In my first column I wrote that I planned to share at least one of my more embarrassing professional moments. My hope is that other members will do the same, as I do believe that we are, as a profession, particularly good at laughing at ourselves. Now that the time has come in fact to write about one of my more embarrassing moments, I find I have quite a few to choose from!
Many years ago, with my previous company, we hosted senior management at least once a year for a review of our activity, and look ahead at our plans for the upcoming year. If possible, we liked to add something a bit “special” to these visits. This particular year, the decision was made to organize a field trip to the Wyoming Overthrust Belt, concentrated around the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area. A co-worker and I spent about two weeks in the field preparing the trip and putting together a guidebook, with photos, sketches, maps and commentary to help orient our visitors and provide a record of the trip. All was going well – we had the guidebooks prepared, the logistics arranged and a forecast of good weather for the time we were going to be there.There were three of us involved in running the trip. We arrived a day early to take an overf light of the area we would see on the ground, to make sure that this was a good option for the entire group as the last activity before everyone left to go back home. This was my first experience in organizing any type of field trip. I soon discovered, as anyone who has done this themselves can probably appreciate, that there is an incredible amount of behind the scenes effort required to run a smooth and successful trip. Everyone arrived as planned and got checked into the hotels. Dinner was fun and we were all looking forward to starting off early the next morning to see some geology. The first day went great. The weather was perfect and we were able to have very enthusiastic discussions while standing in front of some pretty spectacular outcrops. We got back to town relatively late, and while the others were refreshing themselves in preparation for the evening’s entertainment, the three of us were scrambling to gas up the cars, make sure that we really did have dinner reservations, ensure that box lunches for the next day were ready to pick up at 5:00 a.m. and go over the program for the second day.Finally, after dinner, it was time to collapse for a few hours – or so I thought. About 10:30 my phone rang and one of my co-organizers was on the line. One of the senior managers wanted to take us out to celebrate our successful first day and thank us for our efforts. This was probably one of the last things that I wanted or needed to do, but off we went. Of course, the senior manager felt that it was somehow rude to leave the bar before closing time, and we couldn’t very well leave him on his own. Return to the comfort of my hotel room was late, or early, depending on your point of view.
The next morning, after about two hours of sleep, we gathered everyone together and headed off to see our first outcrop of the day, one we felt was particularly important. We arrived at our destination and I began a fairly detailed explanation of why we were here and what we were seeing. Everyone was nodding in agreement. This was a good start to the second day, or so I thought. As we were returning to the cars, my co-organizer took me aside and told me that we had stopped at the wrong outcrop and the one we really planned to discuss was about a mile down the road. I called the participants together and admitted my mistake, asking that they remember everything that I had said so we could make more efficient use of our time once we arrived at the proper outcrop. I wanted to find a hole to crawl into and couldn’t believe that I had made this mistake. I had visions of my career dying before my eyes. Fortunately, the reaction of the group was fantastic. Comments along the lines of “If we were decent geologists, we should have noticed that we were in the wrong place.” “You had us convinced.” and “Can we build an open fire to cook lunch?” suggested that this was not the disaster I had feared. The rest of the trip went off without a hitch. For the next several years our annual review meetings tended to include at least one or two references to this incident – all in good fun (I think). I learned from this that a good sense of humor, at the right time, can help one to survive potentially embarrassing moments. The ability to find firewood and build a fire to cook lunch doesn’t hurt either. Until next month. Take care.