The Job's not done, til the Paperwork's done
I have spent the last couple of days trying to get details on the championship game and Sunday afternoon games at the Prep Hoops Finale in Edmond, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, the people at Prep Hoops OK closed up shop about 2:30 in the afternoon before they finished posting all the scores for 13U through 17U. You would think that for a Finale, Prep Hoops would care a little more about their premier July event than to leave us all dangling over who won the final event, wouldn't you?
It reminds me of a lesson that I learned in my college days working one summer for Diamond Shamrock as a Junior Chemical Engineer in Paynesville, Ohio studying the chemical resistance of poly vinylidene fluoride as a pipe lining for corrosive chemicals. I would extrude the PVF resin on a double screw extruder and then make six inch long plastic bars to soak in various chemicals for several weeks before stretching them on a machine called a Tensile Tester to see how soft they had gotten in the "stew". If they were still strong, they would stretch a long way with good resistance. If the chemical "ate" into the PVF polymer, the bar would be floppy and it would not stretch very far and was easily deformed. Enough of the technical crap. The real lesson...
One morning my boss called down and asked about yesterdays resin extrusion run. He was a crotchety old guy about 55 years old (hey, I was 20 and everyone over 30 seemed ancient) he wanted to know the temperature of the extruded resin. I had NOT recorded it on the data sheet. I hemmed and hawed for a few seconds and then he answered his own question.... "you didn't write it down, did you?" I said, "No sir, I forgot". "Damn it, Douglas, you need to write everything down or it never, ever happened. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? IF YOU DON'T WRITE IT DOWN, IT NEVER, EVER HAPPENED!" I never forgot that lesson.
And so now I tell you this.... The Prep Hoops Finale Sunday afternoon games NEVER EVER HAPPENED. If they didn't report the scores on Exposure, they never happened. Years from now, people will go back to Exposure and see no scores recorded and wonder what happened in Edmond? Did they have a tornado that afternoon? No scores, no games; never ever happened. Hear that Matt Reynolds? You can put on a great event but if you don't report the whole event on Exposure, it didn't happen.
The Vikings came to America in the 10th century and started Vinland. Didn't write it down. Never happened. Instead, some Italian gets some money from Spain, comes looking for the Far East, finds some Arawak Indians in the Caribbean and thinks he is in China. Writes it all down, kidnaps all the Indians and takes them back to Spain and we name a Holiday for him. The Vikings could celebrate October 12th if they had written it down.
That's all I have to say. Write it down. As the sign in the outhouse said, The job's not done til the paperwork's done.
It reminds me of a lesson that I learned in my college days working one summer for Diamond Shamrock as a Junior Chemical Engineer in Paynesville, Ohio studying the chemical resistance of poly vinylidene fluoride as a pipe lining for corrosive chemicals. I would extrude the PVF resin on a double screw extruder and then make six inch long plastic bars to soak in various chemicals for several weeks before stretching them on a machine called a Tensile Tester to see how soft they had gotten in the "stew". If they were still strong, they would stretch a long way with good resistance. If the chemical "ate" into the PVF polymer, the bar would be floppy and it would not stretch very far and was easily deformed. Enough of the technical crap. The real lesson...
One morning my boss called down and asked about yesterdays resin extrusion run. He was a crotchety old guy about 55 years old (hey, I was 20 and everyone over 30 seemed ancient) he wanted to know the temperature of the extruded resin. I had NOT recorded it on the data sheet. I hemmed and hawed for a few seconds and then he answered his own question.... "you didn't write it down, did you?" I said, "No sir, I forgot". "Damn it, Douglas, you need to write everything down or it never, ever happened. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? IF YOU DON'T WRITE IT DOWN, IT NEVER, EVER HAPPENED!" I never forgot that lesson.
And so now I tell you this.... The Prep Hoops Finale Sunday afternoon games NEVER EVER HAPPENED. If they didn't report the scores on Exposure, they never happened. Years from now, people will go back to Exposure and see no scores recorded and wonder what happened in Edmond? Did they have a tornado that afternoon? No scores, no games; never ever happened. Hear that Matt Reynolds? You can put on a great event but if you don't report the whole event on Exposure, it didn't happen.
The Vikings came to America in the 10th century and started Vinland. Didn't write it down. Never happened. Instead, some Italian gets some money from Spain, comes looking for the Far East, finds some Arawak Indians in the Caribbean and thinks he is in China. Writes it all down, kidnaps all the Indians and takes them back to Spain and we name a Holiday for him. The Vikings could celebrate October 12th if they had written it down.
That's all I have to say. Write it down. As the sign in the outhouse said, The job's not done til the paperwork's done.
Comments
Post a Comment