The Swiss Cheese theory of busy days
As working adulting people, working as in ‘with a job’ not necessarily functioning as adults, I believe most of us would ideally like to be prepared for the day ahead and nail every task they’re given. The dream would be to have a job that’s equally challenging and rewarding, with occasional slow days. A job where the answer to ‘how was your day at work’ was always pleasant and interesting.
I know I would like to always say and do the right thing in the office and walk out leaving everyone in awe and admiration for the wisdom that came out of my mouth. And that would be on a slow day! On a busy day I would just know what to tackle first, have time for lunch, and know with absolute certainty how to fix any issue that dares to come my way.
Instead, when the dreadful busy days come I am running left and right balancing two phones, a laptop, a notebook and an agenda both requiring a pen. At the end of the day I am not sure what just happened, all I know is that some things that I thought would require fixing went perfectly fine, the easy tasks ended up destroying my self-esteem, and new challenges came out of nowhere to kick me to the ground, and my morning coffee is still sitting on my desk cold and untouched.
Did school prepare me for this?
I know you’re expecting me to say no and start rambling about adulting and assumptions about life.
Not this time! Because, as a matter of fact, school did prepare me for this, but it did so in typical Italian school system way.
It’s like who published my high school sociology book knew that students wouldn’t fully absorb notions written in a whole chapter about statistics and whatnot, so they decided to insert quirky call-outs to fun models.
One of those wacky paragraphs was titled: The Swiss Cheese Model.
Now, how many teachers would even encourage their pupils to do so and, perhaps, relate theories to daily life? And how many students do you know that go out of their way to read extra paragraphs? Only people in Ravenclaw, just like yours truly.
Unfortunately, that page crossed my path many moons ago and went unnoticed and untied to actual real life situations. See the catch? A book about theory highlighting more theories that turned out to be what would really matter in real life.
The Swiss Cheese Model happens to sum up so accurately what those horrible busy days are made of. Cheese. No, layers with tiny holes that form each task, and all those holes may align creating a huge tunnel within cheese slices. That’s the tunnel of doom, otherwise described as a ‘model of accident causation illustrates that, although many layers of defense lie between hazards and accidents, there are flaws in each layer that, if aligned, can allow the accident to occur’.
There’s just so much risk assessment and prevention you can do, once you grasp the concept. You know you’re about to make a double cheese sandwich, and you know your Swiss cheese has evil holes despite your careful slicing. Some holes you can cut out, others don’t depend on you and you just raise your hands and go ‘oh well, it’s a slice of cheese, what do you expect?’.
And you do that for every slice in your sandwich, which would be perfectly acceptable 99% of the time.
But not busy days, because it’s during those days, where you’d be happy with a half burnt sandwich, that stars and holes align, you bite into nothingness, and fall into unplanned and unpreventable despair.
These are the days where the answer to ‘how was your day at work?’ has to come from a deep part of your broken soul and can only sound like a sigh followed by a grunt.
Image: via
I know I would like to always say and do the right thing in the office and walk out leaving everyone in awe and admiration for the wisdom that came out of my mouth. And that would be on a slow day! On a busy day I would just know what to tackle first, have time for lunch, and know with absolute certainty how to fix any issue that dares to come my way.
Instead, when the dreadful busy days come I am running left and right balancing two phones, a laptop, a notebook and an agenda both requiring a pen. At the end of the day I am not sure what just happened, all I know is that some things that I thought would require fixing went perfectly fine, the easy tasks ended up destroying my self-esteem, and new challenges came out of nowhere to kick me to the ground, and my morning coffee is still sitting on my desk cold and untouched.
Did school prepare me for this?
I know you’re expecting me to say no and start rambling about adulting and assumptions about life.
Not this time! Because, as a matter of fact, school did prepare me for this, but it did so in typical Italian school system way.
It’s like who published my high school sociology book knew that students wouldn’t fully absorb notions written in a whole chapter about statistics and whatnot, so they decided to insert quirky call-outs to fun models.
One of those wacky paragraphs was titled: The Swiss Cheese Model.
Now, how many teachers would even encourage their pupils to do so and, perhaps, relate theories to daily life? And how many students do you know that go out of their way to read extra paragraphs? Only people in Ravenclaw, just like yours truly.
Unfortunately, that page crossed my path many moons ago and went unnoticed and untied to actual real life situations. See the catch? A book about theory highlighting more theories that turned out to be what would really matter in real life.
The Swiss Cheese Model happens to sum up so accurately what those horrible busy days are made of. Cheese. No, layers with tiny holes that form each task, and all those holes may align creating a huge tunnel within cheese slices. That’s the tunnel of doom, otherwise described as a ‘model of accident causation illustrates that, although many layers of defense lie between hazards and accidents, there are flaws in each layer that, if aligned, can allow the accident to occur’.
There’s just so much risk assessment and prevention you can do, once you grasp the concept. You know you’re about to make a double cheese sandwich, and you know your Swiss cheese has evil holes despite your careful slicing. Some holes you can cut out, others don’t depend on you and you just raise your hands and go ‘oh well, it’s a slice of cheese, what do you expect?’.
And you do that for every slice in your sandwich, which would be perfectly acceptable 99% of the time.
But not busy days, because it’s during those days, where you’d be happy with a half burnt sandwich, that stars and holes align, you bite into nothingness, and fall into unplanned and unpreventable despair.
These are the days where the answer to ‘how was your day at work?’ has to come from a deep part of your broken soul and can only sound like a sigh followed by a grunt.
Image: via
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