Who Moved My Cheese (Short Story)

A while back, we were given a work assignment called Learning Partners. It was an effort to build inter-team relationships and also to prime us to be more accepting of the concept of change in general. This is because our agency had increased it's number of employees significantly. I remember hearing some statistic like, 60% of employees were hired in the previous five years.  There were also talks of our main office being taken back by the city, who we were renting from.

For the assignment, all employees were partnered with someone random from a different team and given a short story to answer some disusssion questions on. There were three pieces to choose from, and the one me and my Learning Partner started with was Who Moved My Cheese.

But before we were able to connect, COVID-19 struck, causing widespread lockdowns, forced work from home measures, health panic, economic instability, fear of job loss etc. This concept of change and adaptation in the face of uncertainty became even more topical.

Who Moved My Cheese is the story of four friends: a pair of mice named Sniff and Scurry, and a couple of little humans named Hem and Haw. They live in a maze where they're found an abundance of cheese. One day, their cheese disappear and the four friends are forced to make decisions on how to deal with it.

Due to my racing mind, I wrote a response to the story that was so long and rambling, it was borderline inappropriate to send to a coworker. Recently, I rediscovered this old email and found that I made some funny and interesting points, even if the analysis was overdone. So I'm just putting this old review forward on this blog.

Here were the discussion questions we were asked to review:

1. What are the main attributes of each character in regard to their response?
2. What are the main challenges of each character's dispoition toward change?
3. Which character do you identify with the most in relation to their responses to change and why?
4. How might your reactions/responses to change impact others who respond differently?
5. What part of the process of change from "The Handwriting on the Wall is easiest for you?
6. What part of it is most challenging for you?
7. What might you do differently in regards to change from what you have learned here?

For the purpose of this post, I will only put forward my answers to the first two questions. They're the ones I get into most extensively, and I don't really feel like getting into my early pandemic introspection.

So here it is, the Who Moved My Cheese early pandemic response:

1. What are the main attributes of each character in regard to their responses to change (ie. the depletion of cheese)?

 Mice: Sniff, Scurry:

They saw the cheese for what it is, a source of nourishment. They didn't get caught up in thoughts of entitlement or associate the cheese with unrelated fantasies, and they didn't assume the cheese would always be there. In fact, because they kept the cheese situation monitored, they were completely unsurprised when they ran out and were immediately prepared to take action.

 Little People:

The little people have their own strengths, as highlighted in the beginning of the video. Even though they have duller senses and are less physical than the mice, their methodical and analytical nature allows them to discover Cheese Station C.  However, once they've found cheese, they start to associate it with unrelated things. They "reward" themselves with a more comfortable lifestyle that allows them to become less physically fit to find new cheese, and to not look at uncomfortable truths, like the depletion of cheese. When they lose their cheese, instead of considering solutions to the problem, their instinct is to blame an unknown other "Who moved my cheese?" and to assume it will come back because they "deserve" it more than the mice, considering themselves to be the "more complex species". The truth is, the cheese doesn't care about what species you are, or whether or not you're deserving. It doesn't know how hard you've worked, and it won't treat anyone differently. This sense of entitlement leads to stagnancy and ignorance.

2. What are the main challenges of each character’s disposition toward change?

Sniff and Scurry: are shown to ultimately be flawless at adapting to this specific change. The only caution I would give, is their purely reactionary way of living. It felt odd that the lesson was to be less human, and to act like a mouse in a maze. I would like to think that Haw's philosophical nature and desire to find deeper meaning in things and record them is a positive human quality that the mice lack.

These two are shown to be nearly identical characters, the only distinction being that Sniff's talent is sensing the cheese (insight) and Scurry's talent is running (implementation)

Hem: Hem is a hard worker. When the cheese disappears, his instinct is to "work harder", but the problem is that no matter how hard he works, it won't matter because it lacks a function if he isn't able to accept that change is necessary. He is also more vulnerable to entitlement, when Haw asks where Sniff and Scurry went, he says that they can't have found new cheese because as mice, they are less "deserving" of it. He also has a greater tendency to shift blame to others, being the only character to say "Who moved my cheese?"

Later, when Haw returns with some new cheese, he won't even try it, because he's convinced himself that he wouldn't "like new cheese". He's so caught up in his dream of the past, he won't even sample the benefits of someone else's work.

Because of his instinct to work harder, I think Scurry is his mouse counterpart, both of them being "implementation" types. But Scurry's efforts are productive, while Haw's efforts are misdirected.

Haw: Haw is a planner, he says "All my plans involve the cheese being here". His mouse counterpart is Sniff, because they both have insight based talents. The misdirected use of his talent is that, even though he plans, he puts all his eggs in one basket, on the assumption that his cheese will always be in the same place. He also writes "Cheese Makes You Happy", which is a shallow statement and his life motto before he reevaluates. 

Honestly, I think his worst struggle is that he differs decision-making to Hem. Haw provides the questions, Hem provides the answers. Haw asks where Sniff and Scurry are, Hem says that an inferior species will never have more cheese than them. Haw asks if they should look for more cheese, Hem says that if they stay and work hard, they will be rewarded with new cheese. It doesn't sound right, but Haw trusts his friend, which leads to stagnation.

I appreciate the double meaning of his name. Being half the phrase "hem and haw" represents his stagnation, but they actually mention that the meaning changes when he starts to laugh at himself "hahaha". I'd like to think that his strength is to laugh at himself and be self-reflective.