I once tried to help my assistant’s paralyzed father communicate by creating a picture menu of food, comfort, and family. At first, it worked wonders—too well. Now he sits like a king, summoning relatives every fifteen minutes to point at his next desire, often leaving things unfinished. The family is exhausted, sometimes hiding the menu, only to face tears and demands for its return. A small act of kindness became a lesson in unintended consequences.

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There’s a special category of human behavior I’ve come to appreciate over the years: good intentions with terrible side effects. You know, the kind of thing where you try to solve one problem, only to create three more, usually funnier and more frustrating than the original.

A few years back, my domestic assistant—who has been with my company since 2011 and is basically family—was telling me about his father. His father had suffered a devastating stroke, leaving him half-paralyzed and unable to speak. A tragic, difficult situation. The family would spend ages asking him fifty different questions, getting only grunts for yes or no, just to guess what he wanted.

As we sat one afternoon on my porch in the Himalayas, I imagined what it must be like for him: locked inside your body, unable to communicate beyond “water” or “bathroom.” I felt sympathetic, and my inner engineer kicked in.

“He needs a menu,” I said.

And that’s exactly what I built. In true over-engineered fashion, I whipped up a polished menu in Google Slides. Pictures of water, chicken, mutton, roti, paratha, eggs, vegetables. Then pillows, blankets, medicine, the hospital sign. And for good measure, I added the most important people in his life—pulled straight from my Google Photos archive. With this tool, I thought, he could finally express himself with clarity.

It worked brilliantly. Too brilliantly.

The first time I asked my assistant if they had printed it out, he was excited. The next time I asked, he sighed, rolled his eyes, and gave me the universal look of regret: “Oh my god, what have you done?”

As it turns out, his father now sits around all day with the menu, summoning family members every fifteen minutes to point at what he wants. Water, then chicken, then the pillow, then TV. He doesn’t always finish what he asks for, but the requests keep coming. He naps, wakes up, calls someone, points to the menu, then repeats the cycle.

One day, in exasperation, his wife hid the menu. He spent the entire day searching for it, eventually breaking down in tears until she gave it back. Now the family dares not touch it. In poor, rural India, the patriarch is the patriarch. Whatever he wants, whenever he wants, he gets. And now, armed with my well-intentioned menu, he has become unstoppable.

It’s funny, but also serious. What started as an act of empathy became a source of frustration, waste, and even resentment. Instead of gratitude for the family who tends to his needs, the menu turned him into a full-time requester. His son told me, half amused and half defeated: “He asks for things every 15 minutes and doesn’t even finish them.”

This whole episode made me think about how easily good intentions can backfire when we don’t fully anticipate the ripple effects. By making it easier for him to ask, I also made it harder for the family to give. The menu became not just a tool of communication, but a tool of demand.

There’s a lesson here about balance. About how gratitude has to move in both directions. About how giving people the means to express themselves—or to get what they want—doesn’t automatically create harmony. Sometimes, it creates the opposite.

Still, I can’t help but laugh. Every time my assistant updates me with new stories of his father’s relentless menu demands, I imagine the man sitting there like a retired king, summoning the court every fifteen minutes. It’s tragic. It’s frustrating. And it’s hilarious.

Because in the end, that’s the truth about unintended consequences: they remind us that human solutions are rarely perfect, and sometimes the funniest failures are born from the kindest intentions.

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