Interim Policy on Switch Label Guessing
Nobody in the household remembered which switch controlled the outside light, and nobody had labeled it.
SUBJECT: Interim Policy on Switch Label Guessing STATUS: Preliminary findings NEXT REVIEW: When someone gets a label maker
BACKGROUND
The household has four wall switches in the entrance corridor. Two are known. One controls the overhead light, which is used daily and was identified within the first week of occupancy. One controls the exterior socket, which nobody uses and whose location was determined by accident.
Two switches remain unassigned.
Under the governing rule, any switch label guessing that survives three cleanups must be treated as permanent household infrastructure. Three cleanups have occurred. The switches remain unlabeled.
FINDINGS
Switch 3 is believed to control the outside light. This belief is based on two successful activations observed in March and one observed in July. The March activations were performed by the original occupant. The July activation was performed by a guest who was trying to find the entrance light and accidentally found the outside light instead, which was also satisfactory.
The switch label guessing gains a preferred location that nobody remembers choosing. The preferred location is: switch 3 is probably the outside light. This is the working hypothesis. The hypothesis has not been confirmed by deliberate testing.
ESCALATION PATTERN
Adjacent objects are reorganized to protect the arrangement from accidental correction. A small adhesive note was applied to the wall near the panel during the first cleanup. The note said "outside light = 3?" The question mark was retained because the occupants could not remove uncertainty by adding a label.
The note was removed during the second cleanup as clutter.
Switch 3 now exists in an undocumented state of probable function. The household navigates around this by testing switches in sequence when the outside light is needed, which happens infrequently enough that the sequence restarts each time.
CURRENT STATUS
A future cleanup creates a formal appeals process led by the person who originally said it was temporary. The original person said labeling the switches "takes five minutes." That was fourteen months ago.
The label maker is in the kitchen drawer.