Baaa!

Last Thursday evening when I came home from my business trip out west, I noticed a lot of yellow recycling bins sitting out on the kerbside in our street.

This was unusual. Normally the rubbish is collected on Thursday morning (with recycling taken every second week), and people pull their bins in by the afternoon. So it was a little unusual to see them out.

What was even more unusual was to notice this afternoon that pretty much every second house still had its yellow recycling bin sitting out the front from last week - and still full of rubbish.

I asked Cara what the heck was going on; I was beginning to wonder if we'd missed some sort of council notice - a strike, perhaps?

But no. Cara was talking with one of our neighbours today, who made some sense of the phenomenon.

Last Wednesday evening, someone in the street decided to put their yellow recycling bin out.

Two problems with this: first of all, it wasn't recycling week. Secondly, almost every one else in the street unquestioningly took their cue from this, and put out their recycling bins as well.

By the weekend, I think most people had probably worked out what happened. But of course, it was only a few days till the yellow bins needed to go out anyway, so they decided to leave them out.

It's the sort of behaviour we expect from sheep. But human beings can do it too (in grand style), as we unquestioningly lean on the habits (or opinions) of others, and don't even think twice as we follow in their footsteps.

Of course, this particular example is fairly innocuous and humorous. But it's not always so, is it?

Can you think of times when you've seen this behaviour with much more serious consequences?