The Old Curmudgeon -- Chapter 3

...continued from Chapter 2.

Chapter 3. Three Problems

"Wait a minute!" Jack promised. "You said there were only three things I needed to know -- symptom to cause to solution -- and now you tell me there are three more things I have to know?"

"You should be so lucky.  I told you there were three things you had to know.  I never said there were only three things.  How stupid would that be?  I told you, it's useful to organize ideas into threes, as long as you don't force them."

Jack sighed an tucked into his salad.  The old man sure had a sour outlook on things. Get Off My Lawn his lapel button read.  Yeah, a grumpy old man, for sure.  And it wasn't like he had skin in the game, not as far as the storage tank problem went.

Of course, that might make him a perfect sounding board. He had no ego invested in anything that had been repeatedly booted around in interminable meetings. He remembered the 'first three' and suddenly realized that part of the trap lay in thinking about 'the storage tank problem' when the bigger storage tank was only a solution they had jumped to.  The problem was that he was paying too much demurrage to the railroad.

"But I don't see how that helps me very much," he said when he had voiced that thought to his companion.
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