Are We There Yet?

Every parent chuckles at the “Are we there yet?” jokes. But when you are an electrician performing a tricky installation or an engineer checking your calculations, the same behavior from a project manager, supervisor, or customer isn’t funny.

Each interruption in your mental flow as you work causes inefficiency. And the more interruptions you get, the more mistakes you are likely to make. You take the call or the text or turn around and talk to the person. Then you turn your attention back to your work, and you don’t simply pick up where you left off. You have to mentally backtrack and “reboot” your mental computer to get back into the flow of things.

Interruptions can also be dangerous. Perhaps you’re taking voltage measurements in a live panel and your cell phone rings. You don’t put the covers back on, as you would if going to your lunch break.

But even more dangerous than the interruption itself is the “hurry up” message behind the “Are we there yet?” inquiry. Factory maintenance techs responding to trouble calls when equipment is down tend to get this kind of message more than electricians working in other capacities. But construction electricians are no strangers to it either, often because the start of the electrical was delayed but the finish date wasn’t extended.

Even if you tell yourself you’re not going to hurry, there’s a subconscious message in your mind that you need to work faster. That usually means doing a safety step poorly or not at all. Or stewing over the implication that you are slacking instead of bringing your best work, a situation that lowers your attentiveness to the work and the dangers involved.

An experienced project manager or supervisor makes “soft” inquiries. For example, they may simply walk past you and gage your progress without interrupting you. They may stop by or call you and ask how things are going or if there’s anything you need; this is often accompanied by some “work methodically, not hurriedly” comment. They know that if they make you feel rushed rather than supported, you are likely to make mistakes.

They may bring you a cup of coffee if they want to talk with you for a few minutes. Or they may do something else, like bring you a fresh battery for your drill and ask you if you are running into any problems. Or ask another electrician to go ask if you need a hand and then help you as needed. What they won’t do is mindlessly ask you when you are going to finish the job (are we there yet?).

Less experienced people in these roles, however, are often anxious to see the job completed. Rather than channel their anxiety into some way of helping you, they bug you as if doing so will get the job done sooner, with no decrease in quality or safety. How do you handle these people?

You have to set boundaries, and do so clearly. Thank them for their concern, give them the update they want, and then say you have an important thing to tell them. Tell them you do your best and safest work when you aren’t interrupted, and each interruption slows you down. If they have been bugging you by phone, let them know you are going to turn your phone off until the job is complete. If they have been bugging you in person, let them know each visit means they are stopping your work.

At an Illinois manufacturing plant, the PM procedures were fairly complex. A maintenance supervisor who had earned the nickname “Bird dog” had a habit of haranguing everybody who was working on a PM. He wanted “his” completion times to be quicker than those of crews of other supervisors, and he seemed to feel he could push and harass his people into making that happen.

Bird dog’s people frequently told him the interruptions were slowing them down. Finally, one of the techs logged each interruption for a week. He recorded its start and stop time, how much time it took him to re-orient afterward, and how much time it took him to fix any mistakes he made due to the distraction. It turned out to be enough time to do several PMs. He turned this log in, not to his haranguing supervisor, but to Bird dog’s boss.