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AROUND THE HANGAR


Negative Attitudes Just because someone curses doesn’t necessarily mean they have a negative attitude. Workers with negative attitudes tend to curse. Have you ever worked with someone who always cursed and complained about whatever job he or she was doing at the time? Why do people like this always have trouble with things and always sound frustrated? They are always so negative. I hate working with people like this because their negative attitudes end up distracting me from my work and stressing me out. Negativity breeds negativity.


Back to Cursing The hangar environment is a stressful place to work at best, and mechanics have found many ways of relieving that stress. The biggest problem with cursing to relieve stress is that its eff ectiveness diminishes after prolonged use. After years of cursing to relieve stress, all you are left with is the habit of cursing. This can become very unsatisfying to the average mechanic because he or she needs to start inventing new curses to help relieve that stress. He or she might just resort to attaching a whole string of curses together that nobody else has ever heard of. These creative curse word creations usually impress the newer mechanics. Some of the newer mechanics might even try to imitate it. The problem with this is, as I said before, the eff ects diminish with use. After a while it just becomes a string of words.


Our Cursing Affects Others Although the impact of cursing might diminish with us the more we curse, it isn’t just a string of words to the people in the front offi ces or to the customer who is walking around his aircraft on the fl ight line with his family. We might not realize just how threatening and off ensive obscenities can be to some people. This is just like the old adage, “I didn’t know my own strength.” You don’t know what their normal is compared to yours. What it boils down to is respect for your surroundings. There are many ways to disrespect your surroundings such as littering, creating noxious odors, hazardous materials exposure, violence, extreme temperatures, etc., and you wouldn’t consider exposing your coworkers or customers to any of those things intentionally. Why should obscenities be any diff erent? I have always been proud to be a helicopter mechanic and I have always thought of myself as being a little out of mainstream. We, as helicopter mechanics, are diff erent. We maintain a piece of machinery that defi es gravity, not just blasts through the sky like a bullet. It literally picks itself off of the face of the earth


and levitates. That makes us special because we need to think diff erently than regular people. Our normal IS diff erent than their normal. This is understood, and we will always be diff erent, but it is really too bad if we are only considered diff erent due to our language and our unprofessional mannerisms. Like all mechanics, no matter what they work on, we are usually looked down upon as ill mannered, uneducated, unskilled labor. We are tolerated by society because they have a need for us. We don’t think, we only react to our surroundings. We only use the right sides of our brains. We know that this isn’t true — but what can we do about it? My suggestion is that we simply start using the left sides of our brains. This is the side of logic and calculation. If we want to improve our image and start to be treated better, we need to be logical about it. We need to calculate our actions so that others begin to take us seriously. For most of my career, I have worked around hospitals and EMS fl ight programs. Years ago, nurses were mostly treated like cleaning ladies. They were a dime a dozen and they weren’t paid well. Over the years, the requirements to become a nurse became more stringent. There was a split, and nursing duties were divided up into nurse’s aides and registered nurses became doctor’s assistants. They took on more of the doctors’ duties such as actual medical treatment of patients. Society’s respect for nurses grew and so did nurses salaries, proportionally. There is an international shortage of helicopter mechanics. Money and respect are two of the issues causing this shortage. If we are going to change just these two issues, it is going to have to start with respecting ourselves and we are going to have to earn the respect of society. If we start acting more like professionals with our appearance and our manners, then we will gain the respect of society. The money will come only after our profession is recognized as one made up of intelligent, well-educated and skilled professional people who contribute highly to our society. When we are considered on the same professional level as pilots, engineers, scientists, etc., we will be paid accordingly. Cursing can be an uncontrolled response. It can be addicting and become a nasty habit. It can also be a valuable tool, not unlike many of the other special tools that we have in our toolboxes. They all have a special purpose, but just like all tools, they should be kept out of the reach of children. They should be kept in the hangar and out of the front offi ces and away from customers. They should also be left at work and not carried out into society when the day is done.


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HelicopterMaintenanceMagazine.com February | March 2016


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