I feel like rather than using Schroedinger's cat to illustrate the principle of wavefunction collapse in quantum mechanics, we should update the example to "American retail store manager." While unobserved, the manager has the potential to be both simultaneously working and on break. When his boss goes to observe him, it is no longer possible for the manager to be in either of the two states, he must be in one or the other. He's either on break, meaning he is not attending to his duties, or he is working, meaning he is violating company policies. Either way, due to this act of outside observation, the manager is fired, just as a quantum system ceases to be a superposition of states when looked on by an outside observer.
That is just beautiful :-)
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