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| What? Shouldn't every Christmas post begin with a diagram of the systems engineering process? |
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Having a nice Christmas reception with strawberry cheesecake and homemade chocolate chip cookies and fresh fruit and festive but appropriately understated decorations and a calming soundtrack and a cute coloring page with crayons for your kids all during the third hour of church services on a Sunday is a very good idea and a very bad idea.
(It was something our bishop wanted to experiment with this year--doing something nice and well-excecuted, during church, in conjunction with the amazing sacrament meeting Christmas musical program . . . instead of celebrating with a big traditional Christmas party on a Saturday night. If you were there, and you have an opinion, you are welcome to share it with the bishop. If you share your opinion with me, I will probably cry. If you liked it, I will be sad because I don't want to do it again. If you didn't like it, I will be sad because it was a lot of work for something simpler than a traditional party. If you feel you must say something to me, please say, "That was nice and special." "Nice" implies you liked it. And "special" implies you understand that it was out of the ordinary and you don't expect it to be a regular thing.)
But this post is not about the goodness or the badness of that idea. This post is about systems engineering.
The Saturday night before our church's Christmas celebration Greg emerged from his office and said, "I feel like I should stop working on my research paper and offer to help you."
It was nine o'clock at night. I was putting the finishing touches on a few things. Some very talented and very helpful and very awesome friends and I had spent the previous week preparing things. It was going to be lovely and festive and yummy. I felt confident we were all ready. So I brushed off Greg, insisting, "Go work on your paper!! I have everything under control."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes, of course. Go work on your paper!"
And then it occurred to me that we might not be all ready. . .
I hadn't really thought about how we were actually going to go about preparing and serving 200 slices of cheesecake, 100 cups of fresh fruit, and 400 homemade chocolate chip cookies. You see, doing something like this on a Sunday is tricky business. Remember that stuff about Mormons being thrifty? Well, one way this manifests itself is in how we use our church buildings. When a congregation becomes so big that a new congregation is started, instead of building a new meeting house, the two congregations just share the original building. We have two congregations in our building. It's pretty standard to have 3 congregations using the same church. (And sometimes even 4 or 5!!) So what this means is that while one congregation is worshiping in the chapel, the other congregation is using the rest of the building for Sunday School and other meetings. So all of the building is being used all of the time. This meant we had all of that dessert to prepare to serve in a very short amount of time with basically no place prepare it; this presented a logistical problem that my brain could not handle, especially at ten o'clock at night.
So I wisely took Greg up on his offer.
"Well, wait a second, Greg. Before you go back to your paper, maybe you could help me think through how everything is actually going to work tomorrow."
So I talked for few minutes. And Greg listened. And he learned that I actually had a big problem on my hands. Oops. Ten o'clock the night before was probably not the ideal time for me to realize this. (But better late than never!!!)
Of course, I started panicking and burst into tears. Greg calmly, confidently reassured me there was a solution. He asked me a few questions, like: How long does it take to cut a cheesecake? How much time would there be to cut and plate them? (Not long!!) What diameter were the plates? What tables in the building were not being used? (Not many!) How big were those tables? What spaces in the building would be available? (Pretty much none.) And so forth. He took notes, said he'd be back in fifteen minutes, and disappeared into his office.
What was he doing in there?
Whatever it is systems engineers do: Solve problems.
He reemerged fifteen minutes later. With a plan. He explained how to use the limited space and tables and time that would be available. He told me exactly how many people were needed and where they needed to be and at what times and what they needed to do. It was beautiful.
BEAUTIFUL.
And it worked perfectly. Greg convinced me to make task lists for everybody so they knew exactly what to do. That seemed a little over the top to me. But I wisely followed his advice. It was good advice. Everything went so smoothly. I owe that to everybody who helped. No one seemed to begrudge me their task lists or the fact that I really hadn't figured out what the heck was going on until a few hours before. Thank you. Also, I have to thank my neighbor Judy who called me up out of the blue on Saturday and offered to help. We definitely needed it, so I am grateful she followed her gut feeling and called me. But most of all, I am grateful for Greg.
Seriously, people, without him, you would have had to wait in line twenty minutes for your cheesecake while your kids ran around the gymnasium as monkeys in Sunday clothes. And I, no doubt,would have been in the bathroom hiding.
Greg is working on a PhD in Systems and Industrial Engineering. Never before have I been so grateful for his education.
Handling a nuclear meltdown?
Fixing FEMA?
Managing rescue operations after a hurricane?
Crazy insane statistical models?
Whatever.
But if you can figure out how to serve my cheesecake . . .
Thank you.
P.S. That paper Greg was working on? He never would have finished it without me. English major wives rock! (So, yes, there is a lovely balance in our marriage.)
