusive access to set/reset these configurations. Does it mean he has to have a swipe card for the machine?. or do we run a software on the kettle and log in from our terminal with the required credentials?.

ha ha, look how easy is it to complicate stuff :)