Category: superstitions

Fifteen Is The Magic Number

I used to be a process engineer and a training instructor for a contract manufacturing facility. We built computers and other electronics for many major brands. Often, it was nearly impossible to free up students for necessary training.

When training people whom management did not want to let go from the build-line to start with, you have to be fast and accurate. I worked my system down to a point where I could train between four and 20 people in 15 minutes on a straightforward task. All training is done on the line where the workers will perform the task.  Any less time and the majority of people would not understand the detail of the lesson. Any more, and they ran the risk of them being dragged back to the lines without the proper training. So we walked the narrow edge.

When you can only spend an absolute minimum of time training someone, you need to work out a few critical issues.  Along with these issues, you have to worry about exactly how the student will retain the information. Students who were not reinforced with correct information regularly will tend to lose those memories. The majority of forklifts accidents do not happen in the first couple of weeks after training. Those accidents will show up six weeks to three months after training when the driver grows complacent with the safety rules.

The most people I ever taught one time were 195 people who I had to instruct on how to sit in a chair. This was required by our management because one of our employees fell out of a chair in our cafeteria during lunch and sued us. I developed a two-page flyer for each person, which included mounting and dismounting a chair. I also added not to sleep in the chair, and to ensure all four legs of the chair were on the ground at all times. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and they understood why we were doing the training. My oldest son, who is a college professor out in Walla Walla, wanted to know when I was going to teach a class in how to breathe.

Teaching people how to use an air vacuum lift or how to measure a newly built, computer unit for shorts to ground, I still hold to the 15-minute rule for on the line spot classes, I just limit the students being trained to either 2 or 4.  This way, I have more control and less interruption with each student.  When training, safety is paramount. Safety gets harder, and the unknowns grow larger as you add more novices to the mix.

The point I’m trying to pass on is, if you want to learn something in 15 minutes, you can. You probably have a library card, get the book. Way too busy to read, go to YouTube, and find a how-to for the skill. Or even better, figure out who you work with who really knows how to do what you want to learn, and ask them to show you. Don’t waste their time, take good notes, and let the trainer know that you appreciate them helping you.

Tomorrow, I will show you how to take a string of 15-minute quick learning sessions and turn them into the knowledge of a much larger, more extended class, just by stringing them together.  This should be interesting.  Join me and see if it can be done.

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Cultural Superstitions

Today is Friday the 13th. As I sit here, I think of all the superstitious theory and thoughts which surround Friday the 13th. I am just amazed. And yet, it is good every once in a while to suspend belief even if for the day and let a little fun to come into our lives.

When I was the Shop manager out in California for a satellite system, the technicians who work for me always got together on a Friday the 13th, inscribed their names into a mirror which they would then break on Friday afternoon. They did this to show that they held no fear of Friday the 13th or any superstitions. I believe they did it to have some fun and build morale.

Friday the 13th was never in my mind a bad day. The dreadful day to be superstitious of, for me, was Saturday the 14th. I always seemed to break my glasses on a Saturday the 14th.

I never meant to break my glasses, that was a huge no-no in the family. Yet, when I was a kid, whether it was climbing a tree or something else if my glasses were to break it was always on the Saturday after Friday the 13th. I try not to be superstitious. I do believe that in large part we are masters of our own fate and that we need to take care of ourselves. Truthfully, I was, and still am, a klutz. Yet there’s not too much I can do about that.

Superstitions are fun because they remind of our culture and our ties to others in our community. Every culture has stories and fables and superstitions. The stories give some sort of a warning that usually goes to kids. Often, a scary tale is told to help keep everybody in line and doing the right thing.

People do it because their parents do it. Their parents did because their parents did it and so on, and so forth, all the way back to the beginning of their culture.

People say that some stories in the Old Testament and warnings about what to eat and not eat were put there to help keep people healthy. There was science, even if it was the science of observation behind the ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that.’ It is something to consider and think on. 

I highly recommend that a little research into finding out why we believe what we believe helps tremendously. The stories and celebrations of our cultures are not just superstitions.  They are morale boosters which bring us together as a people and help us to feel good.