Another
one of my “things” - there is that magnificent word again - is
the experience of going to an expert for help and finding the expert
to be more harmful than helpful.
A
friend who has often had that experience says to me, “How many
times do I have to go through this to learn the lesson?!”
Now,
it seems to me that if a person is innovative, believes she (or he),
can do just about anything she sets her mind to do, she's going to
have to develop a strong sense of the harmfulness of those who are
commonly supposed to know.
My
own theory is that we can't just dismiss experts, pay no attention,
but rather we must enter into their perspective so deeply and widely
as to be able to understand what they are missing.
Today,
I called ten air conditioner repair shops listed in the Dayton yellow
pages before I was able to talk to one person who seemed competent.
But I felt that even he really didn't want to touch my machine, and
he told me that it would be $62 for him to look at it, and $1 per
minute to work on it. So he advised me, “Buy a new one.”
This
particular air conditioner costs $450 new, so I pulled it apart by
myself this afternoon, followed whatever tips I could garner from the
Internet, put it back together, and it is putting out cold air again,
at least for now.
It
pleases me that my 23-year-old car and my 18-year-old pickup are
still running reliably even though I was told several years ago by
professional car repair people on different occasions that both were
“dead.”
I
wasted thousands of dollars, had many days out of service and
nightmare experiences when I was an owner-operator trucker before I
discovered the Mahoney brothers diesel service in Brentwood. If I had
to visit a repair shop out on the road, I was sure to regret it, and
so I always tried to hobble home to New Hampshire if it was even
remotely possible.
Everyone
I knew in the trucking industry (except one mechanic) told me when I
decided I would buy my own truck, get my own operating authority, and
truck around the States and Canada, “You will fail.” These
experienced, knowledgeable people were wrong.
I
did hire a professional consultant, for $400, to help me meet the
proper D.O.T. and other requirements but he also had flaws which were
almost fatal to my operation. I knew something was amiss when I
found him asking me about certain regulations. He knew
absolutely nothing about cabotage, which nearly got me arrested in
West Hawk, Manitoba. I was carrying Ontario-origin freight into
Manitoba - “cabotage” for a U.S. carrier – and one of the guys at
the West Hawk inspection stations say to me, “You understand, don't
you, that if you were a Canadian doing cabotage in the U.S., they would
have you face-down on the ground, hands cuffed behind your back, with
your freight and your truck impounded?” I told him, “I can do
this. My consultant said I could.” I think one of the reasons,
besides their natural decency as Canadians, that the guys at West
Hawk let me off that day with only minor punishments was that they
felt sorry for my naiveté about my expert consultant.
One
last instance of this thing, this matter of the unhelpful experts,
that keeps coming to mind is from ten years ago when I got Lyme
Disease. I went to three physicians and one joint specialist because
I didn't know what was wrong with me. I could barely walk, was
constantly tired beyond description and often could barely stay
awake. One day after these four doctors, lots of dollars and despair,
a nurse friend calls me and says, “Val, I think you may have Lyme
Disease. Why don't you come into the clinic and let us give you a
test?”
*
* *
Studs
Terkel in his last interview:
“The
big boys aren't that bright.”
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment