Working with Engineers

During a job interview a few years ago, my interviewers asked me why I abandoned engineering and opted to seek a degree in English. My reply? "I was unwilling to abandon my social skills and personal hygiene." There it was. It had slipped out even before I could do anything about it. As I sat in my seat, reeling from shock, the interviewers stared at one another momentarily, then burst out laughing.

Engineers are a "special breed." They take things apart not because they're broken, but because they want to see how they work. In my industry, we employ the cream of the crop--the weirdest of the weird. We step well beyond the Trekkies or the guys that wear Cheetos-stained Star Wars shirts that are two sizes too small, these guys have gone so far over the edge that some of them can barely converse with outsiders--normal people who have actually seen the sun.

That in mind, we have to deal with some peculiar situations in our office. A few months ago, I published an article in our company newsletter that received cheers from many, and grunts from some of our engineering staff. It was rumored that one of our senior engineers was even going to write a rebuttal that explained why this practice was simply unnecessary.

The article was as follows:



Wash Your Hands
The next time you stand in line at the company barbeque waiting for your turn at the trough, ask yourself —“Did the guy in front of me wash his hands when I saw him in the bathroom before lunch?” If the answer is “No,” maybe you should have tried to get in line earlier. At any rate, consider skipping the finger food.

As tantalizing a thought as it is, there are several “gentlemen” in this company that refuse to wash their hands after using the bathroom. These are the same guys that stand in front of us at company lunches with their hands in the bag of chips or that we see trying to snag a pickle out of the jar.

Consider the following story:

Three men stood side-by-side at the urinals. The first man finished, zipped up and started washing—literally scrubbing from his hands clear up to his elbows. He then used about twenty paper towels before he finished. Turning to the other two men he commented, "I graduated from Harvard and they taught us to be clean."

The second man finished, zipped up and quickly wet the tips of his fingers—as he grabbed a paper towel he commented, "I graduated from the University of California and they taught us to be environmentally conscious."

The third man zipped up and started walking straight for the door. With a smirk on his face he turned and said, "I don't know about you guys, but where I went to college they taught us not to pee on our hands."

While I am aware that everyone of us subscribes to his own measure of personal hygiene, clean is clean. Even if you don’t “pee on your hands,” it’s still absurd to think that you don’t need to wash them. You don’t have to scrub for surgery after using the bathroom, but at least wash with soap and water for a minimum of 10-15 seconds (per the CDC). No matter how hard you try, flicking your hands won’t get the germs off.

If you are one of the chronic offenders that thinks it’s no big deal, look at the mound of used paper towels by the bathroom door—the rest of us use these when touching the door handle so we won’t catch your diseases. There are often so many paper towels that they fall out of the trash and onto the floor—think of it as a silent protest from the rest of the company.

Aren’t you glad you washed? Don’t you wish everyone did?