Prize Blogging

Is it Friday?

It doesn't seem like Friday for some reason.  It feels more like a Wednesday.  Odd.  

Anyway.  This weeks challenge for the prize was to decipher a small bit of code.  I may have made this a little more puzzling than I should have.  Which brings me to today's rant.

The better we become at something the harder it is for us to teach somebody else to do it.  Sounds backwards but it's not.  I see this a lot out in the real world with job training and especially in technology training.  A single task in a job is usually made up of a series of steps.  The more we do a task the less and less we thing about the actual steps and focus more on the task as a whole.  The smaller, more mundane steps in the task are performed reflexively and can be forgotten about when training others.

Say you're training someone to mop the floor at work.  Seems easy enough.  You tell them where the mops are kept, you tell them where the bucket filling station is and you instruct them on the basics of what areas of the floor need special attention.  Done.  Right?  There's nothing more to it than that.  Wrong.  Really?  Yes.  

Because you've mopped the floor a thousand times you really think it's that simple.  Get the mop, fill the bucket, mop the floor.  You forgot something however.  The sixteen year old kid you're training doesn't have the first clue on how to operate a commercial mop filling station.  Why would they?  It's not something they're going to run into in their daily lives.  There are a few valves that need to be in the right spot and the soap won't dispense unless you have them in the right positions.  If you get it wrong you're dumping floor wax instead of soap and making a huge mess.  

You didn't even think that this was something that needed explaining.  You don't even look at the valves anymore when you do it.  A few quick flicks and a slap of the button and glorious soapy water pours forth.  Simple...now.  But what about that poor kid back there dumping floor wax on his shoes?  You have failed him.

Anyway...with Friday here I will dump on your shoes the epic clue to get this thing going:

II   -AATTEE   -NO-

There....good luck.