Question everything

I saw on French TV (la 2) that a woman scheduled to have an operation on one breast had actually both breasts removed. Poor lady. After an initial reaction of anger, the husband did not have hate in his words. Essentially he was saying “shit happens”. An American would have immediately lawyered up.
Any way, this got me to think about “how things happen” and about the qualification of the staff, and the surgeon, and the administrative staff, etc.. Then I went into a more general train of thought that went from doctoring to lawyering, engineering, soldiering, and human activities in general. The surgeon who screwed up maybe was excellent at his job. All the administrative and preparatory work was left to the “little people”. Even during the operation maybe all he did was a couple of gestures with his scalpel, everything else being left to assistants or nurses. He is responsible however for the whole process.
If the husband had questioned before hand how his wife was processed through the whole thing, he probably would have prevented the accident. It takes, however a strong personality to do that.

Dealing with engineers or lawyers or whoever is considered a “professional” , is a similar thing. The core knowledge of the folks to whom we pay 300 or 500$ an hour amounts is maybe 20% of their whole activity. If that much in some cases. That 20% we cannot question because we don’t have the training or knowledge. Everything else belongs to the plain world of common sense, sense of proportions, organization and this 80% we can and should question.
Professionals however do not in general accept the common of mortals to question this 80%. Don’t walk on my trap line..
There are so many examples. Read the paperwork that comes with your medicine prescriptions and try discussing it with your MD. Good chances she is going to pout or frown. My kid went into depression for a year after having been prescribed Rohaccutane for acne. We had not read the paperwork then. We always do now.
I have another good one that goes back to the 70s in Phoenix. I was an internal auditor at a “big semi conductor” factory. They were making a certain part for some IBM type client. It was to be gold plated at 40 microns. If they set up the electrolysis bath at 40 microns, a certain quantity of parts did not get any gold into the corners. So they set up the bath at 50 microns that way they were sure that all parts came up at specs. An auditor showed that if one kept the settings at 40 microns and caught the defective parts at a quality analysis station and reprocessed them, the company could save 20Millions $ per year even after the cost of this new QA station.
Of course the initial reaction from the engineers was anger, rage and hate. “Fucking bean counters trying to tell us how to do our jobs. We are engineers and you are not, therefore shut up. Discussion closed”. The auditors finally won the argument and their suggestion was adopted.
That’s when I discovered that we can always question things. There is a cost to that. Peoples hate to be questioned and one becomes easily known as a pain in the ass. When there is a lot at stake it should be done though.