Bad Strawberry Plants and "The Human Ruler"

 

This post comes from Susanville California, a little town that’s about 100 miles northwest of Reno Nevada. It’s beautiful up here. My drive to the strawberry packing shed is about twenty minutes long and usually takes place at dawn, and then I drive back to the hotel at dusk. Then I put in another three or four hours working with another consultant from Chile via Skype. They don’t pay consultants to put in half days.

Since my mentor is on sabbatical leave in Chile, another consultant and I have been contracted to select and train “strawberry plant professionals” who will work in quality control. The good thing about my mentor’s methods is that they are very effective. The bad thing is that, so far, they take longer than clients want them to.  I wish I weren’t still so new at all of this otherwise I would tell these guys ahead of time, Look, this is going to take a week, two months, etc. I also need to get data showing how much money they will save or make by going through these processes that seem to be so lengthy to them.

The selection process starts with 20-30 of the shed’s strawberry plant trimmers who got the best quality scores last year. They take tests in which they grade 40-60 strawberry plants, identifying if they pass minimum standards and, if not, what problems the plants have. After everyone takes the test I collect the pens and then take a blank testing form and we all go through each plant again. When all of them are in agreement as to whether or not a plant passes or doesn’t, and why, then I mark that as the correct answer. When there are disagreements, we pull out a piece of paper with the minimum standards from the company’s main client and sometimes go as far as use a ruler or caliper to measure root length and crown size and other such things.

 

Yesterday I was testing eight of the original 26 candidates. These eight will be cut down to four tomorrow based on their test scores. I could see that some of them really didn’t like it when I pulled out the ruler, stuck it next to the roots and made them all look and tell me if the root length was right or not. I could see them whispering to each other at times. I decided to take a chance and see if I couldn’t read their minds.

I suppose some of you are wondering why we’re using a ruler even though you were not given rulers to take these tests and the QC checkers will not have rulers when they are grading the trimmers’ work. Most of them nodded with a look somewhere between surprise and annoyance.

This process that you are all going through is to help the company find people who don’t need a ruler, people who have such a trained eye that they can see in an instant that the roots are too long or too short.

That did it. The next time there was a dispute about root length one of the participants said, as I was taking out the ruler, Three and a half inches. The roots came out to three and a half inches exactly. It was a great moment because he was right, which boosted his confidence, and it encouraged a sort of competition between him and some of the other test takers. I’ve nicknamed this guy The Ruler.

Becca has been amazingly supportive throughout all of my long weeks. The house is in great shape; the translation business is running very, very well and the pets are all nice and fed. This is my first time heading up such a big project and I’m afraid it has been overwhelming to me quite often. Becca has been there for me and helped keep me together so I could leave the house everyday at dawn, or before, and come back at dusk. I don’t know what I would do without her.

The payroll lady at the company jokingly said that Mormons are taking over. Two of the administrators and one of the secretaries are also LDS. That’s nice for me because now I will know some people when I head off to church today.

Grant Goes to Arizona, Becca Stays Home and Ryan Picks Strawberries

Life continues to be a rollercoaster. After a buyer for Mom's house literally fell into Garit's lap we made a mad dash to get the house all cleaned up and ready. Not having a real-estate agent to guide us, we made the innocent mistake of asking if we could add two weeks to the time before the buyer moved in so that Garit and Grant would have an easier time finding an apartment after coming back from a big job in Washington State. I found out later that people start to get buyer's remorse around that time and our buyer was no exception. She backed out a week before she was going to move in. We've since made a lot of little improvements (thanks to handyman Jon Segalla), cleaned everything quite thoroughly (another thank you to both the Segallas) and now the house is vacant, ready to be sold.

When riding a rollercoaster you find that things can't always go down. After feeling quite discouraged about not finding enough opportunities to do the practical part of my Human Resource Management course opportunity came knocking. My mentor will be out of town for a long time and recommended me to a huge straw-berry packing company who had originally wanted to work with him. They've hired me to come in and help them implement a quality control system. It's been a learning experience to be sure but it's also been very exciting to get in and do some real consulting work and apply my new skills in a more drawn out project.

We've also made changes at SchoolTranslations.com. Becca has quit massage and now works full time again as our office manager. The constant repetitive motions of her profession and her tendency to give very deep massages were really wearing her out. Since then she's done a little bit of massage here and there and that's good because she keeps up on her considerable skills without, as she puts it, falling apart. The change, or shift, in careers has made us realize we need more education so we have been participating in the BYU Management Society's evening lectures and classes in San Jose. It's a long drive but we've learned some GREAT things for free or very cheap.

We are very excited for Grant's mission call. The Lord has called him to preach to the wicked white people of Phoenix, Arizona! He will be going to the Missionary Training Center at the end of October. I'm sure that between Dad and Grandma Barbara, Grant will have plenty of help picking out his clothes and getting out to Provo. I would love to help but will be out of town too much. He will be better prepared to be a missionary than I think any Boothe man has been to this date. He has gone out on more team-ups than any of us ever did; he went on a full time mini-mission for two weeks in Madera and his job in petitioning has gotten him used to talking to strangers about issues they were unaware of or only vaguely aware of. We are excited for the last Boothe man of this generation to serve the Lord and his fellow men as a missionary!

Our Church service also keeps us busy. Becca and I have something every Saturday this month. Last week we went visited the Oakland Temple with the youth and new members. That's always a great experience, well worth getting up at 5:30am on a Saturday morning. Today is our annual Fiestas Patrias activity where we play games and eat food from lots of different parts of Latin America. Next weekend there is a special Spanish Conference and the weekend after that Becca has the Relief Society Broadcast. We would rather be busy than bored!

Through Facebook and family letters we are able to keep up with many of you. Thanks for all of your efforts to keep up with us.