I looked at my watch.Seven minutes past three, not enough time left to get to the bank, it could wait.

I drove into the town and pulled into the multi-storey car park.There were three shops to get round.I had to wait for ten minutes in the schoolbook shop, so it took longer than expected.

Returning to the car park, I put my ticket in the machine and it told me I owed €4.I couldn’t understand how it had taken me so long to get around the shops.I looked at the ticket and it told me that I had arrived at 1438.I couldn’t have done, I didn’t leave home until 1507.

I thought for a moment about going to complain – but what was the point?What proof had I that I hadn’t been there since 1438?I didn’t want to create a scene about €2.

The next day I went to the supermarket.The self-service checkout told me that my purchases were €16.89, so I fed a €20 note into the machine.It gave me €1.11 back.I looked at my change and the woman, supervising the checkouts, whom I knew, said, “That checkout has probably short-changed you – it keeps on doing thatâ€?.She opened her till and handed me a €2 coin.I thanked her. Normally I would have just put the coins in my pocket without checking.I should have gone to the customer help desk and complained that they shouldn’t have machines that they knew were short-changing customers, but it would have been a lot of fuss about €2.

Driving away I realized that the world becomes a bad place not by us letting some great evil take over, but by letting things get worse bit by bit – even €2 at a time.