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Call me just an old dinosaur if you will, but in my day the boss is the boss.
If he decides to paint the entire fleet passionate pink with green alligators all over them, what can you do about it?
You can argue till your blue in the face, that the entire country will think he’s insane or that the company image is about to become a laughing stock, but at the end of the day, the boss is the boss and they are his trucks!
So if the boss says do this and you don’t do it or refuse to do it, chances are you will get the sack, especially where safety is concerned.
So where is this all leading to you may ask; last night while thumbing through the press (NZPA) I noticed a follow up article buried on page twenty, about Helen’s little jaunt from Waimate to Christchurch Airport a few months back. To have completed the journey in the time alleged (90 minutes) required the motorcade to travel at an average speed of 147kph.
Now I know a little bit about maintaining average speeds and to reach this figure, required a top speed of at least 180 Kph. It doesn’t matter how good the diplomatic protection officers are at driving or how many courses they have been on, the fact of the matter is, the rest of the Canterbury public on the roads that day have not been trained to any where near the same standard. A few years ago an ambulance officer was crucified for fatally injuring a pedestrian while travelling at half that speed, and one must wonder where the buck would have stopped if a similar heartbreaking result had transpired. At least the ambulance officer was responding to an emergency.
Had Osama’s boys been climbing over the back fence of the Beehive then there would have been some justification for the insanity that took place, but a football test?
Now I don’t necessarily blame the diplomatic protection squad officers involved, the buck always stops with the boss. The part of the press article that really got my goat is this, and I quote:
“Clark has distanced herself from the decision to speed saying it was an operational matter and she was not aware”
RUBBISH.
The decision to speed may have been an operational matter, but how could you not be aware? The vehicles were travelling up to, and above, 180 kph for ninety minutes; every other vehicle on the road heading in the same direction had to be got around, that requires a considerable amount of weaving in and out of the traffic flow. Because of oncoming vehicles interrupting these procedures, significant braking must have taken place and then of course, dramatic acceleration to get back up to the average speed. A number of eye witnesses have said they were travelling within three metres of each other, for three vehicles to do this in close convoy; they had to be talking to each other almost constantly on RT or cell phone.
With all this chatter going on and the adrenaline rising amongst those involved, how could Helen not have looked up at least once in 90 minutes?
And at this point, as the Boss, all she needed to say was “slow down” and it would have happened immediately. So, either she made the initial decision in the first place and they were just following orders, or, her ability to recognise danger and demand that her team respond to it, must be called into question. Either way, she’s just been caught doing something really dumb and is leaving her staff, to take the flack.
Doesn’t show great leadership skills Helen,
But then that is “just an old trucker’s point of view”
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