San Diego Trip, Part I

As Lauralee mentioned in the previous post, I was in San Diego all of last week on a business trip. First of all, kudos to her for maintaining her sanity while caring for Emma all week without my capable help -- she also prepped and painted the ceiling in the bathroom and [gasp!] took the garbage out. (Side note: I've been assurred many times that taking the garbage out is a "man task" -- much like grating cheese and killing spiders -- and that her taking the garbage out is a non-negotiable item.)

The purpose of my trip was to get the training to become an RABQSA Certified ISO 13485 Lead Auditor. I won't bore any of you with many of the details. If any of you are dying to know what ISO 13485, or RABQSA, or, for that matter, a Lead Auditor, is, let me know. I'll tell you as much as you want to know. On a scale of excitement, from "Waiting for the Mailman" to "Space Shuttle Ride", I'd put it at about a 2, or roughly equivalent of "Finding a Dime in Your Pocket."

The class was 40 hours long, or 8 AM - 7 PM Monday - Thursday, with a half day, including a two-hour exam, on Friday. We had a PowerPoint presentation of 631 slides (no joke), plus about 125 pages of 'homework' reading to do. We also had 11 hands-on excercises in front of the other members of the class. It was a lot of work.

There were 20 of us in the class. Most were from California, there were a couple from different areas of Washington. It was quite an interesting group of people. I didn't get any pictures of them, so I got on the Internet and found some pictures that *sort of* look like them. Close enough that you'll get the drift.

This guy was from (can you guess?) California. He was the one who embarrassingly made a Mormon joke without knowing that I'm Mormon. Someone in class -- not me -- mentioned an investigation technique commonly referred to as "The Five Whys" because it involves asking "why" several times to determine the root cause of a problem. Somebody misheard "The Five Whys" as "The Five Wives." As soon as that happened I thought to myself: "Countdown to Mormon joke in 5...4...3...2..." and sure enough, this guy stepped up with "What are you, Mormon?" A few of the folks knew I was from Utah and I guess they assumed that I was Mormon because one of them leaned over to this guy and whispered something in his ear, afterwhich he threw up his arms and said, "Of course -- it figures!" Ha ha ha ha! You can't avoid the Mormons! We're everywhere!!!


This guy used to be a paratrooper in the Army. Now we works for a cryogenics company. He was also very prematurely grey. The only possible explanation: secret government testing and cover-up.


This is the guy who sat next to me. He was a nice guy, but he laughed to much. Then he'd turn to me as if to say "Why aren't you laughing?" For the first few days, I indulged him with courtesy laughs, but by the end of the week I just gave up. He also had the habit of whispering stuff to me during class that I could NEVER hear. At the beginning of the week, I'd lean over and ask "What?" but again, by the end of the week, I just gave up.


There was an old, leathery, Italian guy that looked more or less like this. Native New Yorker with an attitude. Once we did a hands-on excercise where you had to make up some document numbers. His made up document numbers all started with the letters "FU". And that was not a coincidence.


What I liked about this guy is that he had kind of a business mullet. He also had an inner ear problem. I thought that 'inner ear problems' were just made up diagnosis to describe someone nerdy. This guy had honest-to-goodness inner ear problems. He showed me his medication.


I'm not sure how this lady ended up in our class. She was a CPA and an aerobics instructor. She didn't have any experience in Quality and she was a new Manager of Manufacturing at her company. She also wore PG-13 tops to class.


This guy sat behind me. He had a ton of experience auditing, and tried to use our classtime to get questions specific to his job answered. He tried really hard to make the questions generic, but it became really obvious that he had a mental list of questions he wanted answered. Example: "What would you say to someone in management if they felt that your auditing techniques regarding competence verification were unduly strict." Really? REALLY? Did that question just HAPPEN to pop into your head, or is there a member of management at YOUR work who feels that YOUR auditing techniques regarding competence verification are unduly strict? This guy was really nice, but he was in my work group and would rather talk about the abstract aspects of the universe than actually complete the assignment we were given.


This is the guy that drove our teacher crazy. He already had a ton of experience auditing ISO 13485, and he was the only one gutsy enough to call out our teacher when he didn't agree with something. He actually made it a point to mention that he wouldn't need to study for the final exam. At a few times, I thought our teacher would go over there and box this guy's ears. Not a good move, though, since this guy was ex-Marine and probably would have punched our teacher right in his 104-year-old face.


This guy was the class clown. Once the teacher said something like, "I'm not going to make you finish this excercise tonight, but..." and before he could finish the sentence, this guy says "THANK YOU!" in an overly loud voice.


This actually might be the guy that sat in front of me. If not him, then at least a close relative...


Our instructor was old school auditor -- a gabillion years in the industry. Everything was his way or the highway. His word was the law. You could try to pursuade him that you had an answer to a question that was correct, but if it wasn't his answer, it wasn't right. "That's not wrong... but if you put that on the exam," he would say, "I'd give you maybe half a point."

There was one guy that sat in the back of the room. The funny thing about him was that he sounded like this guy:

but he looked like this guy:


And the rest...


So that was how I spent most of my time in San Diego: holed up with these characters for long stretches of time. On the plus side, our drill-instructor teacher prepared us so well that when we finally opened our copy of the exam, we were relieved at how easy it was. Now I get to wait six weeks to see my exam results. If I passed, I can apply for Lead Auditor status, and thereafter you can all address me as:
Quinn Lavender
ASQ CQA
RABQSA Certified Lead Auditor

Next time: a critique of San Diego.