Hey, I Know That Guy!
Posted by Bill Rini @ 8:39 amIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m a scuba diving fanatic. In fact, as a hobby, I teach scuba diving and am a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer. A friend emailed me this link to a story about a diver who was left behind on a dive recently and floated in the Pacific Ocean off of the California coast for about five hours before being rescued by a passing boat.
So imagine my surprise when I check out the story and I know the guy! I’ve been diving with him a few times and I also was an instructor on some of his training dives. I haven’t spoken to him since the incident but I can imagine that he’s not all that happy. I haven’t read the story but someone pulled some quotes from the LA Times interview with him in which he indicated he had no intention of suing the dive shop or anybody else involved but that he was upset at the incident. I’ve also seen Dan being interviewed on MSNBC and I hear he was also on the “Today Show” and he didn’t seem too angry.
I quit teaching at that dive shop about eight months ago but I do know most of the folks involved like the boat captain, the dive shop owner, etc. I don’t know the dive master though. He started there after I quit diving with the shop. The basic skills of dive mastering a dive are really not that hard though. You count the people going in the water and you count the people coming out and to be extra careful you take a visual headcount before leaving a dive spot. In fact, that’s one of the more important tasks. Before I let the captain pull up anchor I visually identify every single person on the boat sign-in sheet. I don’t care if they went down below to sleep or if they’re in the head. I have to see them before I mark them off as accounted for. Obviously there was some breakdown in this process.
It just goes to show how skipping a small and seemingly meaningless task can have dire consequences.
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COMMENTS / 3 COMMENTS
mep added these pithy words on Apr 30 04 at 8:48 pmPick two groups of employees. IT Managers and, say, Auto Mechanics (I have no beef with the later group)
Place them in the same ‘boat’ as the dive master. Which do you think would have a higher rate of failure? I have no doubt. Mostly (IMHO) because the IT Managers have highly inflated self worth…the rest of us know that we take care of people first. The Auto Mechanic knows he needs customers to stay in business, the IT Manager only need himself and a finger to point with when things go wrong.
Frank added these pithy words on Apr 30 04 at 11:07 pmWhen training this guy, did you mention it was a good idea to get back on the boat before it leaves?
Bill Rini added these pithy words on May 01 04 at 7:36 pmInteresting suggestion, Frank. I may have to put that into my teaching plan.
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