Non-Negotiables

Visiting with a friend today, I learned that a local community pool has to close for a few weeks to correct a spring painting mistake—the painters forgot to mix the necessary granules into the paint, which prevents slippage. As a result—you guessed it—not only have several people fallen around the pool, but a few days ago a young boy fell and suffered a serious head injury. Now they have to drain the pool, repaint it, wait for it to dry, and fill it back up before reopening to the public, including many disappointed season pass holders.

Certainly, we all make mistakes, but my friend and I continued discussing the inexcusability of this one. After all, weren’t these professional painters? Hadn’t they painted pools before? Wasn’t there an inspection before filling the pool? Before opening the pool to the public, didn’t the life guards notice the safety issue as they walked the deck? All along the way, it seems that several of these different types of employees would have caught this problem based on their own training and knowledge that is a part of doing their jobs—their “non-negotiables,” if you will.

Although varied from one job description to another, we all have non-negotiables, and the rest of us outside each other’s jobs have to trust numerous people throughout our lives to know and carry out their non-negotiables. For example, as an English teacher, my non-negotiables include knowing and communicating in Standard English grammar, as well as understanding the basics of language, if for no other reason than if students can’t trust me to model language for them, they may not have that learning opportunity from anyone else. For the math teacher, details of language is a nice-to-know skill—just as math properties would be for me—as speaking “correct” English is not necessarily a non-negotiable to teach math effectively. (Granted, in my ideal world, everyone should possess the skills of language, but sometimes I have to get over myself in this area.)

In other career fields, a minister’s non-negotiable is to know the Bible; an accountant, the tax laws; an architect, building codes; a referee, the rules of the game; a doctor, the human anatomy; a travel agent, hotel accommodations and tourist attractions; a farmer, fertilizer; an air traffic controller, flight patterns; a restaurant worker, sanitation guidelines, and on and on. And I’m certainly hoping that the plumber who’s coming tomorrow to replace a toilet in my house knows the fine details of pipe mechanics! (There’s probably a better term for this, but I don’t really need to know it.)

I just finished reading Your Inner Fish, a fascinating book on evolution—totally outside my usual reading habits, but because I’ve developed an interest in science the last few years, I thought I’d give it a try. At the same time, one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much is because the information is a “nice-to-know” for me; no one expects me to be an expert on this subject. Another book on my summer reading list, however, is The Pun Also Rises—back to reinforcing my English teacher “non-negotiables.”

What are your non-negotiables?