Slightly OT

We have Murphy's Law to describe the likelihood of things going wrong, and the Peter Principle to describe upward mobility in a corporation... I know there has to be a similar name for the following principle:

When in doubt as to the cause of an equipment problem, an untrained person will blame the part of the equipment he understands the least 90% of the time.

At my job, the part of the system the operators understand the least is, of course, the automation. If we have to tweak a setpoint or adjust a timer to work around a problem until we can shut down to fix it, it automatically becomes 'Why is the program so screwed up?' Next time any problem occurs, it's 'Go check the program, it's messing up again.' Hosing down the floor and soak down a j-box? Program's fault. You get the picture. Anyways, I'm sure there's a formal name for that phenomena and if there isn't, there should be. Does anyone know what it is?

Welcome to life.

The name of this phenomena is "My machiny is broken, you fixy right away? please?

Wow, this sounds just like everything else that happens on the planet!

I take the approach that if anything goes wrong IT IS MY FAULT. Why because, if something goes wrong it is my fault. Why is it my fault, because I'm the maintenance professional, and the buck has to stop someplace ... and the buck stops here.

Take responsibility, fix it, engineer it correctly, or whatever you have to do to make the problem go away -permanently. It's what we get paid for.
If there were no "idiot breaks machine phenomena", they sure as hell wouldn't need us would they - right?

Always take full responsibility for equipment muff ups, then do the best you can to repair it and make sure it NEVER happens again.

Replace that J-Box with a water proof one, and get used to dealing with untrained people - they are everywhere. They are also our bread and butter- God bless the untrained idiot.

Always reckoned Murphy was an optimist.

Hello,

in my former job I had a slogan above my desk

I have a very impotant job, I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong!

But now in my new job I changed the slogan to

I'm NOT responsible for my heritage, I'm responsible for the future.

Rudi

Years ago I found a postcard that I stuck up on my desk.

"There's no cotton pickin' reason for it, it's just our policy!

I think that IS a good response to 'Why is the program so screwed up?'

regards....casey