I am writing this as a reality check to see if it’s just me. Do my peers in the reliability profession have the same problems I do when communicating with non-reliability professionals?
When Proactive Thinking Spills into Everyday Life
If anyone has been in the Reliability game for an extended period (I am in my 45th year), we know that Reliability is a way of life and not just a job. So, our proactive thinking involuntarily bleeds over into our personal lives.
Reliability is a way of life and not just a job.
We tend to be OCD about ensuring we do timely preventive maintenance (PM) tasks on our homes, like annually changing the batteries in our smoke detectors, periodically tightening the lugs in our electrical panels, cleaning our ventilation duct systems, being religious about changing our A/C filters, closing our crawls space vents in the winter and so on.
We tend to purchase warranties on our appliances/equipment/systems to ensure proper PMs are done, like on our standby generators and other mechanical and electrical equipment/systems (unless we feel we can do it ourselves without voiding the OEM warranty). We tend to do the same PM regimens on our cars and yards. You get my drift.
We also employ ‘Reliability in Design’ principles when looking at our personal lives. We look at the life cycle costs of appliances and other products we buy. We buy based on quality and value and not just initial cost.
When we see potential safety hazards, we take care of them immediately. If a receptacle is loose, we tighten it. If it is found to be damaged or worn, we replace it while we are in there. If we see exposed wiring, we fix it. We ensure that all wiring connections are wrapped in electrical tape, just in case.
When we do a project at home, we have already visualized the entire project and have a materials listing complete with all the tools we need. We did not want the project to be interrupted because we did not have the proper materials and tools easily accessible. We want the project to be efficient, on budget, 1st pass quality, and completed on time.
We are picky about the specs of the products we buy and may appear too harsh on Lowe’s or Home Depot personnel with our incessant questioning about product details. To our spouses, we seem to be badgering store personnel as our spouses roll their eyes in apology. Our spouses think, ‘Here we go again; I should have stayed home.’
The Challenges of Communicating Outside the Reliability Bubble
The hardest part about having a Reliability background is my ability (or inability) to communicate effectively with others outside my field. This especially includes my family.
In the Reliability profession, we pride ourselves on effectively and efficiently communicating what we want. Our messaging is short, concise, and straightforward. We are astutely aware of the possibility of misinterpretation, mainly when we write procedures or instructions.
Many of us work on contracts with our vendors, so we have the dubious honor of working with lawyers on contract language. We learn that words mean everything; if they aren’t written, they aren’t happening (no matter the verbal promise the OEM gave you). So, we learn to cover almost all eventualities with clean and concise language. We are proactive to the bone; it is in our DNA!
At work, we are often recognized and sometimes rewarded for having these unique skill sets. However, we are frequently reviled for having this ‘Reliability Curse’ at home!
Because of this, do you all [my peers] ever have communication problems with your spouses (or others) because of our literal nature, or is it just me? Do you ever have scenarios like the following?
Spouse:
“Please stop at the store and pick up some cocktail sauce.”
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
- What aisle is that in, at the mega-Kroger down the street?
- What brand do you want?
- What size bottle do you want?
- We are wondering how we can get the wrong thing. We take pictures of the bottle we are about to buy and get confirmation from our wives that it is what they want.
Cashier at Grocery Store:
My wife sends me to the grocery store to pick up something like described above. I do not go to the grocery store often (unless there is a sale on beer). When checking out, the cashier asks me, ‘Paper or plastic?’
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
I replied, ‘Cash.’ Since I am not there much, I assumed this reference was related to the form of payment and not the type of bag I wanted. Even the cashier laughed at me on that one
Spouse:
“Can you pick up a gift card for your daughter’s Christmas gift exchange (some game they play where gifts are shifted left or right, based on the game’s rules)?”
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
- Is there a $ cap on the gift?
- Where should the gift card be from (what kind of gift cards do kids want)?
- Where can I find that type of gift card?
This was a real case, and this was the result:
- We were at a restaurant where the girl’s softball team was having a Christmas dinner, and my wife met me there.
- All the other girls were putting their wrapped gifts on the table.
- My wife asks, ‘Where is our gift card’?
- I give her the gift card.
- She says, ‘Why didn’t you wrap it’?
- I said, ‘You didn’t ask me to wrap it; you asked me to buy a gift card, and here it is.’
- I ended up wrapping it in a napkin from the restaurant
- There was no instruction to wrap it. I thought the gift exchange game they were playing was based on the recipient knowing what the gift was, and if that did not appeal to them, they would pass it to someone else. Who knew?
Restaurant Waiter:
The background here is that I drink unsweetened iced tea. I had already been served my tea, which had a lemon wedge in it. The waiter was checking on our table, and I indicated that I would like another iced tea. He said, ‘Can I see your glass?’ I said sure, held it up, and showed it to him. Some at my table thought I was being a smart a$$.
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
- He asked me to ‘see’ my glass and not for me to ‘give him’ my glass
- My logic was that he wanted to see if there was a lemon wedge because that might have indicated it was unsweetened (sometimes, they have cues like that to determine if it is sweetened or unsweetened). Based on this, he would know which type of tea to bring me back. Obviously, it did not work out that way.
Spouse:
Puts pizza boxes in outside trash bins, which also have extra marinara sauce in them.
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
- Why doesn’t she put any disposable liquids down the drain in the house (providing it is not caustic or grease)?
- Why doesn’t she put the leftover pizza in a zip lock back and put it in the trash bins in the garage until I take them to the dump?
- I reason that raccoons and possums rove around at night in our neighborhood and tend to rummage through the trash. Putting food in the outside trash will attract them (and their families), and they are a nuisance.
Spouse:
She decides she wants to paint the cabinets in a bathroom in the house on the spur of the moment. She buys a can of paint, a brush, and a container to dip from (FYI – I already had brushes and trays).
What goes through a Reliability Professional’s head:
- I asked her if she planned to remove the hardware from the drawers and cabinets. She said ‘Yes’.
- I asked if you planned on using painter’s tape to protect the areas where the cabinets meet the walls and floors, ‘She said, ‘Yes.’ In my mind, I am building a tools and materials listing of what is needed to do the project efficiently.
- I asked, ‘How do you plan to paint the cabinet doors? She said ‘with a brush’.
- I said, ‘I meant when you are physically painting them, how will you prevent the wet paint areas from getting on the floor, the counter, etc.?
- She got frustrated with my questioning and said, ‘I didn’t think that far ahead…let it go!’
- I was trying to make the project more manageable, and I ended up putting Yankee Candles under the cabinet doors so she could paint them on a pedestal and dry them (without sticking to paper towels or getting on something else).
Is the ‘Reliability Curse’ a Blessing in Disguise?
I know these are trivial cases and humorous to a degree (not to my wife). Still, my Reliability background often frustrates those around me who are not in my field of expertise. Sometimes, this causes friction because they think I am OCD and doing these things maliciously, on purpose. But I am not; I am just being proactive, visualizing the future, and taking action to ensure no unintended consequences. No surprises.
Am I alone? Do my friends/peers in the Reliability field have similar stories they can share, or is it just me?
Principal of Prelical Solutions, LLC and former CEO of Reliability Center, Inc. (RCI), Bob has 38+ years of global experience in Root Cause Analysis (RCA). He’s trained over 10,000 professionals in 25+ countries and co-authored ten books on RCA, FMEA, and Reliability. Bob serves on the Board of the Community of Human and Organizational Learning (CHOLearning), and is Series Editor for CRC Press’s “Reliability, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering” series.
