Scooter’s Story
Common sense is not so common anymore. How many times have you heard or said that phrase? The problem with blaming things for a lack of common sense is you don’t get to the root of the issue. When we do that, we don’t do anything to fix the problem. We complain about the problem the next time it comes up.
Let’s start with defining what common sense is. The dictionary defines common sense as sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. That leads to how someone makes good decisions about a situation if they have never been faced with it or any situation like it. What I tell people about common sense is that it is a product of experiences. People who grow up in the country can develop a shared sense of things they experience growing up. The same goes for people that grow up in the city. When someone who has never done mechanical work comes to work for us as a technician, how can they make sound judgments about a situation they have never been in? The problem may go deeper than a lack of common sense. So, what do we have left if we set aside the lack of common sense as the culprit in bad decisions? I propose three options to consider: attentiveness, training, & experience.
Multiple things can cause a lack of attention: being in a hurry, trying to prove oneself, fatigue & many others. I will tell you a story about a young technician, let’s call him Scooter. Scooter had just started at a Cat dealership as a technician. He had been a technician in the military and a private company for five years. He had never worked on heavy equipment. He was eager to prove that he was a hard worker and someone that the company wanted to keep, even with his lack of knowledge of the equipment. During his first week, he was paired with a senior technician. They were working on a roller frame of a 953-track loader. Scooter’s memory of exactly what the task was needs to be unclear; he is old now, but he remembers that it involved the senior tech heating up a piece of metal. It needed to be manipulated by hand. So, not wanting to stand there, Scooter reached out and grabbed the metal, without gloves, because they did not wear gloves then, that the torch had just come off and jerked his hands back because it was hot. Duh!! The senior tech just looked at him. It was not loose enough, and the senior tech had to put the torch back on it. As soon as the torch was taken off the metal, our hero, Scooter, reached out immediately and grabbed the metal again. He was, again, pulling his hands back quickly. He was embarrassed that he did it again. The senior tech just looked at Scooter with a disappointed look. To shorten the story, it happened a third time like it did the first two times. Upon witnessing this a third time, the senior tech just put the torch up and walked away, not saying a word. Scooter was thinking, how stupid can I be?
At lunch that day, Scooter ate alone and could see the senior tech on the other side of the lunchroom. Scooter knew what the senior tech was thinking. “That boy has no common sense and won’t last long.” He was probably also hoping Scooter never got teamed up with him again. It was not a lack of common sense that caused Scooter to get burned three times in a row; it was a lack of attention caused by being in a hurry.
Along with paying attention to details, a person must also be aware of what to pay attention to. Scooter knew not to touch hot metal with his bare hands, but his desire to prove his worth, oh how that backfired, did not pay attention. Lack of training has also played a role in Scooter’s life and nearly the end of that life. People are not born with the knowledge of how to use lifting eyes properly. They are not meant to be sideloaded. They should also be tightened down before putting a load on them. Scooter was taught that lesson one night when pulling an engine out of a machine. The engine came crashing down and could have easily hurt or killed Scooter and the technician under the machine. Scooter got some experience that night on how not to use a lifting eye.
As I said, experience is the best teacher. All we have to do is survive and gain that experience. The best thing we can do to help our employees gain experience safely is to train them. All Thompson Tractor employees can do to stay safe is to slow down, pay attention to the details, and ask when they don’t know. Common sense is not the answer because common sense can only be gained with experience. Someone once told me that people are not born with common sense, but some seem to be born with a genetic predisposition never to gain common sense. That may be true, but anyone can if Scooter can gain enough common sense to become the older man he is today. By the way, Scooter lasted over 20 years at that dealership. He has also worked in the industry for over 30 years.
Be safe and look out for each other.
0 Comments