MAG 5 - ‘Thrown Away’ - Expected failure.
In the conclusion of this episode Jon talks about Martin conducting the follow-up interview, and immediately afterwards explains how he expected it to fail. This brings up an interesting possibility.
Sometimes when we assign assumptions to people, we subconsciously adjust our behaviour towards them to make it right. It’s like the concept of the self-fulfilling prophesy but placed upon another. In Jon’s case, this seems to take place in the form of giving Martin tasks that will probably be useless, or likely to fail. It’s easy to keep believing things about a person if they’re not in a position to prove you wrong.
This would be just as harmful, if not worse for Martin himself. He already has a low self esteem, and even if you figure out that you’re being guided down a path to failure its hard not to blame yourself. Martin’s obviously very good at talking to people, and seeing himself unable to obtain useful information (even if nobody else would’ve been able to get it) would be confusing and frustrating; this, inadvertently causing him to feel the same way that Jon feels in his job.
They say that you shouldn’t jump into the water to help someone who’s drowning, as their instinct will be to push you down to pull themself up… Perhaps this also applies in emotional contexts.