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.