...there we stood in the doorway We heard the mission bell and we were thinking to ourselves "This could be heaven or this could be hell" Mirrors on the ceiling The pink champagne on ice. And she said: "We are all just prisoners here of our own device." (Eagles)

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

For the Want of A Nail a phone message was lost (Procedural Safeguards 101)

Ben Franklin can show up anytime one is not expecting him. The other day I told my friend about my new Motel Special Ed. Today she wanted to tell me I had not done a very good job of writing my welcome statement. I was imbibing on a Mint Julip when she dropped by. In case one does not know, the key ingredient to a Mint Julep is the finger crushed mint --ok, the mint is a minor key, the traditional Early Times is the major key - anyway, I was tending to no one else's business but my own. She said I had to include information on the procedural safeguards when someone checks in to the motel. She thought she had nailed it.
I dutifully explained to her that all of my motel staff were trained in the procedural safeguards and anyone who had to sign in was responsible for learning it themselves. She asked me if I knew any of my staff who had actually read it. I dutifully told her again that I had a group of professionals that explained it's content to everyone who worked here.
Then she came up with this cockamamie story about a "telephone game". Somehow, a bunch of people sit in a circle. The first person has a piece of paper with a paragraph on it and reads it verbatim to the person sitting next to them. That person then turns to the next person, and without benefit of the paper, repeats the statement. When they get to the last person, that person has to say out loud what they were told, and somehow it never is the same as what the first person read.
This jostled my memory and I hearkened back to the days of old when that very same event happened to me. I can not remember the times that what someone told me the procedural safeguards said came out different when I said to them ' "let's just read that section right now". Ring, ring, telephone ring. "Compliance Office. May I help you?" Nailed it.

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