The butterfly effect

Guess many are familar with the term. Guess for the first time, I get to experience it in person.

Some time back, a friend of mine approached me and enquired abt the positions available in my company. Since he's a friend, I referred him to my boss as there's an opening for such a position which my friend was interested in.

My boss gave him an overview of what the company is doing in the first interview, and then some time for him to decide if he wanted the job. Subsequently, my friend came back to speak to my boss again. Probably he wanted to be honest, he mentioned that he had also applied for some other positions in other companies, and would like to wait for their replies b4 deciding on what he wanted. Fair enough, but the immediate impression showed that he (my friend) is looking at my company as a backup to fall back on. (At least, that's my impression when he talked to me about it) Naturally I was a little upset. He spoke to me about his plans of waiting, in a way, wanting to hear my views about it. So i asked about the chances of getting accepted, to which he said are practically very low, but juz hoping for a one in a millionth chance.

"So why not accept something that's more probable then? Instead of waiting for something which u already feel it's near impossible to get?" I asked

With that (and along with a few more points to ponder), he decided to take up the offer to work in my company. Of course, much to the delight of my boss and everyone, coz we can finally get a few things going wif an additional staff. It was only a verbal acceptance then as he needed some time to do up the paperworks.

Just last week, my friend was offered a job in something he was truly interested in. In other words, his dream job. So he kinda followed his dreams (it's not wrong) and turned down the one in my company.

Well, it turned out that following his verbal acceptance, a few things had already been planned out and arranged to shorten the administation time. And also a few other candidates were turned away coz the position was 'filled'. But at the end of the day, it all came to nothing. And on my side, we are all back to square one.

It's simple how a short "I'm sorry, I won't be taking up your offer" can cause so much of a disorder to things. It just ripples through the ranks, in this case, when everything was all banked on something we deemed so insignificant, just like the flapping of a butterfly's wings.

No point arguing what shd be done and who's right and/or wrong. But perhaps one can say that through all this, we can look into someone's character quite clearly. Perhaps we can also see how much a person honours his/her words, and how much his/her words actually mean.

Given the situation to either pursue your dream job or honour our words, which will it be?