When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me

Making an ass out of me

A week or so ago I thought I’d finished writing the specification and producing the drawings for the air handling units for the project I’m currently working on. Then I sat down to review all of the specifications with engineers from other disciplines, and with the buyers. It quickly became apparent that I, and many of the other engineers, had made assumptions about what items had been included in other department’s specifications. It’s really not a problem discovering these things at the current stage of the project – we just add, or occasionally delete, items into our specifications to make sure that all the interfaces are covered. If we hadn’t stopped to have that review though, there would have been a few gaps that would have left us looking pretty silly once items were installed on site. After all, it’s no good specifying, paying for, and installing equipment if no-one provides a power supply to it!

One of the items that had been left out for example was the mesh in the low level extract scoops. You normally extract air from a room via grilles in the ceiling and the ductwork contractor provides all the necessary items. However, in clean rooms it’s often preferable to extract air at a low level, in which case the architectural contractor forms the ducts within the room as they’re making the rest of the room. That’s fine so long as they’re aware of all the bits you need within that ductwork – like a mesh to stop pieces of paper or rubber gloves or cleaning cloths being sucked up into the air extract system. Thankfully we found out that they hadn’t included the mesh in their specification and now it is in there. I wouldn’t have envied the commissioning engineers trying to figure out what was wrong with the new system only to discover the filters, which are intended for very tiny particles, were covered in rubber gloves!

Another assumption which has been made a few times recently is that I’m a secretary or document controller. Or more simply, when people haven’t seen me in a room, they often assume the meeting room or office is going to have no women in it. It can be a little frustrating having to regularly put people straight & explain that I’m not just there to take the meeting minutes but can also make useful contributions to the discussions as well. That said, I’m sure part of that is my age & youthful looks rather than just my gender – I have been ID’d when buying alcohol within the last 6 months after all! The second assumption, that there will be no women in any given engineering office/meeting room can actually provide a certain amount of amusement. The mischievous, mould-breaking streak in me rather enjoys seeing people blush beetroot red as they’ve said ‘morning gents’ then realised I’m there. I also find it rather curious how embarrassed many male engineers become having realised they’ve sworn in front of a woman as well. It’s not like my delicate donkey ears haven’t heard such words before after all…

Last but not least, I went on mentor training last week in preparation for having a 16-19 year old mentee from the local school’s Engineering Diploma programme. One of the main aspects of the training was about not assuming the mentees will know what we consider to be the most basic of work place behaviour. It was fascinating listening to previous students’ testimonials. Prior to the help of a mentor they had made mistakes on work experience such as answering a work phonecall by saying “yo”, or accidentally making a cup of mixed tea and coffee and then being too embarrassed by their error to do anything but drink the horrible concoction.

As you can see, over the last week it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the saying, and title of this blog, “when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me” really is rather true. If I can try and make a few less assumptions perhaps I’ll avoid some embarrassing moments, not just for myself but for others too. After all, who wants to be an ass?