3 minute read
Complacency
By ADCS (AW/SW) Andrew S. Van Norman
Ever come home with your arms full of groceries that are falling everywhere only to leave your keys in your front door? How about leaving the oven on after you’ve finished cooking dinner? You could argue that you just forgot to grab those keys or turn that oven off, but both are real, everyday examples of how complacency can sneak up on you. Both instances could have led to accidents that could have been avoided if you had not let your guard down; the oven could have started a fire and the keys could have attracted a burglar.
Sometimes when we go on autopilot doing the things we have done repeatedly, day after day, we do not finish the important action steps to ensure bad things do not happen.
Whether you are the most experienced subject matter expert or the most junior Sailor fresh out of boot camp, we have all experienced some form of complacency. However, there is a big difference between complacency in everyday life actions and working on a multi-million dollar aircraft with the lives of the aircrewmen in your hands. Complacency usually rears its ugly head during actions of repetition. You’ve done this particular job a thousand times, so you can do it in your sleep or blindfolded with two hands behind your back. You let your guard down and that’s when it happens! Complacency sneaks in and the next thing you know, an accident occurs.
Accidents are precisely that: an accident! You didn’t mean to leave the tie-downs hooked up to the aircraft before the tow evolution or the blade crutches still connected during the spread evolution. You didn’t mean to leave a tool on the aircraft before launch or a switch in the wrong position. You didn’t make sure you followed all the steps you should have before starting the evolution. Now you’re facing a major incident that could have been avoided. All that could have been prevented by simply taking the time to grab that publication, following step by step and not falling into that complacency mode while performing the job at hand.
Maybe it is not the word “complacency” that scares you, but it is the result that should! Many of you have been here in similar scenarios. Some have had close calls, scared enough to learn their lesson after a near mishap, and avoid it, so it never happens again. Some have been lucky enough to get away with it this time, only to repeat it again and again and gamble with a chance at an accident occurring. But then, some have had to learn the hard way. This can mean damage to equipment, injury, permanent disability, or even worse…death to yourself or a fellow shipmate.
It is for these reasons that it is said the procedures and steps in a publication are “written in blood.” Many of these steps, notes, cautions, warnings, are the lessons learned from generations of aviators and maintainers before us who might have learned “the hard way.”
They collected and experienced the issues for themselves so we would not have to, so we could safely perform the job. Maintenance by the book! We hear it all the time, but do we listen? Is it worth it to you, your fellow Sailors and Marines working beside you, to their and your families, not to heed the warning from the past?
Not to listen to the audience yelling, “Don`t go in there!” like a horror flick right before they are all wiped out. Do you want to be the cause of someone not going home to their family because you couldn’t follow the steps laid out in front of you? There is a fine line between life and death. Choose wisely.
