Powerful writing as usual. Thanks, Mari. Your spot-on epistle made me recall the movie, from which I have only one dim recollection. Steve Martin, I think, is an advertising executive in charge of the Volvo account, and his current campaign is, "Volvos: they're boxy but good".
On the serious side, I recently worked for a dull, mean, greedy egomaniac. I'll cite one example among dozens that I experienced: We had to change into food production gear upon entering the production area, then change back when returning for breaks, etc. There were about 30 human beings changing concurrently. The changing room was 16 feet by 16 feet. So needless to say, all through the pandemic, we packed in there, admittedly masked, and shared our bugs. There were two sizes of smocks, which were mixed helter skelter, adding to the time required as we sorted through smocks to find the right size. That added a little totally unnecessary time to the process, since the smocks arrive sorted, but in bundles of a dozen. The bundles were all mixed up.
I went in to Brett's office to discuss the pandemic and offer a couple of suggestions regarding employee pandemic health. When I brought up the unbelievably simple act of sizing the smocks on the racks, his demeanor of crossed arms and a frown immediately became friendly. He grabbed a legal pad, flipped a couple of pages, and displayed to me a whole page of this thoughts on this issue. He proudly announced that in the near future the smocks would be sorted. He was quite proud of this. Anybody with an IQ above about 87 would have spent 5 minutes on this with a phone call to the launderer. And then gone on to the dozens of other pandemic related actions that should have been taken.
Anyhow, your thoughts hit home. Keep up the good work, my international writer dudette friend!
As for your story, how infuriating to be subjected to such a stupid added risk as that tiny changing room. You have to wonder why, if Brett had a whole notebook of thoughts on that changing room, he didn't just go ahead and fix things, instead of waiting for an employee to complain. Sounds like bad management.
You keep up the good work to, my rocker-photographer friend!
As always your observations are on point especially why are we making movies with guns featured so much!
Re the need for check lists: I started my current job 3 years ago and my main responsibility is to verify health records for incoming freshmen. By NJ law every freshman must provide vaccination information for measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B and meningococcal (given after age 16) other vaccines are optional (Covid was added this year by the university, that’s a whole other story!) so when learning the system I developed a check list to track what was submitted ( in addition to the vaccine dates they also have to sign various documents and have doctors sign also). The check list was very useful to me and my co-worker also new to the job. My supervisor who had been doing this for over 25 years disliked the list saying it was too convoluted. She preferred a blank sheet where you just writ what is missing. My point was if you missed seeing something in our 8 page packet, how would you know! Fast forward to just this week. We have been extremely overwhelmed this summer and we hired a part time nurse who had 1 day of training in our firm system. A student called me asking what she was missing and why was there a hold on her account. I looked through the paperwork she had submitted noting that the cover page said she needed 2 x MMR dates. On reviewing the whole packet I saw 2 MMR dates…….the packet had been reviewed by the new person who had missed the dates and by my supervisor who took what she had noted on the cover page and placed the hold. I had to apologize to the student and remove the hold. I felt like she thought we were all incompetent! My check list might have helped to have prevented this! I will say I have made plenty of mistakes, especially this summer/fall but the list works!
This is such an interesting example of the importance of standardization to avoid errors. Your story reminds me of how we editors always have someone else proofread our work. We can be the best language people out there, but our eyes will still skip over errors when we're very familiar with something. Your checklist was an elegant way to counteract this tendency. It's always better to admit to ourselves that we can make mistakes, and to come up with ways to make mistakes less likely. Thanks for sharing this story!
Powerful writing as usual. Thanks, Mari. Your spot-on epistle made me recall the movie, from which I have only one dim recollection. Steve Martin, I think, is an advertising executive in charge of the Volvo account, and his current campaign is, "Volvos: they're boxy but good".
On the serious side, I recently worked for a dull, mean, greedy egomaniac. I'll cite one example among dozens that I experienced: We had to change into food production gear upon entering the production area, then change back when returning for breaks, etc. There were about 30 human beings changing concurrently. The changing room was 16 feet by 16 feet. So needless to say, all through the pandemic, we packed in there, admittedly masked, and shared our bugs. There were two sizes of smocks, which were mixed helter skelter, adding to the time required as we sorted through smocks to find the right size. That added a little totally unnecessary time to the process, since the smocks arrive sorted, but in bundles of a dozen. The bundles were all mixed up.
I went in to Brett's office to discuss the pandemic and offer a couple of suggestions regarding employee pandemic health. When I brought up the unbelievably simple act of sizing the smocks on the racks, his demeanor of crossed arms and a frown immediately became friendly. He grabbed a legal pad, flipped a couple of pages, and displayed to me a whole page of this thoughts on this issue. He proudly announced that in the near future the smocks would be sorted. He was quite proud of this. Anybody with an IQ above about 87 would have spent 5 minutes on this with a phone call to the launderer. And then gone on to the dozens of other pandemic related actions that should have been taken.
Anyhow, your thoughts hit home. Keep up the good work, my international writer dudette friend!
Ha--that's actually a great slogan for Volvos!
As for your story, how infuriating to be subjected to such a stupid added risk as that tiny changing room. You have to wonder why, if Brett had a whole notebook of thoughts on that changing room, he didn't just go ahead and fix things, instead of waiting for an employee to complain. Sounds like bad management.
You keep up the good work to, my rocker-photographer friend!
Having visited the Vasa, I loved hearing all about it again. I had forgotten so many details.
Thank you, Mari, for your insights. I learn so much from you. …Ever the teacher.
Oh, thank you for these kinds words!
I sent your article to the 7 friends who were with us on our trip that included the Vasa. The reviews were outstanding!
Oh wow! Thank you so much for sharing it!
As always your observations are on point especially why are we making movies with guns featured so much!
Re the need for check lists: I started my current job 3 years ago and my main responsibility is to verify health records for incoming freshmen. By NJ law every freshman must provide vaccination information for measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B and meningococcal (given after age 16) other vaccines are optional (Covid was added this year by the university, that’s a whole other story!) so when learning the system I developed a check list to track what was submitted ( in addition to the vaccine dates they also have to sign various documents and have doctors sign also). The check list was very useful to me and my co-worker also new to the job. My supervisor who had been doing this for over 25 years disliked the list saying it was too convoluted. She preferred a blank sheet where you just writ what is missing. My point was if you missed seeing something in our 8 page packet, how would you know! Fast forward to just this week. We have been extremely overwhelmed this summer and we hired a part time nurse who had 1 day of training in our firm system. A student called me asking what she was missing and why was there a hold on her account. I looked through the paperwork she had submitted noting that the cover page said she needed 2 x MMR dates. On reviewing the whole packet I saw 2 MMR dates…….the packet had been reviewed by the new person who had missed the dates and by my supervisor who took what she had noted on the cover page and placed the hold. I had to apologize to the student and remove the hold. I felt like she thought we were all incompetent! My check list might have helped to have prevented this! I will say I have made plenty of mistakes, especially this summer/fall but the list works!
This is such an interesting example of the importance of standardization to avoid errors. Your story reminds me of how we editors always have someone else proofread our work. We can be the best language people out there, but our eyes will still skip over errors when we're very familiar with something. Your checklist was an elegant way to counteract this tendency. It's always better to admit to ourselves that we can make mistakes, and to come up with ways to make mistakes less likely. Thanks for sharing this story!