Not even turning on the light is organized - November 2021
Why it is important to understand if someone in a management position understands to do their the job or not?
Let us have a look at this example and find out what is wrong with this picture:
An hour after it got dark the emergencies there case is still dark.
A concerned resident publishes this picture in a residential chat group. Asking the management who is responsible and why no one turns on the lights in the fire escape staircase.
This seems to not being organized well.
So what probably happened after this message was read by the management? There are different scenarios possible.
The official answer is that after a technician was sent out to check the situation he reported that the lights did not work. They would organize an exchange with new ones the very next day. But if you look at the picture with the dark staircase carefully you will notice that there is no light shining from the lower or the upper floors into the staircase. That indicates that several lights stopped working the very same day. How likely is that? As a resident you even know that five lights are affected just in this photo alone.
You clearly would see if there is light shining from the floor below this one or above this one into the fire escape. There are also lights installed between the floors.
But they all are out. As a manager of this particular building you should know what’s going on, right? Chances are that someone did not turn on the lights on time.
Why? Because just minutes later suddenly the lights were turned on. They would have no chance to exchange all the broken lights in such a short time.
No reaction from side of the management followed. No apologies, no investigation, no announcement to improve or to learn from the incident.
Shouldn’t any professional learning from any incident? And if it was an incident that should not have happened should there not be a plan about how to avoid that problem from happening again? Of course, that is just a management standard procedure. Yet nothing happens…
Something else is odd here...
You might wonder: what else is wrong in this picture? The door to the fire escape is wide open. Doors to any fire escape should be kept closed at all times. This is to avoid smoke spreading in case of a fire. During every yearly fire drill day the fire department is recommending to keep these doors closed. As a manager wouldn’t it be your job to make sure they are closed at all times? Of course it would.
But in this building many doors have problems.
Why is that?
The windows of the fire escape facing West are not waterproof anymore. So Rainwater is coming in, running down the stairs and effects the iron made fire and smoke protecting doors. Rust expands the volume and they do not fit properly into the door frame anymore.
So since the management never took care of the leaking windows it just caused the next problem. Which is not taken care off as well.
What is most surprising is that the majority of the residents just don’t care.
Anyway, the ones interested can learn from these incidents. They can learn how to connect the dots. They can learn that it is better to just not believe any explanation given by officials. Use your own brain. One day it might save your life.
