Yes, I am just a sick safety professional who needs help! You may have a point, but I just had to share this “human factors” learning experience from my wife and daughter. First, let me say that there are probably not many women smarter than my wife and 12-year-old daughter. Both women put me to shame when it comes to intelligence, and I state this as a fact and not as a _ss kissing attempt! The other day my daughter wanted to warm up her pizza in our microwave and the instructions my wife provided were about as simple as possible; however, my daughter took her literally and repeatedly failed to do such a simple task…
As many of you know, if you overheat your cold pizza in a microwave, the end result is like eating paper! So my daughter asked my wife, “how long do I warm up two slices” and my wife’s instructions were… “30 seconds @ 8 power”. My daughter asked How is that done? And my wife responded… “hit the “quick” button and then hit the power button twice”. We continued to eat, and after a minute or so, we looked up to find a hungry 12-year-old battling the keypad on a microwave! Now I knew exactly what those instructions meant as I was an experienced operator and had been “trained” repeatedly by my wife (sound familiar, men?). But to a 12-year-old, she took the instructions literally, so as she hit the “quick” button and the microwave started, she would then hit the “on/off” button, which is ALSO labeled “power” on the keypad. Now my wife meant for her to hit the “power” button that changes the settings of the cooking intensity from 1-10. So the “unwritten” procedure is to hit the “quick” button, which defaults the microwave to a 30-second time period, then to hit the “power” button twice to lower the cooking level from 10 down to a Level 8. But my daughter was hitting the “quick” button, then she was hitting the “power” button (but the power – On/Off” button) twice, which would turn off the microwave and reset the microwave settings. She did this repeatedly with the same results – about two seconds of cooking each time. I guess if we had left her alone, she would have finally warmed up her pizza.
So when you hear someone say… “it’s common sense,” “anyone could do it,” etc., remember it is NOT ONLY how we say it but, more importantly, it is how the other(s) hear it! Thus, “verbal instructions” should be AVOIDED, and we should always refer to WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS and TRAINING on those WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS when carrying out critical tasks. And in the eyes of my 12-year-old hungry daughter, heating up her favorite pizza from Dewey’s Pizza was a critical task!