Thursday, November 27, 2008

How come we seldom see the obvious?

 

Some things are like the nose right in front of your eyes but you don't see it.

I was on my way out the office door when they were trying to fix the exit switch which broke down again.  These doors are equiped with security scanners on the outside when you come in, and a switch to open the door from inside when you want to leave.  The Mat-Salleh boss was there and he sneered, "Aaah...Made in Malaysia..."  It was like a punch in the solar plexus and brought the bile up to my throat.

C'mon, this is a doorbell switch they installed here.  I mean, how many times a day you get someone to ring on your doorbell?  It's a no-brainer using it on a door that needs to be opened about 500 times a day.  But I didn't say all that.  If I did I would have added a few nasty words about his Malaysian wife too. 

I was fuming and should be thinking of a few thousand nasty things to say to put him in his place.  But my mind was working on a better solution and the answer was so obvious it came to me between the office door and the main gate to the car park.  Yet nobody seems to have seen it.  Why not install a production equipment switch instead?  Those things take at least a few thousand punches a day and still last for years.  I made a mental note to put this into the suggestion box the next day.

But came the next day I forgot about it, until the day they started changing them into industrial equipment switches.  Someone in maintenance must have been riled up enough to put on his thinking cap as well.  I guess the contractors don't have much experience with this either.

Well, here's one more to experience.

 

2 comments:

  1. How about having something with no moving parts at all - an RFID card reader. It's more expensive than a el-cheapo switch but it won't break. Plus it doubles as a clock-out device.

    About not seeing things right in front of your eyes, change those glasses. LOL...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aaah... That reminds me of old times...

    BTW we have something the equivalent of a 'touch n go' card system for entering. We still have to push doors.

    ReplyDelete