Professionalism and Responsibility

Great Debates
1

This thread was inspired by a debate here:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=81772

It seems people occasionally leave their kids in the car. They forget. Sometimes the kids die.

Some people consider this a regrettable accident. They say it could happen to anybody.
NO!

In some cases relativism is nothing but sheer bullshit. Some mistakes should not happen.

There is the concept of professionalism. There are times when you are just going out there and trying something, having fun, or it’s not that important and you just wing it, because failure is tolerable.

There are times however when professionalism is recquired.

Professionalism means that you know what you are doing, are taking it seriously, and doing it right.

For example, a pilot worthy of the name “professional” follows a set of procedures every time he flies. Flying is complex and potentially hazardous and as a professional he knows that he must eliminate or minimize all possible risks.

The set of procedures he follows protects him from the most common and avoidable mistakes. Being a professional he follows them each and every time he flies. This is his insurance.

A pilot isn’t just winging it, and if unforseen circumstances throw him off his set of procedures he is highly uncomfortable because he knows he has lost his insurance. He gets back on them, or starts the procedures from scratch to make sure he didn’t omit anything.

These methods produce wonderful results. No pilot who could be called professional would ever forget to put his landing gear down. A pilot can surely correct me, but I recall reading on a standard airliner landing approach, putting the gear down is manually checked over a dozen times by three different people. They don’t gloss over it. They check it each time.

Forgetting to put your landing gear down is a wholly avoidable accident, and one that no qualified pilot should ever make.

If you are a professional, you will have followed the procedures. It simply will not happen, by definition.

Likewise my father is a retired Recon Marine Sniper. He has handled guns his entire life. He has never shot anybody by accident, and being a professional there is zero chance he ever will.

Each and every time my father picks up a gun he checks to see if it is loaded. I’ve seen him do this to the same gun 5 times in ten minutes, as he shows it to people. Each time it returns to his hands he checks it. It’s both a force of habit and deliberate.

If you watch a rifle inspection in the armed forces, you will see the inspector check the gun when he recieves it from the recruit. Standing right in front of the recruit, he will inspect the rifle and hand it back. The recruit will immediately check to see that it is still not loaded, even though it has never been out of his sight. He checks it every time he receives it.

One safety however is not enough for a professional. Mistakes can happen, and it is possible though unlikely in the extreme that my father might overlook a cartride in the chamber. Therefore my father never ever points a gun in an unsafe direction. Never. He goes to great pains to do this, and suffers inconvenience, but he never allows the barrel to point at another human being or in an unjnown potentially dangerous direction. He makes himself aware of it at all times.

Furthermore, my father keeps and transports all weapons with the bolt open until immediately before they are ready to fire.

All these procedures prevent my father from accidentally discharging his weapon into another human being. As a professional my father follows them 100% of the time. It is therefore impossible for him to accidentally discharge his weapon into another human being. As a professional he has eliminated that risk.

Professionalism is a nice thing to have. With professionalism we can safely do extremely complex, dangerous, or difficult tasks with relative safety. Unnecessary risk has been eliminated, and necessary risk has been minimized.

Mountain climbers know about professionalism. Scuba Divers know about it. So do surgeons.

Any accountant in the world understands the concept.

There are certain mistakes that are not made ever by competant responsible professional people.

I take some things seriously. Those that I do, I follow procedures I’ve developed and I do them every time.

For example, I take my credit card seriously. I don’t want to lose it. When I pay for something, my wallet stays out and open and in front of me and in my left hand until the credit card has been returned to me and placed back in the wallet. Once the card is out, I do everything right-handed.

This, however safe it may be is not enough for professional surety.

I like to save my reciepts, so what I do is wrap the receipt around the credit card. I don’t get my receipt until I sign the bill. Once I sign the bill the clerk checks my signature hands me my card and receipt. I wrap the receipt around the card, place it back in my wallet, and put my wallet in my back pocket. I do this every time be it in a restaurant or a store.

It is impossible for me to leave my credit card in a store or restaurant, unless I am still holding my wallet open in front of me and I have not received a receipt.

That level of surety I am comfortable with.

One more example:

Today after work I went to the club to pick up my daughter. The fence by the tennis court was bent. Apparently a lady had gotten out of her car and it had rolled into the fence with her kids still in it while she was talking to somebody ten feet away.

I take both my driving and my children’s safety professionally.

This mistake, or accident could not have happened to me. The fact that it did happen is proof of an unporofessional and incompetant attitude. She is an amateur as far as the safety of her children is concerned. She depends on habit, instinct, and luck.

Leaving your children in a car is in and of itself the mistake of an incompetant. It should never happen.

Now why couldn’t this happen to me.

  1. I never leave my children unattended in a car.

  2. I never leave my keys in the car, not even for a second.

  3. By following rule number #2 this ensures that I follow this rule if I am driving my wife’s car, which is an automatic (which I always drive when I have the child:) I put the car in park before I turn it off. If the car is not in park you cannot remove the key. This is a good case of double insurance.

  4. While parking on a hill I always engage the manual parking brake.

  5. While parking on a hill I always turn the wheel so that if the car does start to roll it will turn in a safe direction and come to rest without continuing to travel as a runaway.

I do all of these things all the time. It is impossible for my car to roll away from me with my children in it.

These things don’t take me hardly any extra time or effort. They are both force of habit and deliberate.

This lady has made a mistake that should never have happened.

In order for it to occur she had to follow a chain of incompetance.

By allowing it to occur she is negligent, irresponsible and unreliable. She was derelict in her duties as a parent and demonstrably incompetant for the job.

2

So, what exactly is the Great Debate here? Whether or not you are perfect, or whether or not bad things sometimes happen to good people, or whether or not humans are fallible? :rolleyes:

I guess all the pilots in all those airline crashes over the years were just incompetent and unprofessional.

Final note: There sure are an awful lot of True Scotsmen on the Straight Dope, aren’t there?

3

Well, Scylla, I guess we must conclude that you are a flawless human incapable of error and the rest of us are just thoughtless, irresponsible boobs.

I bow before your perfectitude. Debate over.

stoid

4

<<So, what exactly is the Great Debate here? Whether or not you are perfect, or whether or not bad things sometimes happen to good people, or whether or not humans are fallible? >>

I’d think it would be this: since you can take the license away from a bad pilot, and if you drive really stupidly the police can ticket you out of your driver’s license whether you hurt anyone else yet or not, and bad accountants don’t keep their jobs long…

what do you do with a bad parent?

I’ve often thought, since many people really do at least like their children, and are quite attached to them no matter what sort of wrong or dangerous behavior they may subject the children to…that possibly what we need is foster homes for foster parents. Don’t separate the children and parents, put them ALL under the supervision of a professional parent.

Here in Oklahoma, when you are 16, you get a driver’s license and can drive alone. You cannot, however, be the supervising driver for someone with their permit until you’re 18, because you’re not experienced enough. I wish more people would treat parenting the same way, and not test themselves on their children. How you could do this, I don’t know.

Corr

5

SCYLLA, you’re mixing apples and oranges.

Professionals are held to a higher standard of care (they have a greater duty regarding the execution of their professional duties) precisely because they are professionals. A higher level of competency and expertise presumably also comes with a greater understanding of the necessity of executing the protocols or meeting the standards of a particular profession. If I am an amateur sailor, I might be excused for failing to keep right when approaching an passing another vessel, but if I am a ship’s captain of some years’ experience, I am unlikely to be so excused.

Ordinary people living ordinary lives are generally held to an ordinary standard of care – a duty to act as a reasonable and prudent person would act under the same circumstances. The fact that you never leave your keys in your car does not establish, either generally or in any specific instance, whether a reasonable and prudent person would do so – whether, in other words, the individual in question violated his or her duty of care. “Professionalism” in this context is irrelevant, because we are not talking about a profession.

Pointing out that something would never happen to you does not establish that it would never or should never happen to someone else. But if your point is that it is negligent to the point of being criminal to leave one’s children in a car under such circumstances that the children are killed . . . well, that doesn’t seem to me to be much of a debate.

6

My former sister-in-law P. was in an accident this weekend. She and her younger sister were driving from California to Colorado, along with my 10 yo neice and 14 yo nephew. My ex sis-in-law had her 18 yo sister, C. driving and this girl fell asleep at the wheel. The car hit the car she was follwing and flipped three times off the highway, throwing my neice out of the car. A terrible accident that everyone survived. I keep saying accident, because that’s what everyone calls it. I know C. didn’t MEAN to fall asleep while driving my neice and nephew, innocently sleeping, trusting their elders for safe journey. But how can we call this an accident? Where is the responsibility, the accountability? I don’t expect perfection, but I didn’t expect to get a call saying my brother’s children were in a hospital in Utah while the adults were unconscious. This was preventable. It was not an accident. Humans are fallible, C. is a good person, but a bad thing didn’t just accidently happen.

7

CYN, we can call it an accident because it was, by definition, an accident – that is, something that was not intended to occur and could not be foreseen. (Unless the driven hadn’t slept in like two days.) The responsibility is on the driver. The accountability is also probably on the driver, should your former SIL (or her insurer) decide to hold someone accountable. The fact that something is preventable does not stop it from being an accident. They two are not mutually exclusive. The fact that something is an accident doesn’t mean a person cannot be held responsible and/or accountable for it; those terms are not mutually exclusive either.

I can understand you being upset, but I wonder what pound of flesh you’d like to extract from an 18 year old who presumably did not intend to injure herself and her family and who in any event will have to live with the consequences of the pain and suffering she’s caused.

8

Well PLD had you been a perfect professional such as myself, you would have read the linked thread before you posted (it would have been a part of your standard operating procedures.) Therein you would have read that Izzy apparently disagrees with this concept and that leaving your children in the car, and letting them die in the heat is simply a mistake that could happen to anybody.

I maintain that it could not happen to anybody who is competant, or has made the effort to take a professional attitude towards their child’s safety.

Since that debate was about whether or not there should be new laws, I felt uncomfortable with my continued hijack, and started this thread where I’ve created my thesis as to why these things don’t happen to competant people.

I would say that the ones that crashed because they simply forgot to put their landing gear down certainly were. That is precisely what I said, is it not?

Did I somehow imply that all accidents were a result of unprofessionalism or incompetance?

Is there a serious point you are trying to make with that comment, or are you just being a dick?

9

Stoid:

Well said. Thanks.
corrvin:

The debate is whether or not certain kind of mistakes are 100% avoidable, and if they are when and who is obligated to make the investment and take the responsibility to make them so.

Jodi:

No. I think you are mistaken. As a captain of a vessel that you sail on weekends for fun, you have the same responsibilities and must follow the same laws as the captain of a commercial ship. You don’t get a free pass for being an amateur. You simply don’t have the same competance and skill as a professional. As an amateur, you recognize those lower limits and hopefully don’t get it in over your head. You also defer to professionals.

Admittedly, I’m using the word in an odd way, referring more towards the concept of expertise inherent in professionalism rather than simply getting paid or not as the distinction between amateur and professional.

10

Scylla, I understand what you are saying about this particular situation. When a parent makes a clear choice (leaving her children in a car where there is the possibility that it could roll) we might rightly assign some blame.

However, I would caution you to avoid statements such as the above, simply because you are, like all of us, human and prone to error.

I am one of those ultra safety-conscious parents. My 6 1/2 year old daughter is still using a booster seat, even though our state law says she is “safe” without it, because she weighs only 42 pounds and is hardly protected by a lap-and-shoulder belt only. I cut my toddlers’ veggie dogs in half lengthwise before slicing them because I worried that a disc shape might be a choking hazard. You get the idea.

I have made choices, deliberately and out of habit, for 13 years now, that were in the best interests of my children.

I also have made mistakes. I have, either 2 or 3 times (I may have blocked out one incident in shame and humiliation) gone around to unbuckle one of my infants and found that, while my child was buckled into her/his carseat, I had neglected to buckle the belt around the seat. Apparently, something distracted me and I forgot. I drove home with my child unsecured. Did I feel, at the time, negligent, irresponsible and unreliable? Yes. Did I curse myself for my inattention and thank whatever powers-that-be that we arrived safely? Yes.

I hope that you never make a mistake with your children. I certainly didn’t plan on making any with mine. But when I did, I also found a way, eventually, to forgive myself, and to continue to do my best. I hope that when you make your own mistakes (and I’m afraid that it is inevitable that you will) you will find the courage to accept your imperfections, and to continue to do your best.

11

It’s certainly happens with depressing frequency that I am mistaken, but this time I don’t think I am. When you talk about “professionalism” versus, for lack of a better term, “amateurism,” you are talking about degrees of a standard of care to which a person might be held. A professional is held to a higher standard of care, precisely because an amateur might reasonably make a mistake it would not be reasonable for a professional to make. This does not amount to a “free pass” for the non-professional, who must still meet fulfill his or her ordinary duty of care, as I have already said. Of course, as an amateur, you “hopefull” recognize your own limits and “hopefully” don’t get in over your head, but life is full of judgment calls, many of which in retrospect seem appallingly badly made. But then hindsight is always 20/20.

My point is that I fail to see your point in equating child rearing to “professionalism” since it is not necessarily (a) something we are paid to do or (b) something we must have a particular skill set or level of judgment to do. Young people have kids. Stupid people have kids. Irresponsible people have kids. That does not mean that if those kids die accidentally in the care of the young, stupid, or irresponsible, that their death does not remain an accident. Rather, the question is whether we as a society want to hold those people responsible for the consequences of their actions even though it was an accident, on the theory that they ought to have known better and that youth/stupidity/irresponsibility is no excuse. On that, you’ll get no argument from me. I just don’t see where “professionalism” enters into it at all.

12

Robinh:

Nyahh. I make mistakes too. I make lots, probably more than average, and I’m rather accident prone in my day to day life. Making a mistake an hurting myself is one thing. Hurting a child through my negligence is another. I strive not to do that, and I strive to do things in such a fashion that no single mistake of mine is going to damage my child.

Hopefully I can set it up so that it would require a chain of unlikely errors, and multiple mistakes with lots of chances to catch those mistakes failing.

Hopefully I can eliminate all the easy common or really stupid mistakes entirely or reduce their chances to nil.

The devil you don’t know is dangerous enough, but it’s a shame to get caught by the devil you do know. And, how are you going to ever handle the truly unfortunate and unforseeable accident when you’ve already made a long chain of mistakes that have limited your options?

13

Hmmm. I see your point. As I hinted at, Professionalism may be the wrong word choice, but I can’t think of a better one.

You and I seem to agree that professionalism denotes a high standard. This is why I’ve chosen to equate it with an acceptable standard for parenting, especially of infants and toddlers. I can think of no higher or more encompassing repsonsibility than being totally in charge of a helpless child’s welfare, nor can I think of one more deserving of a true professional standard of care.

I will also note that a professional standard does not necessarily recquire that one be gifted or intelligent or otherwise superior.

It simply requires one to be vigilant, careful and responsible. ANybody can train themselves to follow a blind set of procedures that will reduce risk, and it certainly doesn’t require much forethought to reason it out on one’s own.

14

Oh, I read it, before you even started this thread. I thought your point, to whatever degree there was one, was as silly and arrogant in that thread as in this one.

Actually, I agree with Izzy. The most dangerous people in the world are A) the ones who have all the answers and B) the ones who believe they have a 100% infallible system for anything. Those are the ones who always – always – get caught with their pants down, and not only end up eating crow, but more importantly, cause more harm than they otherwise would have by not allowing for unanticipated occurrences.

[QUOTE}I maintain that it could not happen to anybody who is competant, or has made the effort to take a professional attitude towards their child’s safety.[/QUOTE]

And I maintain that you have a dataset of exactly one – yourself – which is utterly meaningless. Until you’ve been in someone else’s head, you have no idea how cautious, prepared, or competent they are. Of course, if you’re going to define something negatively – that is, an X is someone who would never do A – then you can easily dismiss lots of people as not being good Xs and thus continue to feel superior.

You may have used landing gear as an ilustrative example, but what you said was: "For example, a pilot worthy of the name “professional” follows a set of procedures every time he flies. Flying is complex and potentially hazardous and as a professional he knows that he must eliminate or minimize all possible risks.

The set of procedures he follows protects him from the most common and avoidable mistakes. Being a professional he follows them each and every time he flies. This is his insurance.

A pilot isn’t just winging it, and if unforseen circumstances throw him off his set of procedures he is highly uncomfortable because he knows he has lost his insurance. He gets back on them, or starts the procedures from scratch to make sure he didn’t omit anything."

Um, actually, yes.

“In some cases relativism is nothing but sheer bullshit. Some mistakes should not happen.”

“There are certain mistakes that are not made ever by competant responsible professional people.”

"This lady has made a mistake that should never have happened.

In order for it to occur she had to follow a chain of incompetance.

By allowing it to occur she is negligent, irresponsible and unreliable."

"If you are a professional, you will have followed the procedures. It simply will not happen, by definition. "

Actually, more than anything else, I was just wondering if you’ve ever broken your arm whilst patting yourself on the back.

You bring to mind Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, sputtering endlessly about how everyone else isn’t being a professional, goddammit!

Mistakes happen. They happen to the competent and incompetent, the professional and the amateur. That’s why they’re called “mistakes,” and parenting is not, by some miracle of nature, exempt from this. Some of these mistakes end in tragedy. That does not make them any less mistakes, nor are those kinds of mistakes limited to some pool of “incompetents.” Not that that means that people should escape punishment for mistakes that end in tragedy, as long as we are willing to distinguish between acts of deliberate malice and acts of negligence.

15

pld, I think Scylla’s meaning is pretty clearly that SOME accidents are the result of negligence or incompetence, not that ALL of them are. However, I don’t think it’s really true that any procedure, no matter how careful and redundant it is, no matter how dedicated to following it you are, can completely eliminate the chance of an accident happening. You can make an accident exceedingly unlikely, but impossible? Hardly.

Oh, and depending on your perspective, wouldn’t the word Scylla is looking for be something like “perfectionist” or “anal?” :smiley:

16

pld, I think Scylla’s meaning is pretty clearly that SOME accidents are the result of negligence or incompetence, not that ALL of them are. However, I don’t think it’s really true that any procedure, no matter how careful and redundant it is, no matter how dedicated to following it you are, can completely eliminate the chance of an accident happening. You can make an accident exceedingly unlikely, but impossible? Hardly.

Oh, and depending on your perspective, wouldn’t the word Scylla is looking for be something like “perfectionist” or “anal?” :smiley:

17

Scylla writes,

Unfortunately, Scylla, I don’t think a lot of people have any forethought at all. I don’t think they’re bright enough, on the average, to think about “Hm, if I leave my child in this car while I go get some soda in the store, and it’s 5 PM on the first of the month, there might be a long line and my child might get heat exhaustion and die.” Or they might consider that, but not why they shouldn’t let their kid run out the door and play in the street just because no cars are moving right now.

Three times today, out of the 50 or so calls I took at work, I had someone who could not respond to the question “My name is Corrvin, what is your name, please?” with their own name. If they don’t know their name well enough to respond to a query, how the heck do they know not to leave their kid in a car on a hot day?

Not that this helps any, because it sure as heck doesn’t provide any answers to the problem. I don’t know how most people manage to survive their OWN childhood, really.

Corr, who knew her full name, parents’ names, phone number, and address when she was 5

18

Scylla, I must disagree with you. The professionals you list as examples are not comparable with parents.

Look at this example, an airline pilot who has received thousands of hours of training, and has the lives of hundreds of people in their care, still needs something as simple as having the landing gear down checked over and over again by different, similarly well-trained people, using a damn checklist! I’d bet dollars to donuts that if you gave the stupidest parent in the world a checklist and 2 other people to go over it with them, that nobody would ever leave a kid in the car.

Again, your father has had these procedures drilled into his head over and over again by his Marine instructors. Ask your dad if in the first, oh say, 6mo of his training, if his drill instructor ever yelled at him for making a mistake.

Your average parent doesn’t have a Marine Corps DI telling them what to do and what not to do whey they start parenting.

[Drill Instructor Voice]

THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE MOST POORLY INSTALLED DIAPER I HAVE EVER SEEN, MAGGOT! THE TAPE MUST BE SNUG, BUT NOT TIGHT, WITH NO GAPS TO CAUSE LEAKAGE! DROP AND GIVE ME 20!

[/Drill Instructor Voice]

Nor do they have the opportunity to make a mistake without potential consequences. The pilot had his hand held during his training, and had to log many hours of flight before even being allowed to fly by himself. No parent ever gets the kind of training that these professionals get, to hold them to the same standards is unreasonable.

What do you propose we do with this woman? Take her children away and sterilize her? Who do you give the children to? Where do you find the perfect parenting professional to send them to? There are frightfully few parents that could meet your requirements.

Just because a parent makes a mistake, does not make them negligent or criminal. Negligence is a pattern crime, it happens when a parent doesn’t care, not when they err.

There is a difference between the parent that is chit chatting with someone while the kiddies run around the parking lot unwatched, and the otherwise caring parent that accidentally leaves the kid in the car. Parent #1 doesn’t think anything is wrong at all, Parent #2 is horrified at what they have done. Punishing Parent #1 if somethng tragic happens is worthwhile, they never cared for their child and deserve what they get, punishing Parent #2 is not, they are already punishing themselves far more than a prison could.

19

PLD:

I don’t know why you’re having trouble seeing my point.
No. Not all accidents are preventable or forseeable.

However, there are some common dangers, that can easily be avoided. Because they are so well known, and so easily avoidable, and the consequences are so high, nobody with any common sense should ever fall victim to them. To do so is simply inexcusable.

If a pilot has an engine explode destroying his hydraulics and he has to steer by thrust power alone, he is likely to crash through no fault of his own no matter how good a pilot he is.

Similarly there are all kinds of things that can befall an infant causing disaster that would be no fault of the parents. A child may fall and break it’s nose or suffer a cuncussion while learning to walk on a soft carpet.

You can’t anticipate things like that. However, some things are well-known and common dangers. They are easily anticipated and averted. Falling victim to them is inexcusable. It means you haven’t been exercising reasonable precautions. It means you’ve been getting by on luck.

Cheesesteak:

Yes, you do make a good point about the DI thing. But if you think about it, simply existing in today’s society means that we have indoctrinated ourselves or been indoctrinated with certain sets of behaviors that protect us. We know how to get dressed, we know how to drive, and cook. We know that if we turn the propane on in the grill we need to light it immediately, and not wait 15 minutes while we answer a phone call.

Without thinking we check everyday berfore we put our shoes on to make sure they go on the right feet. As an adult, there really is no excuse for going around all day with sore feet because we put our shoes on wrong. The reason that we don’t is because if we do, it hurts. We learn very quickly.

We do this much for own welfare without thinking and we do it perfectly every time.

It is a simple conclusion that if you are the parent of an infant that cannot take care of itself, and often cannot communicate it’s distress, and that you don’t have a pain signal connected to that child the way you do your feet, then you will have to prudent steps to compensate for these facts if you are going to be a successful parent.

“He will probably be ok” is not an acceptable level of surety to a responsible parent.

“I forgot” is not an aceptable reason or excuse when life and death is at stake, especially in something so common and avoidable as leaving your child in the car.

Saying “I forgot” means you’re a poor parent in this instance.

A DI can take an idiot and turn him into a responsible rifleman in six weeks.

A parent must make themselves responsible. That’s what being a parent means.

Who knows, maybe a commando course for parents might be a good idea. Such a course would instill and indoctrinate the necessary behaviors.

The fact is, as parents, both my wife and I made up our own course. We took a childbirth, and an infant class. I took a course on infant CPR. We read books. We identified the common dangers prepared for, and had an idea what we were facing.

I don’t think you can or should legislate such a thing, but I feel strongly that a newborn infant has the right to expect such from his parents.

20

I would add that EVERYONE suffers lapses in judgment.

It’s true that in certain well-defined, narrow, and critical areas of human life, there are simple rules that are and should be drilled into people’s heads; yes, a classic example of this is the three rules of firearm safety.

Once you get beyond these narrow areas, even the best people make mistakes on a regular basis. Ask any doctor or lawyer.

Why is this? Well, in more complicated situations, there is no simple set of rules you can follow to ensure that no mistakes will be made.

Actually, a better way to put it is that in many situations, it is simply uneconomical to impose rules that will eliminate all errors.

With respect the rules you follow, they make a lot of sense, but I do have a comment:

Never leave children unattended in car.

This is a good rule, but most parents break it once in a while. For example, if one parent is loading a toddler and an infant into a car, frequently the most practical way to do it is to leave the infant in her car seat; walk the toddler out to the car and load her in; and return for the infant.