Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There are practices that time has proven to be worthwhile. Someone in school drilled them into us. We vowed to avoid them as soon as school was out, but life eventually catches us.

I have lost track of the number of times I have seen this on the job. We have a problem; we examine the problem and its causes, and we conclude that someone avoided a fundamental practice. There are no excuses other than, “I didn’t want to do that.”

That is the source of the title of this post. In college or trade school or high school, we learned something basic. The teacher made us do it more times than we felt necessary. We vowed that once we got out of that class or place or the sight of that stubborn, mean, rotten, overbearing teacher, we would never do it again.

Then it happened. We skipped that long-cursed practice, and the ceiling of the world fell on our heads. These long-cursed practices are not nice theories. They are not new inventions that someone wants others to try first.

They are basic practices that have proven their worth over several centuries.

We avoid them at our peril and snicker when we get away with it. Time and circumstances, however, catch us.

Okay, here are a few examples (add to the list):

• experiments should be repeatable
• don’t pour ingredients back into the container
• wear your safety goggles
• wear all the safety equipment
• always have two people present
• ask someone else to read your paper
• if you didn’t document it, you didn’t do it
• if you didn’t test it, you didn’t do it
• if you didn’t document the test, you didn’t test