As I work to create this commentary for you I am comfortably seated in my room on the Autotrain speeding northward from Sanford, Fla. to the Autotrain station in Loreton, Va. My circus music associates and I have once again completed a really great week in the Bradenton/Sarasota area playing the music of a long-ago era in the world of the old-time circus. We spent many happy hours playing the music of a bygone era. It is especially great for us because the type of music we play there is not often heard in the world of community bands wherein each of us lives our normal musical lives.
Normally my lessons for you come from the fine folks at the Sailor Circus in Sarasota. Normally I will tell you about their latest training improvements or some aspect of their devotion to operation safety and close-up coaching. However, my lesson for you this this year is of a much different type and kind. As a matter of fact it comes as a result of a truly world-class screw-up on my part.
This year’s lesson involves the concept of planning and pre-planning for a highway journey (or any trip or fire department operation really). For the last several years I have brought two concert tubas to the Florida meet in my large GMC Yukon XL. One horn is for me and the other is for my sidekick Jerry from Tuscan, Ariz. Doing this saves him from having to pay extra to fly his horn in on the airplane. My new routine for the past couple of years involves me driving down to Florida and coming back on the train.
My sad story begins last Wednesday, when my buddy and I went out to my truck after breakfast to get the horns from the truck so that we could take them in to our room for the morning recording session. You can only begin to imagine my shock and horror when, after taking my buddies tuba out of the car, I found only a large, open spot where my other tuba should have been. What a dumbass move on my part. I had traveled over a thousand miles to play music and there I stood, without the means to do fulfill my primary mission.
I did not have a clue as to what I should do about this sudden, gaping hole in my psyche. Let me assure you that it is not like a missing shirt or a pair of socks. You just cannot go down to your local Walmart and buy a tuba. However, being a man of my word I gave my buddy the horn I had and despite his protests told him to start playing. My pal Jerry is a World War II U.S. Marine combat veteran, and he is also suffering from a serious medical malady. I was not going to penalize him for my poor planning (and downright stupidity).
I then called my tuba-playing buddy Matt who works for Dillon Music in Woodbridge, N.J. to see what it would cost me to have him pack and ship my horn for an overnight delivery to Florida. I told him what I had done and asked for his advice. Having known me for over 20 years, he expressed only a minimal amount of astonishment at my miscue.
With a chuckle on his lips, he then proceeded to inform me that the cost to pack and ship my tuba for overnight delivery would be approximately $700. More than that, my poor, long-suffering wife, Jackie, would have to take the horn to him by noon for the early pickup which an overnight delivery would require. That pretty much put a halt to that. I could not even think of asking my wife to tote that tuba to Dillon’s, let alone tell her the cost. So I thanked Matt and moved on.
On my way past the front desk, I stopped to mention my costly blunder to the lady at the front desk. She commiserated with me, but could not offer a solution to my problem. So off I went to my room to ponder the problem. As I sat in my room answering emails and writing a highway safety commentary for Firehouse.com, I began to calm down and think. What could I do? What should I do?
I did an Internet search for pawn shops. I figured that I might be able to snag an old horn for a few bucks. After a few phone calls, I gave up on what was turning out to be a fruitless search. I then headed off to the front desk to see if I could borrow a phone book so that I might begin calling music stores. Since it was very busy at the front desk, I walked across to the Starbucks concession and bought a cup of coffee in order to ease my pain.
As I was standing there swigging on my cup of Joe, Robin Price, one of the kind ladies from the hotel executive staff came up to me, put her arm around me and said, “…I hear you have a bit of a problem Harry.” I have known Robin for many years now, since we moved our convention to her hotel. I told her what I had done and what a dumbass I was. She chuckled. Her reply which followed was truly one for the ages.
“I think I can help you out with this one,” she said. She then went on to tell me that each of her four children had played an instrument in their school bands. She also told me she insisted that each of them play a brass instrument. Then she told me that there was a store not more than 10 minutes from the hotel that rented instruments. She told me that she had called them and that they had three tubas from which to choose. She said to see Dave at the Keyboards and More store, and tell him that Robin sent me.
It was a though the weight of the world was suddenly lifted from my shoulders. If I thanked her once, I must have thanked her a dozen times. Out to the car I flew like a flash (well as much of a flash as a chubby old guy like me can be). Even though I caught most of the traffic lights on the way, the trip was truly less than 10 minutes. After trying all three horns, I selected one and made my payment. It cost me a grand total of $26, plus tax and a $50 deposit. Problem solved.
Of course I also filed an e-mail comment with the Marriott Corporation lauding her actions. A long time ago, my parents taught me the importance of always saying thank you to others who had helped you. In that message I told them the story of how Robin Price literally brought order to the chaos what my vacation trip had become. Literally, how often can you expect to find a hotel employee why knows how to rustle up a tuba. I got a nice reply from the customer service manager. He assured me that the executive office would be notified of her incredible level of service to me.
As many of you might remember, each year I work hard to learn some new lessons from the world of music and the circus which I can transfer to our fire service domain and share with you. Usually the lessons come from our time at the Sailor Circus where we perform on the last day of our meeting. Once again I kept a keen eye out for lessons which will help you and I to do a better job for our fire departments. But they all seemed to pale in comparison to the lessons I learned from my debacle.
It is critical to note that my lesson to this year was one of extreme personal importance, not connected to the circus. Here I was; the guy who teaches strategic planning and I found that I had not properly planned for something as simple as a vacation to Florida. As you might imagine, my fame spread throughout the organization. Not the sort of notoriety one consciously seeks out, but oh well.
That evening as I sat out behind the hotel sharing a cloud of cigar smoke with my circus cigar-buddies, the force of this lesson started to come into focus. It seems that many of my associates have created written checklists which they use to prepare for their trips. Who would have thought?
One lady in particular, Wendy from the Ringgold Band in Pennsylvania, told me that she has a couple of different checklists which she uses, depending on whether she is attending our Windjammer’s Unlimited meet at the Marriott Courtyard, or an adult band camp at a college campus where she would be staying in a dorm room and need to pack such things as soap and shampoo. As they spoke, I took copious notes in my little pocket notebook so I would not lose the impact of their thoughts and advice.
So here I was, the man who had a sheaf of papers with him in his car with all of his hotel reservations, his train reservations, and a map with each hotel’s location off of I-95 in North Carolina and Florida, and on I-4 in Florida. And here I was with no checklist to insure that I had everything necessary for success in the world of vacationing. You know, like a tuba. Wow!
Here I was, a man who in his career had planned for and executed fire service operations of all types and sizes, unable to play music because I had forgotten the most basic necessity; the musical instrument. Think about that one gang. Would that not be akin to arriving at a fire without water in your booster tank or air in your SCBA cylinders?
Heck, I first used checklists in the Air Force nearly 50 years ago to perform our morning apparatus preventive maintenance inspections. Do we not follow checklists as we operate at hazardous materials incidents? Do we not follow checklists as we operate in our incident management plans? We use apparatus checklists for our weekly apparatus checks in Adelphia. I surely should have known better. Now I do.
When my wife asked me how I could possibly have forgotten to take my tuba to a music meeting, I was really hard-put to come up with an answer. The best I could do was to say that if I could explain that action, I might then be able to cure cancer and then take a whack at bringing peace to our weary world. She chuckled a bit and then changed the topic of conversation. I guess after more than 50 years she knows a lot more about me than I know about myself.
Let me assure you that I have learned this lesson the hard way. I will be developing a couple of different check lists. I shall have one checklist for traveling by air, and another for traveling by car. I might even create both musical and non-musical lists. There might even be business and non-business variations. I will also pay closer attention to the details for each of my various activities; both fire and non-fire related.
Quite simply, my lesson to you all today is that nothing should be left to chance, or taken for granted in your fire department operations. Let me suggest that you create checklists which can guide you through the various nuances in your daily operations. You need a written drill schedule to insure that you cover a wide range of training topics over time. You can create check sheets based upon your standard operating procedures (SOPs) or your general operating guidelines (GOGs) whichever it is that you use. This I would suggest that you do.
My vacation was saved by Robin Price of the Marriott Courtyard in Bradenton. In the whole course of world events, this was not a major catastrophe. It really only affected Jerry and me. Let me assure you that such a person as Robin may not be available to pull your chestnuts out of the fire when things start to go off course. Checklists can help you to set up a well-run operation. By drilling on the checklists, you can work to build some certainty and order into your operations. I would urge you please take the time to get the job done now. It is yet another case of ‘know it before you need it.” Take care and stay safe.
HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., CFO, MIFireE, a Firehouse.com Contributing Editor, is a municipal fire protection consultant based in Adelphia, NJ. Dr. Carter retired from the Newark, NJ, Fire Department and is a past chief and active life member of the Adelphia Fire Company. Follow Harry on his "A View From my Front Porch" blog. You can reach Harry by e-mail at [email protected].
